by Wild, Cassie
By the time Ava woke up and joined me in the living room, I was practically bursting at the seams with excitement. I’d considered waking her up several times, but decided to let her sleep. I’d already learned that she was cranky when she didn’t get enough sleep.
I nearly jumped on her when she walked into the room. “I want to go to the police station.”
“And good morning to you, too,” she joked. Then she saw how serious I was and stopped smiling. “What happened?”
“I know who hit me. I remember everything.”
Chapter 22
Preslee
“Why won’t you believe me?” I pleaded with the detective even as I wished I could slap the smirk off his face. This wasn’t going anywhere near where I’d imagined.
I’d been so excited when Ava and I had started off, sure that I was finally going to get some justice. Now, sitting in the station in front of two skeptical detectives, I felt anything but positive. They looked at me like I was insane. I might as well have been speaking Latin for all I was getting through to them.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you, Miss Keats,” the older detective replied. “I think you believe, very much, that what you dreamed is real. But we can’t exactly arrest someone and charge them because of a dream. Can you imagine what a mess that would be?”
I kicked myself for telling them that the memory came back in a dream.
“Dream or not,” I told him, “doesn’t it make a difference that I can clearly describe a specific person? I’ve never met Kris Fields in my life,” I pointed out, “so I shouldn’t know what he looks like, right? Have I described him? Because if I did, doesn’t that mean that I’m actually remembering the real crash?”
The younger detective scoffed openly, not even trying to hide his disdain. I bristled.
“So you’ve never met the guy, big deal. Who’s to say you didn’t look him up somewhere?”
I was starting to wish I’d asked for Ava to stay with me.
The younger detective, Krazelburg continued, “Let’s not forget that you already accused a totally different guy of being Kris Fields. Two of our guys drove out to that crappy little bar to arrest him. And who is it? Oh, just some innocent guy who made the mistake of having the same nickname as the guy you have a hard-on for.”
I gave him a dirty look, anger overcoming my hopelessness.
“I don’t have a hard-on for anybody, Detective. That was a mistake more complicated than just the same nickname.”
“Oh, a mistake,” Krazelburg laughed, his voice was dripping with sarcasm. “So you made a mistake then, but this isn’t one? We’re supposed to believe that now you have your act together and you’re not accusing the wrong guy. Right?” He snorted.
I felt about two inches tall, which was exactly how he wanted me to feel, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me crumble in front of him, regardless of how much I wanted to.
“If you’d bothered to do your damn job, you would know Kris Fields was at the bar that night, drunk enough that the bartender and other witnesses wanted to call him a cab. He caused a scene, and left in his car. That’s not a dream. That’s a fact.”
Krazelburg’s eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you stick to doing whatever the hell it is you do, and let us be the detectives.”
I almost told him that if he’d done his job, I wouldn’t have to, but I was stopped by a way too familiar voice.
“Detectives, I have to speak with you.”
I heard the words just before Kris Bedford came into view from the other side of the cubicle wall.
Kris froze when he saw me, and I sat, stock-still, torn between embarrassment and anger.
“Look who it is,” Detective Krazelburg said with a snide smile, turning to me. “The guy you tried to have arrested but were so wrong about. Tell us again about how we should believe you.”
“It had nothing to do with Preslee, Detective,” Kris said quietly, not taking his eyes off me. “I misled her. It was all my fault.”
“Aren’t you a pair, then,” Krazelburg said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
“You’re right,” I snapped at Kris. “This is all your fault! Now, because you lied to me and I was stupid enough to believe you, they don’t believe me. For all I know, you’re part of this whole cover-up too!”
“Cover-up?” Krazelburg spat. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“It’s the only logical explanation,” I insisted. “Somebody is lying. Somebody is deliberately ignoring evidence. I mean, what happened to my purse? Did anybody ever figure that out?”
Krazelburg shrugged. “There’s no proof that you had it with you in the first place,” he said. “Unless you’re now going to tell us that you suddenly remember having it in the car with you.” Krazelburg’s dark eyes flashed with menace, daring me to challenge him.
“Why wouldn’t I have it?” I countered, suddenly fed up with playing the nice girl. “I was driving home from school, right? Ava said she spoke to me, and I’m guessing that somebody will remember seeing me in class. There were no books or anything in the car. Now, you explain to me where all of that went.”
Even the detective looked reluctant to speculate.
I continued, “I can’t be the only person who’s been thinking this through.”
“All right, enough of this,” Gracen said, standing up. He had been pretty quiet throughout my argument with Krazelburg. Taking in his bear-like appearance and earthy-green eyes, he seemed like a much more reasonable and thoughtful person than his partner; maybe that had to do with him being so much older. Krazelburg seemed a lot more brittle and bruising.
“Miss Keats, we’ll take everything you’ve given us under consideration, just as we have with every aspect of this case,” he said, in a voice much kinder than his partner’s. He held out his card. “If there’s anything else, please contact me right away. In the meantime, we’ll be in touch.”
“Thank you for your time,” I said quietly. I tried to be as dignified as possible when I stood and walked away from the three men. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Kris.
“Preslee,” he murmured, but I brushed past him without a glance and hurried away. He was the last person I wanted to speak to. All I wanted was to pretend that none of this ever happened. I should’ve just taken the damn hush money and started over.
I stepped outside and took a few deep breaths. I had to clear my head. First, the detectives had treated me like a mental case, and then Kris showed up. Talk about a double whammy.
“Preslee.”
Dammit. Why wouldn’t he just leave me alone? I walked on without a backward glance.
“Preslee, please, let me talk to you for a minute,” he begged. I felt his hand on my arm. “I have to tell you something, please, don’t leave just yet.”
I turned around to face him. “What?” I asked, my voice flat and clipped. No way in hell I was going to let him back in. He seemed surprised that I gave him the chance to speak, and it took him a moment to get the words out. “I…I’ve been thinking about you, and us.”
I sighed heavily and looked away. I didn’t need to hear this.
“I can’t stand letting things end this way.”
We stood in silence for a long time. I could tell that he was waiting for me to respond. Finally, when I was sure I wouldn’t cry, I swallowed, “You know what the worst part is? It was bad enough that I couldn’t trust my old memory, but now you’ve made it impossible for me to trust my new ones. I can’t believe anything you told me, ever. Kris Fields took my old memories, and you took the new ones. I can’t forgive that.” Kris flinched like I slapped him. He opened his mouth to speak, but was immediately cut off by Ava who suddenly appeared at my side.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” she growled at him.
“It’s public property, Ava,” he answered, holding up his hands. “I didn’t know that I’d run into Preslee here.”
“Fine – but if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away fr
om her,” she warned. “Or else you’re going to lose a pretty important part of your anatomy.” She looked pointedly at Kris’ crotch.
His expression went blank, but he stepped aside to let us both pass.
Ava bundled me into the car and drove off at top speed. I happened to catch a glimpse of Kris as we peeled away. He was standing where we’d left him, a dejected look on his face.
Chapter 23
Preslee
“You don’t need that creep,” Ava said for what must have been the hundredth time since our run-in at the police station. She handed me a cup of tea and then sat, Indian-style, on the opposite side of the sofa.
“I know,” I told her. “Besides, he’s the least of my worries right now.”
She took a sip from her own tea. “So what’s next? What can we do?”
I couldn’t help smiling at her. The fact that she used the word “we” went a long way to making me feel better.
“I have no idea,” I admitted. “I mean, I thought remembering the accident was going to solve everything, you know? I thought I’d walk in and announce that I remembered who hit me and they’d be all ‘wow, awesome, thanks!’ We’d get the guy and that would be it. But now I feel more lost than ever. Maybe…this is as far as we go.”
She gave me a hard, searching look. “Is that what you want? Do you really want to let him get away with what he did to you? Can you live with that?”
“Of course it isn’t okay,” I admitted. “I don’t want to let this slime ball get away with what he did, Ava, but I feel totally powerless. There’s something a lot bigger than just me or you at work here. It’s the only explanation. Otherwise, why would the police be making it so hard?”
“That Krazen…whatever his name is, sounds like a real jerk,” Ava observed sourly.
“You said it,” I agreed. “I felt like he legitimately hated me. I can’t explain it. He was beyond pissed that I kept asking common sense questions. Maybe he just wants to be done with the case already.”
“I thought detectives aimed to solve every case,” Ava mused.
“Maybe we watch too much crime TV,” I joked half-heartedly.
For all my attempts at explaining away Krazelburg’s behavior rationally, it didn’t sit right with me. But what was the point of repeatedly banging my head against the same brick wall? I had enough ahead of me in terms of moving forward with my life, letting myself get dragged down by this mess was only making things worse.
“I hope you don’t mind that I threatened Kris today,” Ava apologized. “It’s just that I’ve never seen you so upset. I hate the way he made you feel. I’m sorry if I crossed the line.”
“You didn’t,” I assured her. “Believe me. Castration would be too good for him.”
Ava went to bed not long after our conversation. Now that I had some time to myself to think, memories of how Kris looked in front of the police station flooded back. I’d pushed those memories aside since getting home, but in the quiet, I wasn’t so distracted and they came back against my wishes, bringing with them embarrassment, anger and hurt.
Sleep was a long time coming, but when it came, it brought with it a non-memory dream.
I was lying on a sofa in front of a roaring fireplace, but I didn’t really recognize where I was. The sofa and fireplace were from Kris’ apartment, but I saw knick-knacks from Ava’s apartment, and the pictures she’d brought from mine.
“Kris?” I called out. I wasn’t sure why his was the name I called, but something inside me said that I needed to find him.
I shivered as I stood. The room should’ve been toasty considering how the fire was going, but it was almost cold enough for me to see my breath. I didn’t let it stop me though. I had to find Kris. I had only started down the hallway, but it seemed to stretch for miles in both directions. There were doors on either side, but when I tried them, they were all locked. I could hear talking behind a few of them. Sometimes I even heard screaming and fighting, but I couldn’t get in, no matter how hard I tried. I even knocked on a few of the doors, but whoever was on the other side ignored me. Who was talking? Where was I? Where was Kris?
I called his name again, wishing he was there with me. He would know the way out of there, I was sure. The hallway turned into a street. No, a gravel road, barefoot. I could feel bits of broken glass beneath my feet. A car, crumpled and crushed, was laying off on the side of the road. It had come to rest against a telephone pole. There was nothing else. No lights, no cars, no people. It was just the car, and me. Then I noticed something else.
There was a large, dark mass lying in the road not far from the car. I was terrified to see what it was, but my feet kept moving in that direction.
“No, I don’t want to,” I whimpered, but now I was being pulled closer and closer to whatever it was that was beside the wreckage.
I didn’t want to see, but I couldn’t close my eyes. When I stood nearly on top of it, an overhead street light flicked on, and I screamed in horror.
Kris laid on his back, staring up at the black sky. His eyes were blank and unfocused, devoid of their normal humor and heat. Blood streaked his handsome face, matting his hair in clumps and pooling beneath his head. His body was twisted in an unnatural angle, and his clothes were ripped to shreds.
“No!” I dropped to my knees beside him.
His eyes were unblinking, and he didn’t respond to my cries. I begged him to look at me, to see me, to come back to me, but he didn’t move, didn’t flinch. I put my head to his chest, but heard no heartbeat. I pleaded with him to breathe, but he was gone.
I’d lost him. I would never get the chance to tell him how sorry I was. I’d never hear his voice or see that boyish grin again. Then I saw the blood on my hands – his blood – and I started screaming...
I woke up in a puddle of sweat. I was shaking violently, and there were tears on my cheeks. I searched the room wildly, but there was no body, of course. It had been a dream. I was on the couch at Ava’s. That hadn’t been a dream. It hadn’t happened.
I laid back down, still shaking. I could still feel the slick wet of the blood on my hands. Feel the pain that had ripped through me, thinking that I’d lost Kris forever. That anguish. The despair. I’d felt like I might go crazy with grief. His empty eyes, his face covered in blood, and his brown hair even darker where the blood soaked in. I couldn’t erase the image no matter how hard I tried. It was permanently imprinted on my brain, on my heart. No matter how often I insisted it had only been a dream, the sense of loss stuck with me.
I longed for the comfort and certainty that Kris was okay, but the way we’d left things, I couldn’t just call him on the phone. All I could do was rock myself back and forth. Sleep didn’t come again for a long time. But by the time it did, I knew one thing for certain. I wanted Kris, now, more than ever.
Chapter 24
Kris
I poured myself another bourbon, slopping the liquor over the rim of the glass and onto the bar.
“Oops,” I laughed, but there was nobody around to hear me. “Drinking alone is a sign of a serious problem, Kristopher,” I scolded myself in a mock-serious tone of voice. Then I laughed again, but even to my drunken ears, it sounded harsh and humorless.
I’d been drinking alone for hours, and the place was a mess. If I’d half a brain, I would hire some permanent help, I told myself, instead of just having a cleaning woman come in every other day. Then I wouldn’t have to clean up my own messes when I was drunk.
I could also send them out for more liquor after I’d emptied the bottle, I thought as I held the open bottle upside down and let the last few drips fall out into my open mouth. I scowled at the bottle, like it was at fault for everything that’d happened. Seeing Preslee at the station had thrown me for a loop. She’d looked so devastated that I’d wanted to wrap my arms around her. I’d wanted to beat the shit out of the asshole detective who’d upset her. I wanted to just be with her again, but she was still dead set on never forgiving me, and I couldn’t really b
lame her. I might not ever forgive myself.
Not only had I lost her, but I’d hurt her. She was right to hate me. I’d made her doubt herself. Who knew if she’d ever trust anyone again?
I had tried to convince myself that my motives were pure, that I was only trying to help her, but she knew better, and so did I. I wasn’t a good guy, I was a liar. I hadn’t even been able to come clean to her about who I really was until I hadn’t been able to avoid it. Nothing excused that.
I tried to redeem myself by telling the detectives everything I knew about Quaid and Kris Fields, which, considering how long I’d known them both, had been a lot. Gracen had listened politely, but Krazelburg had seemed more annoyed by the information, even when I gave them the papers I’d gotten from the bartender. I’d left after Gracen promised to look into things, but I hadn’t been very hopeful.
Then I came home and got drunk.
I’d tried to call Preslee more times than I could remember before running into her at the police station. Each time it went straight to voicemail. At one point, I heard someone pick up and my heart leapt in my throat…but it was only Ava, threatening me with the cops if I didn’t stop.
“And this time they’ll be looking for the right guy,” she’d promised.
I didn’t know Ava well, but I got the feeling that she wasn’t the type of girl to make idle threats.
I stumbled into the bedroom, suddenly very sleepy. I barely made it to the bed before I collapsed, still fully clothed. I passed out in the middle of telling myself to hire someone to help me undress when I was drunk.
Unfortunately, the drinking didn’t give me the main thing I wanted. A dreamless sleep.
It felt as though I didn’t get more than five or ten minutes at a time. I kept half waking, sometimes expecting to see Preslee lying there beside me. I was always disappointed for a split second before remembering that Preslee would never be there again. Then I would close my eyes and repeat the pattern again and again.
First, they were good dreams, the nightmare coming when I woke up and realized they weren’t real.
