sister had traded in his truck for. He hated the damn thing. It was big, slow, and worst of all, it had fucking handicap plates on it, announcing to one and all that he was a fucking cripple.
Always fucking awesome to be able to make that announcement before getting out of the car so that little children could point and scream as their parents tried to get them to be quiet even as they openly stared at him. The best part was when a child started crying and having to listen as the little brat’s parents tried to get the kid to shut up by promising him that he would never have to worry about ending up like Chase.
Because, unlike Chase, they were sweet kids who deserved to live a full life filled with smiles and love and nothing bad could touch them as long as they were good. Every time he heard some well-intentioned parent sprout that bullshit, he simply shook his head, laughed it off and wished them all the luck in the world. If there was one thing that he knew now, it was that it didn’t matter how good you were or how well you treated people, because in the end, none of that shit fucking mattered.
It didn’t matter how many doors you held open for women, how many times you remembered to say, “Thank you” and “Please,” or how many times you risked your own ass to save a stranger. None of it fucking mattered and it sure as hell didn’t guarantee you the life that you deserved.
There were no fucking guarantees in life and he was living proof of that. He hadn’t deserved this, hadn’t deserved to have his entire fucking life ruined because some fucking landlord had cut corners, ignored city ordinances, and hadn’t fixed the fucking stairs so that when Chase was trying to carry two children to safety, the fucking boards gave out and sent him to hell, killing both children in the process.
Hearing everyone tell him that he should be happy just to be alive was complete bullshit. He would rather have died that day so that he wasn’t forced to relive the memory of lying there in pain, trying to pretend that the two children that he’d risked his life for hadn’t died in his arms while he’d waited for his turn.
Nine fucking hours it had taken them to dig him out, nine fucking hours he’d laid beside those tiny bodies as he’d waited to be put out of his misery. Instead, the rubble had been removed and he’d been forced to watch as the two children who should have had their whole lives ahead of them were carefully placed in body bags.
God, of all the things that Chase wished that he could forget, that moment was one of them. He should have died with them, but instead, he’d broken his back, his legs, his right arm, most of his ribs, and a good portion of his face and body had been ripped to shreds. Thanks to his family’s money and reputation, they’d had him in surgery in less than an hour, a plastic surgeon cleaning up the mess once he was stabilized and had him in a chemically induced coma in less than a day, because the idea of poor Chase suffering had been too much for his family to stomach.
They’d kept him like that for three months.
Three fucking months of his life had been taken away from him!
He hadn’t been able to attend the services for the children that he would have given anything to save. He hadn’t been there when their small bodies were laid to rest and he hadn’t been there to wrap his arms around their grieving mother and tell her how goddamn sorry he was and how badly he wished that it had been him instead.
It should have been him.
At the very least, they should have left him conscious so that he could grieve for those children. He’d deserved to feel every ounce of pain to remind him of how badly he’d fucked up. They’d robbed him of that, robbed him of his ability to feel every ounce of pain that he had coming to him.
Instead of letting him work through everything that happened to him, they’d kept him knocked out for months until they were ready to face him. He’d woken up in agony in a fucking sterile room filled with cards, balloons, and medical equipment, alone and drugged out of his