A Shattered Heart (Fractured Lives 2)

One

I should have left. I wanted to. The little voice in my head shrieked at me to step away from the door. To retreat down the narrow porch stairs and run away like I had been doing for the past year and half. The people inside the house were as familiar to me as my own family. Hell, they were family, and yet, as I stood with my hand shaking, inches away from the doorbell, I felt like I was drowning. My lungs constricted and threatened to collapse, crushing my will into a pile of dust that would blow away in the breeze. It wasn't supposed to be like this. I had grieved enough over the accident that changed everything. I was ready to move on, but the poignant, vivid memories of that night refused to release their stranglehold on me.

My shrink, Dr. Carlton, insisted that memories were good, that accepting the pain would eventually heal me. The Grand Canyon-sized hole in my chest disagreed with him, which was why Dr. Carlton was soon to be my ex-shrink. Avoiding the pain was how I had survived every second, every minute, and every hour of every single day since that fatal night. It was crucial I forget my former life and the friends I'd lost. More importantly, I had lost the love of my life, who was literally ripped from my arms along with our future together. Those weren't memories I wanted to cherish, no matter what that idiot Dr. Carlton insisted. No, the pain was better off buried in the deepest recesses of my broken heart, within the dark shadows of my crying soul.

So, I did the only thing I could. I ran away. I ran from every memory and any reminder of my old life. Being abroad helped. Studying in Paris and painting in Madrid and Rome consumed my every waking moment, allowing me to fall into a dreamless exhausted slumber each night. Emails and letters from those I left behind remained unanswered, and my family quickly learned that any mention of my previous life was a taboo subject. It was the only way I could survive. The only way I wanted to survive.

Somehow I managed to make it through one day, and then two, until finally, three hundred and sixty-five days had passed. My time abroad came to an end and the painful memories of the accident were pushed away.

I was worried about what would happen once my feet landed on American soil, but after nearly a year back home, I had been able to keep the memories locked away in their prison. Well, until Dr. Carlton decided to use his maniacal pickax to chisel away at the thick block wall encasing those memories.

Dr. Carlton wasn't the typical soft-stepping type of psychiatrist. He was a bully. At least, he was with me. He used words like fraud and coward and accused me of hiding from my past. Not that I cared. I could be a bitch right back at him. His name was actually Dr. Carlton Randall, but I called him by his first name to mess with him. I was well aware of what I was doing. The harshness of his accusations caused me to recoil and shake with rage. He insinuated I had failed my friends—that I was still failing my friends. He called me selfish and weak before asking the most betraying question of all: What would Dan think of what I had become?

"Fuck you! That's what he would think," I yelled, slamming the door to Dr. Carlton's office. I vowed never to return, as I had done about a dozen other times.

For two days after that I hid out in my tiny one-room apartment, trying in vain to shove Dan back into the cement prison of my mind. Suddenly he was everywhere I looked. My apartment, which was located about ten miles from my college campus, had always been my private oasis with its vibrant furnishings and all the paintings I had sent home from Madrid. Now, thanks to Dr. Dickhead Carlton, my sanctuary was wrought with a hurricane of memories of Dan and Kat. We'd always been Dan and Kat. Everyone said our names in one breath, sometimes bleeding them together into our celebrity couple name—DanKat. We were synced together for as long as I could remember. Until in one moment, we were only Kat.

Graduation 201

3

"We're officially adults now," Dan breathed into my ear, draping an arm around my waist to drag me against his side. I shivered as his breath fanned across my cheek. My pulse jumped to a trot as his fingers tickled the bare skin of my arm.

He chuckled deeply, knowing exactly what he was doing to me. The only problem was the seatbelt that dug into my side. I debated taking it off. Without it holding me in place, I could climb onto Dan's lap and loop my arms around his neck. After all, two could play the teasing game. I knew the way he liked me to run my tongue along his lips. I could straddle his lap, pressing my body against his. Back in the third row of Zach's Suburban, Dan and I had the cloak of darkness to hide us from our friends sitting in the first two rows of seats. I could drop a kiss on his lips that would leave us both wanting more. It would be a sweet, delicious torture we could continue until later when we would be alone.

We promised our parents we would wait until we were mature enough before taking our relationship to the next level. What better time than after graduating high school? Dan was right. We were officially adults.

We would commemorate our achievement with our friends as we had all been planning since we were kids, but then Dan and I would have our own celebration. A celebration we had both been counting down the days to.

We almost didn't make it. On New Year's Eve we'd come close to doing the deed, but an untimely interruption derailed the moment when Dan's parents arrived home from the party at Mackenzie's house.

Tonight nothing would stop us. Tonight we would seal our love in the most intimate way possible. It was our secret. We planned it that way. I would tell my best friends eventually, but tonight would only be for Dan and me. I shivered with anticipation.

My fingers moved to my seatbelt to unlatch it.

"Uh-uh," Dan murmured in my ear, placing his hand over mine before I could undo my seatbelt.

"Zach won't even know," I whispered, looking up to the front of the vehicle. Just as I expected, Zach was focused on the road ahead as he merged onto the highway. Zach was a born rule follower. The Boy Scout of our group.

Dan's lips found my earlobe and he tugged gently on it with his teeth. "Forget Zach. Your mom would have my head if she knew I let you take your seatbelt off," he whispered as his hand settled on my thigh.

I turned to scold him for teasing me with his touch and not allowing me capitalize on it right before the vehicle shuddered violently. Something had rammed into my side. Panic seized me as a blur of screeching metal pressed against my window, shattering the glass. Dan reached for my hand and pulled me away from the shower of shared glass. I gripped his hand tightly as Jessica's screams filled the vehicle. Everything around me tilted wildly like an amusement park ride. I watched morbidly as Tracey's head slammed against the window with so much force I was surprised it didn't explode. It couldn't be happening. We had to be in a nightmare I would wake from, in my own bed. The wheels of the Suburban left the road and my body pressed against Dan.

A scream tore through my throat as the vehicle lost its ability to stay upright. We flipped over and over again with stomach-churning force. Dan's hand was ripped from mine when the rear end of the Suburban crushed him, taking him instantly.

***

Tears of anger sprang to my eyes as I shook my head to clear the agonizing memory. I fucking hated Dr. Carlton for doing this to me. Why couldn't he leave well enough alone? In one fell swoop he had knocked down the wall around my heart and obliterated my sanity to smithereens. He refused to acknowledge I needed my wall of protection. I needed it more than I required oxygen to breathe. Without my wall, I was like a crack addict, waiting for another fix as I shook like a leaf trying to ring a damn doorbell.

It wasn't too late to leave. Mackenzie would never know if I got back in my car and drove away. I could continue to ignore her emails and letters. It would be easy to continue hiding, or being selfish as Dr. Carlton claimed. He was wrong about one thing though. I wasn't weak. If I were, I would never have made it past those first few hours after the accident. I wouldn't be standing here.

I raised my hand and rapped on the door before I could change my mind. Maybe subconsciously I was hoping no one would hear the knock, giving me the excuse to leave. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, ignoring the way the air in my lungs had become sticky and was now coming out in labored gasps.

I could hear activity inside the house as I waited for someone to open the front door. My mind became flooded with questions. Would Mackenzie be angry at me for ignoring her emails and letters? What about her parents? We had all been so close. Part of me hoped Mackenzie would be mad. Maybe she would be so livid she would refuse to talk to me. Then at least I could report back to Dr. Carlton with a clear conscience that I had tried, and I wouldn't have to fire him after all.

The door swung open, but instead of an angry Mackenzie as I had been expecting, a six-foot-something male who looked vaguely familiar stood in the doorway. He peered back at me apprehensively, wearing an expression filled with sympathy as if he somehow recognized me. I stumbled backward without saying a word as my mind comprehended where we had met before.

Of course I knew his face. It would be forever stamped in my mind. He had peered at me through the mangled Suburban after the accident, shining a light in my face to ask if I was okay before moving the light past me. I will forever wish my eyes hadn't followed the beam of the flashlight, but they did. I was unable to un-see what was reveled.

The stranger's lips moved as he stood with the front door open, but his voice sounded muffled to my muddled brain. He called Mackenzie's name with apparent familiarity. My instinct was to flee, but my feet refused to move, keeping me rooted to the porch.

My ears returned to clarity at the sound of an approaching tapping noise behind him. He shifted his stance, holding the door open for me to enter, but my legs wouldn't cooperate.

"Hello, Kat," Mackenzie said, greeting me with none of the anger I had yearned for.

Two

I stood in front of Mackenzie as a tidal wave of memories crashed down on me. This was a mistake. Didn't everyone see how fucking wrong this was? Every childhood memory was etched with a touch of the person in front of me. Jessica had been my person while Tracey and Mackenzie had been closer, but that didn't mean Mackenzie hadn't been one of my best friends. Mackenzie was the one I'd confided to the first time Dan kissed me. I knew she'd share my excitement without blasting it all over the place like exuberant Jessica would have. Mackenzie had been the leader of our group. Everyone always assumed it was Zach, but in truth we all knew Mackenzie was the one who orchestrated our outings, adventures, everything we did as a group. She made sure we remained a unit. She'd failed all of us. I realized in that moment I hated her for it.

The hatred rippled through me like a heat wave at the beach. Her eyes widened and her mouth formed an O. Through my haze of fury I wondered if she could see it. Was it written in blood across my face?

I watched with eyes that seemed to blaze with red as she placed a hand on the EMT's arm, who had taken a protective step in front of her. It became clear in that moment even he could feel my anger. He was wise to step in front of her. Did he sense I wanted to rip her to pieces? Judging by the way his face turned to stone, he must.

"I got this, Bentley," Mackenzie said in a voice so familiar I wanted to puke.

EMT had a name, Bentley. What kind of name was that? New rage surged through me. How could Mackenzie do this to Zach? Poor, broken Zach. Zach who would never walk again. Is that why Mackenzie left him? Was being strapped to a cripple just too much for Little Miss Perfect to handle? I spotted a cane in her left hand and a whisper of satisfaction blanketed some of my anger. Good. Maybe she wasn't all that perfect anymore.

"I'm fine," she gently implored Bentley, who was looking at her like she was the most important person in the world. I wanted to punch him in the nuts.

Bentley's eyes met mine, and his were filled with warning. I could have laughed. Did he think his

stare frightened me? He might be cute, but he was dumb as rocks. Didn't he know I'd already traveled through hell and back? I wasn't sure anything would ever scare me again. That part along with a few others were black as night. Dead. Just like the three who'd died in the wreck.

"Kat, do you want to come in?" Mackenzie asked quietly. I realized she was holding the door wide open for me, and Bentley was gone. I shook my head sharply, not only declining her invitation but to also clear it. Trying to dislodge the crowd of memories and voices inside it.

"Okay," she said, smiling at me softly as she closed the door behind her, leaving us alone on the porch together. My eyes moved to her hand that clutched the stupid bedazzled cane. I knew she'd been hurt in the accident, but I refused to ask about her or Zach. All I knew was that Zach was in a wheelchair and would never walk again. Mackenzie obviously was doing much better than him. It was clear she'd moved on. Forgetting the past we all shared.

My palm itched, wanting to strike her.