Always and Forever (15 page)

One thing stopped me, though. Kal's arms anchored around me were only a physical thing, easily broken, but I'd be blind, not to mention stupid to ignore how my newly hatched plan of death-by-train would affect him. It was one thing to want for him to not see me waste away as the cancer ate at my brain, my body, my soul. It was quite another for him to see my guts splattered all over the tracks. How would that help him?

The horn blared. A bright light sliced through the night to illuminate the tracks.

“Dude, let go.” Adam tugged on my arm again.

In the end, the train won out. This was my chance. My chance to have death on my own terms. If I didn't do this now, I'd find some way to cling to all the things in my life that I was better off letting go of now. Kal was a prime example. How many times in this past week had I told myself I'd break things off with him? How many times had I found some lame excuse to not do it? It had to end. Here. Now.

And it had to be on my terms.

A striking calm settled over me, then. Decision made. It'd be a mess, not at all what I'd originally wanted, but this way would be better, faster. I shoved aside the fact that it was probably only better for me. Selfish as I had so obviously become since my diagnosis, I couldn't be bothered to worry about that. Not now. Not ever again.

Slowly, I pushed up on tiptoes, wound my arms around his neck, and slanted my mouth over his. The best goodbye kiss ever. His arms tightened in response, but in a whole different way. So when I skipped out of his embrace, he let me go, not even a thought about the ramifications of doing so.

“Just don't look, and it'll be fine,” I told him before I pulled away and followed Adam to the tracks.

“Mia!” Kal bellowed, but his angry shout was drowned out by the roar of the fast approaching locomotive.

Adam and I were on opposite sides of the tracks, each straddling the iron ties. We exchanged a quick conspiratorial grin, and then faced forward.

“You ready to lose, chicken?” he called over to me.

I didn't respond, but a small victorious smirk tilted up the corners of my lips. I would come out the winner here. I already knew that. In that moment, I shut out his words and the shouts of the people who surrounded us. I was focused on one thing and one thing only.

My death.

The light of the train swept over me. The engine roared in my ears and mixed with the shrill sound of brakes applied far too late. Metal screamed against metal. A fog horn blasted through the air; it beseeched us to the get the hell off the tracks.

Bathed in bright, golden light, I dragged in a deep breath, closed my eyes, and waited for death to come and claim me.

E
IGHTEEN

THEY SAY THAT IN THE MOMENT
before you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. Whether that was true or not was beside the point. Let's just say, in that moment, when the train was bearing down on me, when the shrieking brakes, the thundering engine, and the shouts of my friends were all closing in on me, there was nothing.

Nothing save the golden ray of the train's headlight. That was all. And then everything went black, but I felt no pain. Which was odd, because wouldn't a person who'd been hit face-first by a speeding train feel something? Anything?

“Mia!”

I shook my head, forcing out the last vestiges of gray murkiness that clouded my mind. Someone was calling out to me, but I couldn't see who.

“Damn it, Mia. Come back to me.”

This time it wasn't just my head that shook but my whole body, and once the trembling began, there was no stopping it. Slowly, the gray began to recede. My breathing went from slow and steady to hitching and gasping, painful intakes of cool, crisp air. And, even before my eyes fluttered open, I knew the cold, unrelenting truth of it all.

I'd failed. Again.

What kind of idiot loser couldn't even commit a proper suicide? How was it even possible that I'd survived getting hit by a train?

“Mia, baby…please,” Kal pleaded yet again.

A weak sound, not quite a moan but almost, clawed its way out of me, and my eyes snapped open. Of course, the first thing I'd have to focus on would be his face, a mask of worry, eyes dark and unreadable, lips compressed into a thin, angry line. Like he had any right to be angry. If it wasn't for him, I'd be dead right now. My lungs wouldn't still be pulling in air, each breath allowing the cancer to take one more bite out of my soul, slowly devouring me until there was nothing left.

It's his fault I'm still here.

“Mia?”

I shook my head, batted his hands away with a low growl. “What happened?” I forced the words out through teeth clenched so tightly together, they were like heavy concrete, hard and immovable.

“You lost,” Adam hooted from behind Kal. “Loverboy freaked out and pulled you off the tracks. You hit your head on the platform on the way down.”

I shoved up to a sitting position and winced against the pain and dizziness that rocketed through my head at the too fast movement. “You did what?” I leveled a hot glare at Kal. How could he do this to me? He'd ruined everything!

His mouth dropped open, a giant O of bewilderment, shock, and the slightest tinge of shame at my harsh tone. “I didn't want you to get hurt,” he mumbled, eyes downcast.

“And, knocking me over the head wasn't hurting me?” I snapped out, angrier than I think I'd ever been in my entire life. Hot, blinding crimson sailed gleefully through me.

I ignored Kal's pleas for me to
just stop and listen to reason
, pushed up to my feet, and then stalked off toward the Colonel. I really didn't know where I was going or what I intended to do. I just needed to get away. Away from Kal and his grand confessions of love. Away from Brad and Dave's roller coaster relationship. Away from Ricki and her melodramatic, narcissistic tendencies. Away from Adam's carefree existence. Away from everything and everyone who represented what I could never have. And would never be: alive.

I didn't once look back, not sure I wanted to know who watched me or what they all thought of my erratic behavior. I knew it was completely insane of me to act the way that I was, the way I have
been, but I couldn't seem to stop myself. And, I definitely didn't want to know who was or was not following me. I'd know the answer to that question soon enough.

I yanked open the Colonel's door, jumped in, and slammed my fist against the steering wheel. What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I do anything right? How hard could ending one's life really be? It shouldn't be this difficult.

I sucked in a ragged breath, fought for some semblance of calm even as my brain raced forward, fell backward, pretty much ran around in circles, not quite knowing which direction was the safest, sanest route. Sanity hasn't really been my strong suit lately.

The passenger side door flew open, and cold air whooshed in; its icy fingers wrapped around me. Kal dropped into the seat with a heavy, over-burdened sigh. He shut the door firmly but said nothing. He didn't even look in my direction.

The silence opened up and stretched out for miles between us, a great yawning chasm that had no beginning, no end, just a bottomless pit of pain, fear, and heartache. One that I'd created with my bare hands.

I killed the silence between us first.

“This whole thing with us,” I started. My voice broke a little more with each syllable. “It was a mistake. A really big one.” My eyes burned as the tears began their assault, fighting to break free. I wouldn't let them fall, not while Kal was there to witness them.

He looked over at me, his eyes shining brightly beneath the pale moonlight. Immeasurable hurt reflected off the whites only to be devoured by the confusion swimming in his dark chocolate irises. He swallowed visibly, clearly steeling himself against the onslaught of my vicious words. “Is that why you did it?”

“I don't need to explain myself to anyone, much less you,” I bit out. Venom coated and dripped off my every syllable. “And, I for damned sure don't need your permission to have a little fun.”

“Fun?” he echoed stiffly. He barked out a bitter, hollow-sounding laugh. “That's what you call what you just did? Fun?”

“It was just a game, Kal. No one would've gotten hurt.” No one did get hurt. That was the real tragedy. Dammit.

“Hurt? You could've been killed!” he exploded. His face darkened with a curiously intriguing mixture of fear and fury. He stopped for
a beat, drew in a steadying breath before he allowed himself to continue. “You've changed. At first, I thought it was because of us, but I'm not so sure anymore. You're different, Mia, and not in a good way.” He turned toward me, caught hold of my shoulders, and made me look straight at him and only him. “The Mia I know would never have done something so…so reckless. The Mia I know would not pick fights with Ricki and flirt with Adam in front of everyone. The Mia I know—”

“Doesn't exist,” I burst out and shrugged off his hands.

Surprise was too quiet a word for what I felt in that moment. I stared into his face and saw the hurt and horror at war behind his eyes. Shock, maybe? No, even that wasn't enough to describe my reaction to seeing such brutality, such overwhelming emotion rolling through him. I'd never in all the time I'd known him seen Kal like this. It was strangely fascinating, even as it angered me. What gave him the right to be so shocked, so concerned, so hurt by all this? He wasn't the one who was dying here. He didn't even know what anger and pain and horror really were. He wasn't plagued by the terrible sense of injustice that shadowed my every step, my every breath.

He was the lucky one.

“That Mia never existed, Kal,” I told him in a mean little voice. “She was a figment of your imagination.”

“Always?” he asked in genuine disbelief.

“And forever,” I slung our little catchphrase at him like a poison-tipped arrow, one aimed directly for his heart.

If the look on his face was any indication, that arrow hit its target, dead-center. The ache in my own chest announced the path that arrow had taken to get to Kal had gone straight through my own heart. It throbbed out its agony, cried out for me to take back everything I'd said to Kal, to tell him all the things I'd kept hidden.

But I just couldn't do that. It was better this way. Really, it was.

Betrayal flashed across his face a split-second before his features locked down into a stoic mask. “Fine,” he gritted out. “If that's really how you feel.”

Coward that I was, I let silence be my answer.

He didn't look at me again, didn't reach out to me. Instead, he slipped out of the Colonel and walked away, a hunched dejected figure slinking off into the darkness.

The first tear rolled free before the door had even clicked shut. Then the dam broke and flooded my face in hot salty tidal waves. Riptides that knocked me down, pulled me under, drowned me with bitter tears of regret.

I shouldn't have ever let that first kiss happen. How could I have been so selfish? My hand locked over the pendant dangling from my neck, but I couldn't bring myself to tear it off. This was all I had left of Kal, of love.

In the last week, my heart had grown and swelled with the warmth of his emotions, his love for me, my love for him. Now, it collapsed in on itself. With him gone, it wasn't just an empty house but a condemned building, the foundation crumbled, the windows shattered. My body was already dead; now, my heart had finally caught up. No one could fix this.

Just like no one could fix me.

My movements mechanical, I leaned forward and turned the key, the engine roaring to life. I scrubbed at my face, mopped up the still flowing tears, and then let my head fall forward to rest on the steering wheel.

What now?

I heaved out a mournful sigh, leaned back, buckled my seatbelt, and then put the Colonel in gear. I didn't go home right away. There was really nothing there for me, anyway. Mom and I still weren't talking, but for more than short exchanges since our argument Christmas morning. Dad watched me like a warden at a maximum security prison where I was the lone death row inmate. And, Ben…well, Ben and I may have formed an uneasy peace with each other, but he still regarded me with barely concealed suspicion.

Not that I blamed them.

I drove around with no real direction in mind and after about an hour, wound up at the Pit. I parked the Colonel and just sat there, replaying the day's events. The rose from Kal and our impromptu make out session. Horcrux's ambush. All of us meeting at the diner. Ricki's drama and the subsequent fight. Kara Lambert asking if Kal and I were really together. Adam and I rolling around on the ground, tickling each other until we couldn't breathe. Kal and I in the Colonel's backseat. Kal finally admitting that yes, there
was one thing he liked about my car: the backseat. Adam's game of train chicken.

I cringed as memories of standing on the tracks washed over me. I'd been so close. So very close. And then, Kal had jumped in to save the day. At least in his mind he was.

None of that mattered now. I just had to think of something else. Something better. That's all. It'd happen. The cancer wasn't going to take me. That was for damned sure.

Over my dead body.

A soft, bitter laugh floated out of me. That was right. Over my dead body. A couple of little snafus were not going to deter me from my goal here. I said
when
. I said
where
. And, I for damned sure was going to say
how
.

The Colonel and I left the Pit, then. Invigorated by renewed determination, I coaxed his cranky ass around the hills and valleys of the Pit and down the long, winding road that led back into town.

And then, the answer came to me.

In order to get from town to the Pit or the Pit back into town, you had to cross the river. And, the bridge on this side of town was old, rickety, and very poorly maintained. Not to mention, it was only one lane, with no guardrails.

I stopped the Colonel about a quarter of a mile from the bridge. Giddiness sailed through me as the plan took shape. There were no other cars out this way. No one would see me.

Best of all, no one would come to the rescue.