Olivia's POV
After Samuel and I make sure that Hugo will fill in for my shift, we make our way along the side of the small park. While the left side of my brain knows that what I'm about to do is the right thing, the right side is still hesitant. Am I really ready to face Charlie?
As we depart from the park and step onto the sidewalk, Samuel turns in the direction of the nearest bus stop. I, however, stop. Almost automatically I turn my head to the right; toward the intersection from the accident. Since it's the middle of summer and already a little later in the morning, the four roads and the intersection in their middle are more or less deserted. This makes the urge to cross the street one more time too strong to ignore.
"Wait here," I call to Samuel, who only then notices that I'm not following him, and jog down the sidewalk.
When I reach the intersection, I stop at the edge of the sidewalk and take in a deep breath. Before I can step onto the road, however, Samuel grabs my arm and pulls me to the inner edge of the sidewalk.
"What are you doing?" With his hand still around my forearm he spins me around, so I'm forced to face him.
I point at the road, but keep my eyes on him. "I need to cross the road from the same direction I did on the night of the accident. Until now, I've been unknowingly trying to cross it from the opposite direction."
"You promised to count to three."
"What does that have to do with anything? Look at the road. There's not a single car here, so I'm not going to endanger anyone. This can be it. My chance to remember what the driver looks like."
Samuel remains tight-lipped for another heartbeat but then lets go off my arm. "Fine. But I'm coming with you. And if you stop even for a second, I'm pulling you off the road."
"Deal."
I wrap my hand around his and pull him behind me as we cross the road. For the first time since the accident, I don't hesitate before crossing the road, but I push the sensation to the back of my mind and focus on the approaching sidewalk instead.
No matter how reassuring it feels to have Samuel's hand in mine, I let go of him once we reach the other side of the road. I need to do this on my own. With a deep inhale to steady my racing heart, I spin around and turn to face the intersection from the same direction I did on the night of the accident. Then I take my first step onto the road.
Before I even reach the middle of the road, thick darkness and the sound of screeching tires replace the warm daylight and the mid-morning silence. Yet again I remember the car hitting me and then me flying through the air until I hit the road back first. This is followed by the sound of opening and slamming car doors and a female voice calling out to me.
Opposite to the previous occasions, however, this time my vision doesn't turn black just before the woman reaches my side. This time the approaching steps stop beside me and a familiar face appears above me.
"Are you okay?" the woman asks. "Can you hear me?"
She crouches beside me and prods my cheek with her index finger. I want to scream at her to help me, but my lips refuse to move.
"Shit." The woman runs her hands through her short hair and then snaps her head up. She looks around as if looking for someone and then jumps back to her feet.
All I can do is stare up to the night sky, while the woman disappears out of my vision. A moment later a loud bang of closing car doors slashes the silence and the bright headlights pull away from me.
"Help..." I rasp out, but it's already too late. The tires screech against the road and just like that the woman leaves me on my own.
"I knew this would happen."
Samuel's voice pulls me back from my memory and I find him standing right in front of me. We're standing in the middle of the sidewalk where we first began, but that's not what matters right now.
"I told you not toâ" Samuel continues.
"I remember," I interrupt him.
"What?"
"I know who the driver is," I breathe out hardly believing my own memory. But no matter how impossible it seems, I know what I saw. "It's Mom's friend. Anya."
"What?" Samuel repeats, but this time with his eyes wide open.
"It was Anya. I remembered seeing her face when she leaned over me."
"Anya? The human who's friends with your mother?"
"Yes." I nod, feeling like my head is spinning with the new-discovered memories. "Now I remember almost everything about that night. How I saw Charlie getting beaten up and how I walked away from him. How I hurried down the road and how I was hit by a car. And finally how Anya leaned over me."
"What?" a familiar voice hisses from behind me. "What'd you say?"
My throat squeezes into an airway the size of a finger, but I still force myself to turn around. Two steps away from me stands Nick, with his eyes narrowed in the shade of an ice-cold blue I have never seen before.
"You saw Charlie that night?" he asks.
"Yes." There's no point denying the truth. I was, after all, planning to tell him everything the moment I apologized to Charlie. "I saw your brother that night."
"And you walked away?" Nick's eyes turn even frostier. "Without calling 911 or shouting for help?"
"I..." I try to think of a way to tell him what happened, but for once the words refuse to come out. "I saw him... And I... But then after... You see, I..."
"It's okay." Samuel steps in front of me, shielding me from Nick's ice-cold glare. "You don't need to explain anything. Not until you're ready."
"I..."
"Let's go." Samuel grabs my hand and tugs on it.
He manages to pull me a step to my right before I plant my heels into the ground and tear my hand out of his hold.
"No." I might not know how I can explain everything to Nick, but I know that I can't just leave like this. "I need to stay. Nick has a right to know the truth."
"You..." Nick staggers a step back, eyeing my raised right arm, which I tore out of Samuel's hold. "You're really crazy, aren't you?"
"What?" In horror, I watch as he edges further and further away from me.
"All this time I've been telling myself that you only occasionally murmur something to yourself. But it's not just that. You actually think you're talking to somebody right now, don't you?"
"I am, but you don't understand. Iâ"
"You're crazy."
Nick slams the accusation in such a final manner that all of my protests and explanations die in my throat. How can I argue with that? I'm, after all, talking to what must look like air to him.
"Stay away from Charlie and me." Nick puts another step of distance between us. "Do you hear me?"
"No, you don'tâ"
Instead of letting me finish, Nick shakes his head in disgust and turns his back to me. Without as much as a backward glance, he storms down the street, away from me.
"Nick," I whisper and take an unconscious step forward.
Before I can do anything else, Samuel wraps his arm around my torso and pulls me against his body. "Don't worry. He'll come crawling back soon. Just give him some time to cool off."
"But..." My brain is telling me to go after Nick and explain everything to him. At the same time, however, I know that I can't really explain everything to him. At least, not the part about Guardians. "What should I do?"
"We can worry about everything else later." Samuel switches his hold to my hand and pulls me in the opposite direction from the one Nick disappeared into. "First we need to get you to the police station. Anya needs to pay for what she did to you."
*
As Samuel and I stop in front of officer Wright's desk, we find him with his phone pressed against his ear.
"How did you know?" The officer gapes at me and lowers the phone onto the desk.
"What?" I ignore the ping that squeezes my chest as I realize how similar officer Wright's eyes are to Nick's.
"I was just about to call you," officer Wright says, "and here you are. It's uncanny."
"You were about to call me? Why?"
"We found the driver," he says. "And before anything else, I must apologize to you."
"Apologize to me?" I risk sounding like a broken record and yet again repeat his question. After all, nothing he said since Samuel and I stopped in front of his desk makes sense.
"You were right. The driver was a woman."
"You know it was a woman?" My shoulders sink in relief. Up until Samuel and I reached the police station we had tried to come up with a way to convince officer Wright and the rest of the police force that the driver was a woman. But now it seems that they beat me to it.
"Yes." Officer Wright nods. "We matched the partial plate number you gave us to her license plate, and we got a statement from her coworkers that she wasn't at work on the night of the accident."
"Have you already arrested her?"
Officer Wright glances at his phone. "Davis should have arrested her by now, so I'm sure they'll be here any moment now."
"You have her," I whisper and sag into the chair beside me. "It's finally over."
***
Please, remember to vote and comment if you like the chapter.
Much love
- E