Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 60482 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60482 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
He fires.
The blast isn’t thunderous, it’s an internal crack, like a bone snapping. Pain detonates in my chest, distant and searing simultaneously. My knees give out; I collapse onto the cold, wet pavement, the sting of rain lacing with the fire blooming in my torso. The SUV skids away, into the darkness as if it never existed.
I don’t know if I’m screaming, but I know my mouth is open.
My ears are ringing.
My hands go to the wound, as if I can do anything to stop the bleeding. Blood wells beneath my fingers, hot and sticky. My vision narrows to a tunnel of warmth and light. Above, the station bulbs buzz like trapped insects. I don’t feel pain, it’s as if it lasted just a second before it went away. Now, all I can feel is the cold drops of rain on my skin and the pavement beneath my back, cool and wet.
I hear the distant yell of what sounds like a teenager. In seconds, a young guy, maybe eighteen, is kneeling before me, voice cracking as he screams.
“Miss,” he begs, shaking my shoulders.
I can’t answer him.
Blood is filling my mouth, the taste so metallic I want to vomit.
He shakes me again, causing the blood to spurt out and splatter on his face.
He’s screaming now, and I’m not even sure if I’m doing it along with him.
I close my eyes, blissful peace, as I hear him desperately yelling down the phone, no doubt to 911.
It only feels like seconds have passed when I hear sirens wailing in the distance. Hands press into my shoulders, pressing something against my wound, frantic pleas to stay awake.
I lie there, blood soaking my shirt, heart slurring its rhythm. I think of Travis, maybe his lie was the only mercy he had. I think of Dad and Mom, how they guarded me with their broken love. And a tired warmth spreads through me. I drift on a current of quiet, weightless and free. They beg me—“Stay with us!”—but my eyelids flutter closed.
This is letting go.
I’m floating, but not in the way I expected.
There’s no white light, no parade of the dead, no Lillian pacing the border of remember and forget. There’s only me, and blackness, and the strange collapsing of my life into smaller increments—the taste of metal, the shiver of wet hair clinging to my cheek, the searing memory of the trigger pulled. I want to open my eyes, but the effort is too much, and there’s no reason. I don’t want to see pity in the face of the kid with blood on his chin.
I don’t want to see the gas station, with its flickering bulb, or the rain drizzling down the windshield of my car. All that ever mattered is already behind my eyelids, replaying at double speed. I am just a ghost, hollowed by every cowardly choice and clumsy act of love. Maybe the universe wasn’t hunting me for what I did, but for who I am—a girl who falls hard and never apologizes for the mess she leaves behind. Maybe the whole tangled orbit of Travis and me, the way we could never quit each other, was only meant to end like this.
Maybe Mom and Dad did their best, and that best was, in the end, not enough. I forgave them, but maybe I didn’t do it with enough heart. I wanted to save Travis, but I forgot to save myself on the way. Maybe the cold gas station concrete is the only place I ever really belonged, pressed flat by the honest weight of everything I tried to outrun. Rain needles my cheek, shocking enough to jolt a last, ragged breath out of me.
Inside, my chest feels hollow, as if the bullet carved away not only the tissue and blood but the gravity that kept me here. I imagine Lillian is somewhere nearby, not as a vengeful phantom but as the truest voice in my head. “Let go, Violet,” she would say, and this time, I try to listen. It’s funny, the things you think of just before the end. Not the college I never went to or the child I never was or even the future I never had. It’s the softness of Travis’s lips, the smell of my mother’s hands after a day spent in the garden, or the way my dad hugged me so tight it took everything away. It’s the way the world keeps spinning, utterly indifferent, as my breath slows to a trickle and fades.
I let go.
And in the silence between two heartbeats, I forgive us all.
The end isn’t a flame or a trumpet, but a small, satisfied sigh.
Like finally getting to the last page of a story that always hurt a little to read.
TO BE CONTINUED...