had been awake and heard the entire conversation. “Let’s go get his sorry ass and take him home so we can crawl back into this warm bed.” He kissed my bare shoulder. “And if you aren’t too sore, maybe we could do that again?” I just giggled and shook my head at him.
As much as we didn’t want to leave the bed, we threw on our clothes and headed back to the bonfire party.
When we pulled up, the lights from the truck shone down on the pond. We could see Eric puking in the pond. Emma was standing behind him, yelling at him about how stupid he was. Declan ran over to help Eric. I walked over to Emma and tried to calm her down.
“Ems, breathe,” I said as I wrapped my arm around her shoulders.
“I can’t believe he did this tonight! Lor, sometimes he’s such a jerk.”
“Yeah, but you love that big jerk,” I said with a little smile.
“Damn it, I do love that jerk.” I could tell she was upset, but she was trying really hard not to be.
“Go on home. I don’t want your parents to freak out. We’ll get him home safe.”
She got in her little purple Ford Escort and drove off toward her house. When Declan was sure that Eric was done puking, he threw him into the truck, and we headed toward his house.
Declan was holding on to Eric to make sure he didn’t get sick inside the truck. About the time we got in the truck it had started raining. It was coming down so hard that I could barely see the road in front of me.
“Dec, it’s really raining hard. I can’t even see the road.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad, sweetheart. You’re doing great. Just speed up a little, so we can get back to what we were doin’ earlier,” he said with a wink.
I knew it wasn’t a good idea, but I listened to Declan and sped up. It was so dark and the rain was coming down hard. I couldn’t see even two feet in front of the truck. All of a sudden the cattle were in front of us. The last thing I remember doing was slamming on the brakes. But I heard so much after that, breaking glass, crunching metal, and screams, so many screams. Then I must’ve lost consciousness, because the next thing I remembered was Eric standing over me crying. I sat up slowly and screamed, “DECLAN!” Then Eric cried even harder.
That was the moment my destiny was changed forever.
Chapter 1
Ten Years Later
To celebrate my twenty-sixth birthday, Emma forced me to go into town last night to a dance club. That was so not my idea of a fun time. Ems was always harping on me about not getting out enough. I finally caved and went with her.
Emma and I were so much more than best friends, we were like sisters. Eric and Emma have been in love since we were kids. They finally got married about five years ago. They very rarely fought, but last night Eric didn’t want us to go out. He was worried about us going to a dance club alone. He hadn’t been there before, and he just didn’t think it was safe for us to go.
When he told Emma she couldn’t go, of course, she was pissed, which made her even more bound and determined to go. That anger only fueled her fire to say the least, we closed the place down. They actually had to make us leave. We danced, we drank, and actually I kinda enjoyed myself. Sometimes, I forgot that I was only twenty-six. I was much too young to feel so damn old.
My birthday had always been a difficult time for me, it always took me back to that night…the night when everything changed.
I really didn’t remember much about what happened right after the accident. I knew there was a lot of crying and people saying, “I’m sorry.” I couldn’t understand why everyone was saying that. It wasn’t their fault. Why were they sorry? I was the one to blame - I was the one who killed my destiny. I was the one that put the man of my dreams in his grave. It was all my fault. I had caused the accident, I wrecked the truck, and everyone should hate me. Why did they keep hugging me and telling me it would be okay? Didn’t they know this could never be okay? Didn’t they understand