“Well, holy crap, then, I’ll get away from you.” I sling the door open and stomp down the shoulder of the highway, rain pelting me like nails. “Drive the car back yourself,” I yell over my shoulder. “You’ll be safer that way.”
But, of course, she doesn’t do that. Instead, she stumbles onto the shoulder of the road and hollers for me to come back. I just keep walking as fast as I can. It’s like if I move fast enough I can even get away from myself.
“Sutter,” she yells. “Stop. I’m sorry!”
Unbelievable. She’s sorry? For what? I turn to tell her to just get back in the car and let me go, but I don’t get the chance. A pair of headlights zoom in right behind her. All I can get out is, “Aimee!” before she staggers left onto the highway. For a second the lights blind me, then there’s an awful thump, and the next thing I know she’s rolling across the shoulder into the high grass.
My skin feels like it’s on fire as I run to her. The rain nearly blinds me. My stomach feels like a crazed animal that’s trying to scramble up through my chest and out of my mouth. I’m like, “What have I done? What have I done?” I don’t even know if I’m saying it out loud or not. She’s lying in the grass, her hair soaked, mud slashed across her cheek. Or is it blood? I kneel beside her. “Aimee, God, Aimee, I’m such a f**king idiot, Aimee.”
“Sutter.” She doesn’t open her eyes. “I think I got hit by a car.”
“I know, sweetheart, I know.” Somewhere I heard that you’re not supposed to move a person who’s been in a car accident, something about not damaging the spine, so I just kneel there next to her, afraid to even touch her face.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get some help,” I tell her, but I’m such an idiot I’ve lost my cell phone and don’t have any way to call for an ambulance.
She opens her eyes and tries to sit up.
“Hold on,” I say, “I don’t think you should move.”
“It’s okay.” She leans her head into my chest. “I think I’m all right. It just clipped my arm.”
Looking closer, I can see that it is only mud on her cheek, and I gently smudge it away.
“Can you help me get back to the car?” she says. “We’re getting soaked out here.”
“Sure, I can, baby, sure I can.” I cradle my hand beneath her arm to help her up, but she winces and tells me to stop.
“What is it?”
“It’s my arm. I think it might be broken.”
“Does it hurt bad?”
From behind us, a voice calls, “My God, is she all right?”
It’s a guy and a girl, a couple of years older than us, college students from the look of them.
The guy goes, “She just kind of like stumbled out in front of us. There wasn’t anything I could do.”
“It was only the side mirror that hit her,” says the girl. She’s holding an open magazine over her head to keep her hair dry, but it’s not helping much. “The whole mirror’s ruined. I mean, she was just walking in the road.”
“I’m sorry,” Aimee says.
The guy’s like, “No, don’t worry about it. I just hope you’re all right.”
“I’m fine,” she says, but I’m like, “I think her arm’s broken.”
“She’s lucky it’s not worse,” says the girl. “What were y’all doing out here?”
I start to tell her it’s none of her business, but Aimee goes, “We were looking for something. Something fell off our car.”
The guy wants to know if we need them to drive us to the hospital, but I tell him that we’re all right, we’ll handle it ourselves. He seems relieved, and his girlfriend’s like, “Y’all really need to be more careful.”
I help Aimee up and everything seems to be in working order except for her left arm, but there’s no bone sticking out or anything. The guy follows us to the car and opens the passenger-side door for Aimee. His girlfriend’s already heading back to their car.
“You sure you’re going to be all right to drive?” he says, once we have Aimee tucked safely inside.
“We’ll be all right,” I tell him. “I don’t care if I have to drive ten miles an hour. I’m not going to let anything else happen to her.”
As I slide in behind the steering wheel, I tell Aimee I’m driving her to the emergency room, but she refuses. She’s afraid they’ll call the police on me and her parents on her. “I can wait till tomorrow and go to the doctor then. I’ll make up something to tell my mom.”
“But doesn’t it hurt?”
“Kind of.”
“That’s it. I’m taking you to the emergency room.”
“No, Sutter, you’re not.” She’s sitting there holding her arm, but there’s determination in her eyes instead of pain. “I told you. I’ll go tomorrow. I don’t want anything to get in the way of us going to St. Louis.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
She’s drenched and bedraggled, but I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love her right now. That’s how I know I’ll have to give her up.
Chapter 63
Ricky’s stuffing T-shirts into a backpack, getting ready to go on vacation to Galveston with Bethany and her folks. He’s planning on trying out some surfing and, of course, the obligatory girlfriend boat ride around the Gulf of Mexico.