Unbroken

Thirteen

Skye

Present

“It’s pretty good karma Loraine Itani was in that car crash a few weeks later,” says Fay. “She might have tried to kill you again.”

“No doubt about it,” I reply.

“Were you with Leo when it happened?”

“No, and…they weren’t accepting visitors. The town went crazy with grief.”

I reflect on those times.

Her car had been found in a ditch in the pouring rain. It was suspected that she’d lost control of the car as it skid along a turnabout. No one was there to witness it, so it was conjecture. She had been seen drinking that evening after leaving the gym…with her trainer— the very one that was found dead in the driver’s side.

That last part created quite the frenzy.

Had Loraine Itani been having an affair?

There was no word from George Itani, either.

For a long time no one knew if she would survive. The injuries were extensive—the kind you don’t just walk away from unscathed. I couldn’t go into town or to school without hearing about it. Leo didn’t leave his house for weeks, and oftentimes I found myself standing at the gates of his grand home on the cliffs, waiting for him to appear.

Where was he?

What was going on?

Why hadn’t he come to us?

“She just won’t die,” Hunter hissed under his breath one day as we walked home from the bus stop in the chilly rain. “Even Hell is adamant to keep her out.”

I didn’t respond as we trudged along.

I felt…indifferent about the whole thing.

A part of me was hurting for Leo.

The other part didn’t give a shit if Loraine pulled through, or not—

And the timing of it?

That’s what got to me the most.

I paused suddenly and spun around to look up at him. “Did Leo do it?”

Hunter peered down at me, his face streaked with raindrops. “Did Leo do what?”

My voice was empty. “You know what?”

But he just stared at me.

He looked at me in such a way that—I didn’t know—there was something dark in his expression that unsettled me. On a whisper, I pushed out, “Didyou?”

A car passed by, and I jumped suddenly, gripping his arm as my heart climbed up my throat. He turned his head, watching the car drive past. He shielded me as I trembled, and I knew how it looked—how traumatic this was for me to walk down this cursed road.

When he looked back at me, his expression was a storm. “I wish I did.”