The Story of Us Read online

  His face is right in front of mine, our noses almost touching as his eyes search mine and I hold my breath.

  “Bullshit,” he whispers. “Does your boyfriend who’s so easy to love make you moan like that when he fucks you? Does walking around with a stick up your ass acting like you’re better than everyone else just like your mother really make you happy? You acted like you’d rather be skinned alive than move around on that dance floor. And don’t try to tell me it was because of your dance partner when that goddamn kiss proves otherwise. I remember a woman whose entire face lit up as soon as she heard music. Who could lose herself in dancing and it was the most beautiful fucking thing I’d ever seen in my life. She came alive when she danced and those fucking legs of hers that went on for days defied the laws of gravity.”

  He holds my stare for a few more seconds until he finally moves away and I can let out the breath I was holding. My bottom lip shakes with the need to scream and cry when he turns from me, grabs the handle of the door, and yanks it open so roughly it slams into the opposite wall.

  “You’re not happy. Best thing about you right now is that at least you still have the most beautiful damn legs I’ve ever seen. Too bad you chose to stop using them.”

  I watch him walk out into the brightly lit hallway and turn toward the double French doors that will lead him out of the house, my body sliding down the wall until my butt hits the ground. My bad leg is straight out in front of me and I bend my good leg, wrap my arms around it, and bury my face in the material of my dress that covers my knee. Eli’s parting shot hit its mark right in the center of my chest, breaking off the last remaining pieces of my heart as the memory of another night, one filled with thunder and tears and pain, crashes through my mind.

  Chapter 10

  Shelby

  Six years ago…

  Rain.

  Thunder.

  Lightning.

  Flashing headlights blinding my already blurry and puffy eyes from so much crying.

  Spinning and sliding through the flooded section of road, the wheel slipping from my hands and turning so quickly I can’t hold on.

  Screams.

  So many screams and I realize they’re my own. I can’t hold on. I can’t stop. Before I squeeze my eyes closed, the sky illuminates outside my window, lighting up the handwritten note resting on the passenger seat and I watch it slide across the leather and onto the floor.

  I don’t need to see the words to know what they say. I memorized them and they’ve been playing on a loop in my head since I got in my car. This car that is careening out of control. This car that he always insisted on driving when I would sneak away and pick him up. This car that he loved because it wasn’t flashy and new, but safe and reliable and I paid for it with the money I earned waiting tables. This car that he loved to pull off on a secluded road, pull me over onto his lap, light my body on fire with his hands and his mouth, and whisper in my ear how much he loved me.

  The words from the note play on a loop as this car, the one he loved to drive and tell me lies in, spins off the road.

  “It was fun while it lasted. I’m in love with someone else. Good luck with your dancing.”

  Even through the squealing of tires, the crash of metal, the breaking of glass, the words in my head are louder and demanding to be heard.

  “It was fun while it lasted. I’m in love with someone else. Good luck with your dancing.”

  My body jerks and my head hits the side window before that, too, shatters in a shower of glass, and still, the words won’t stop.

  “It was fun while it lasted. I’m in love with someone else. Good luck with your dancing.”

  The vehicle finally crashes into something that stops it, but it doesn’t stop my side of the car from collapsing in like it’s made of a thin piece of paper, pinning me in place. My left leg explodes with so much pain that my screaming grows louder, ringing in my ears as the car hisses and creaks and the remaining few pieces of glass from the windows tinkle down on top of the twisted metal all around me.

  I try to move, but I can’t. I scream even louder when I feel the burning, the crushing, the stabbing, the agony, shooting from my hip down to my knee. I move my shaking hands to where the pain is and I feel something sharp and hard sticking out of my thigh where it shouldn’t be. My hands are immediately covered in warm, wet blood and I choke on my tears and my screams when I realize what I’ve done.

  “It was fun while it lasted. I’m in love with someone else. Good luck with your dancing.”

  Good luck with your dancing.

  Good luck with your dancing.

  My screams of pain start to die, right along with my vision…and my dreams.

  Chapter 11

  Eli

  Get in the car, asshole.”

  My feet stop in the middle of the turnaround where I’ve been pacing since I stormed out of the plantation house and away from Shelby thirty minutes ago. I look up to see a sleek, silver BMW idling right in front of me with the passenger window down and an irritated woman leaning over the center console, glaring at me.

  “Not in the mood right now, Meredith,” I reply as I start to turn away from the vehicle.

  “I don’t give a shit what kind of a mood you’re in. Get in the car.”

  I hear the locks click as she releases them and leans back against her seat, her hands on the steering wheel and her fingers tapping against it while she waits for me to do as she says.

  Fucking Meredith Prescott. There was a time when I thought the two of us might be friends when Shelby introduced me to her that summer six years ago. Friends who constantly bickered with each other, insulted each other, and couldn’t be in the same room together more than five minutes before we were throwing sarcastic comments around like a baseball, but we had the love of Shelby in common and that always made us try to get along for her sake. It didn’t always work, but we tried. I liked that she was so protective of Shelby, even if it sometimes pissed me off when she would make comments about how she’d kill me if I ever broke her heart. Going by the look on her face and her cheerful greeting, she’s come to collect on that death threat.

  Realizing I’d rather be anywhere than standing in front of this fucking plantation with a woman inside who I can’t keep my hands off even when I’m pissed at her, I huff out an irritated breath and stalk to the car, throwing the door open none too gently and climbing inside.

  The engine revs and Meredith presses down on the gas before I even get my door closed.

  “If you’re taking me somewhere to dump my body off a cliff, I came with my brother-in-law and he might get suspicious when I disappear,” I inform her, quickly buckling my seat belt as she takes the corner of the turnaround entirely too fast and then opens the car up on the long driveway to the main road.

  “Don’t worry, I introduced myself to Daniel and told him I’d be giving you a lift home. He was quite pleased he wouldn’t have to leave early, so he won’t consider you a missing person for at least twelve hours,” she tells me with a straight face, her eyes never leaving the road in front of her.

  Meredith has no reason to hate me, unless she’s still mad about the way I left Shelby all those years ago. But she’s also knows damn well I explained why I did that in all the letters I wrote to Shelby after I got my head out of my ass. It’s clear she’s still very good friends with her and is out to right whatever wrong she thinks I might have done.

  I clench my hands in my lap thinking about that fucking kiss and how quickly her shock and anger turned to hunger. The softly playing music in Meredith’s car quickly reminds me of other kisses, of pulling Shelby’s car off the side of the road, turning down the car stereo until it was just background noise and losing myself in her. The wind rushing through the open car windows and ruffling my hair sends me back in time to riding horses with Shelby through the back acres of her family property, tying them up to a tree, and spreading a blanket out on the ground where we could touch and taste and do whatever we wanted to each
other without anyone finding out.

  I close my eyes as Meredith drives, listening to the quiet sounds of the local jazz station on the radio and feeling the warm Southern air on my face, and I think about how quickly Shelby’s body melted into mine tonight and how quickly she opened for me and let me in. She still tasted the same, smelled the same, and kissed the same, pouring everything she felt into me and it messed with my fucking head until I couldn’t take it anymore. As soon as I heard that little moan of need vibrating into my mouth, I pushed her away so I could breathe. She always had that power over me. With just a touch of her lips and the feel of her tongue gliding against mine, I forgot everything around me and all I cared about was her. Her pleasure, her happiness, her life. A few minutes in a dark room and there I was again, forgetting that the woman I loved no longer existed.

  “Care to tell me where we’re going at such a high rate of speed?” I question, my eyes flying open and my hand grabbing on to the door handle when she suddenly makes a sharp left-hand turn onto another road.

  “Care to tell me why I saw you go into an empty office with my best friend and then, a few minutes later, watched you stomp out of it all pissy and found her in there crumpled on the floor looking like someone just killed her dog?” she fires back.

  I don’t answer her, not because I’m angry she’s calling me on this shit, but because I suddenly have that image of Shelby in my mind and it does something funny to my heart. I want to hate her for what she’s become. I want some time to be furious that I had a moment of weakness. I can’t do that when Meredith is giving me this image and making me wonder if there really is a little bit of my Shelby left inside there somewhere. I can’t let that penetrate my brain. I won’t allow it, because if it’s true, if she really is in there, buried underneath all the similarities to her mother, the things I said to her tonight would be really shitty and that would make me an asshole, just like Meredith called me.

  Maybe I am an asshole and the things I said were a little out of line, but they were right, dammit. She can lie all she wants about how happy she is and how good her life is, but all I had to do was take one look at her to know the truth. She’s still here, in the same fucking spot I left her, because it was easier than trying for something more.

  Neither one of us says anything else as Meredith continues into downtown Charleston, turning down a familiar road right on the opposite end of town. It’s the road my old public high school is on, and the school is the only building located on this stretch of road. A half mile down from the turnoff, Meredith turns into the school parking lot, killing her headlights in the middle of the empty lot and slowing the car down until she finally stops. I notice we’re on the south side of the sprawling, one-story brick building and it’s pitch dark over here, all the streetlights and spotlights located around the front main entrance, a few hundred yards from where we are now.

  Turning my head, I see Meredith’s profile in the glow of the dashboard lights as she stares out the front windshield.

  “You’ve been gone a long time, Eli,” she says softly, the sound of the idling engine forcing me to lean closer to hear what she’s saying.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, but you’ve been gone a long time,” she says again.

  “I think I know how long I was gone, Meredith. I have the scars to prove it.”

  My hands clench into fists as they rest on top of my thighs, pissed off that I got in the car with her, just to listen to her tell me what an asshole she thinks I am. She has no idea what I went through to get back home. She has no idea the kinds of horrors I saw or lived through. Who the hell does she think she is? I get it. She’s Shelby’s best friend and she’s looking out for her, but give me a fucking break. Shelby doesn’t need a guard dog. She seems to be doing just fine in her happy little bullshit life.

  Meredith laughs, but it’s hallow and there’s nothing funny about the serious look on her face as she continues staring at something in the dark out of the front windshield.

  “You’re not the only one with scars, Eli. And I’ll say this again, you were gone for a long time. Maybe you should stop and think about the fact that she thought you were dead for five years. She loved you. She gave you everything. You broke up with her in a shitty note and then you died without giving her any kind of explanation or closure and she’s had to live with those thoughts in her head all this time. You gave her a kind of strength that I never thought possible for her, and then you left and she had to figure out how to pick up the pieces without that strength she so badly needed. I did what I could, Eli, but I couldn’t fill up the holes in her heart that your dying left behind,” Meredith says quietly, twisting the knife in my heart a little harder as she continues.

  “A lot of things happened while you were gone. Things you know nothing about. So before you decide to rip my best friend apart again, maybe you should know about at least one of those things.”

  Her arm closest to the driver’s side door reaches out and she presses a button that turns her headlights back on, flooding the area in front of us with bright light. My heart starts thundering in my chest and my palms start to sweat, but I don’t really know why. The image in front of us that is suddenly on display thanks to her headlights makes me cringe. I’ve seen things like this before, similar displays on high school lawns—a mangled vehicle with a sign warning students not to drink and drive or not to text and drive. An excellent scare tactic for new drivers so they know what could happen if they make stupid choices.

  Something about the image in front of me tugs at the back of my mind and my hand blindly reaches for the door handle and I push it open. My eyes never leave the crushed pile of metal and glass as I unfold myself from the car, move around the door, and walk slowly across the asphalt, unable to stop until I’m just a few feet away from the wreckage.

  My heart is beating so fast I wonder if Meredith can hear it as she gets out of the car herself and I hear her heels clicking on the ground until she stops right next to me and we both stare at the image in front of us. The car, if you can even call it that anymore, is just a pile of twisted metal with the driver’s side door completely collapsed in on itself. I can only assume whoever was driving this thing wrapped it around a tree with the way the vehicle is now in the shape of a U. All the windows are gone, save for a few jagged pieces of glass still attached to the door frames and the roof has been completely peeled back like someone took a can opener to it.

  I walk closer, my feet leaving the asphalt and stepping onto grass, my hands starting to shake when I see something stuck to what’s left of the back bumper. It’s scratched and faded and detaching at the edges but I know what it is. I know what it says and I should know, since I put it there before she left for New York for her audition.

  Dance Your Ass Off!

  A stupid little bumper sticker I found. A cheesy gift I gave her to make her smile and take away her nerves about her audition. She threw her head back and laughed that beautiful laugh of hers that always made my stomach drop like when you go down the first hill of a roller coaster. She jumped into my arms, wrapped her legs around my waist, and told me it was perfect. Made me walk over to the back of her car, with her still clinging to me, while I slapped it on the bumper. Then I opened the backseat and tossed her inside with a squeal, following right behind, climbing on top of her and getting rid of her nerves another way.

  My scalp tingles with sweat and my stomach rolls with nausea as I stare at what’s left of the red Honda Civic in front of me. She was so proud of that fucking car that was five years old and had a hundred thousand miles on it when she bought it. And I was so proud of her for refusing to use any of her mother’s money to buy it, waiting tables in the next town over so her mother wouldn’t know, working her ass off in between preparing for the audition and spending time with me, just so she could save enough to get it on her own.

  I hear a noise in the quiet night, and realize it’s coming from me. I can’t stop the grunt of pain that flies out of my mouth thinking
about her being in that car when this happened to it. There’s nothing left of that fucking red Honda Civic that I always made her let me drive and always loved pulling off somewhere secluded so I could hear her shout my name and listen to her loudly proclaim how much she loved me. We could do and say whatever we wanted in that car, however loudly we felt like it, without me having to sneak her into the apartment I shared with Kat after she’d gone to sleep or creep into an empty tack room at the stables without anyone seeing us.

  “After the accident, the high school called and asked if they could use it for this display. She wasn’t drinking and driving or texting and driving or any of that shit, but the car was enough of a mess to get the point across to their students,” Meredith tells me quietly.

  Being tortured and beaten for five years hurt like a bitch, but this is worse. This hurts deep down into my soul and it feels like someone is reaching into my chest and pulling my heart out with their bare hands.

  “When?”

  I choke the word out roughly, not wanting to know when or how or why, but unable to stop myself from asking. I feel my body swaying from side to side as I stare at the twisted metal and broken glass and the driver’s side door that is so bent it’s a wonder she’s still standing and breathing.

  “The night you left.”

  Meredith’s words hit me like a bullet to the gut and I have to press my hands into my hips and lean forward before I throw up.

  “She got the acceptance letter from Montclair Dance Company and the first thing she did was drive to your apartment,” Meredith continues, oblivious to me dying inside right next to her while I listen to her talk and hear the words I said to Shelby earlier, screaming through my head.

  “Best thing about you right now, at least you still have the most beautiful damn legs I’ve ever seen. Too bad you chose to stop using them.”