I smiled and looked back over the water. “Fast forward, Aspen is going well. It’s a constant party with all manner of people moving in and out, but that was so normal for my childhood, I didn’t think anything of it. There was the usual drugs and sex, but again, any time I spent with my parents was like this. It was tour life. It was rock star life.” I paused to slow down my heart rate. Every word I spoke brought me closer. Brought me back to that hazy room. The music thudded in my ears. After eighteen years, I still knew every word. Bile rose in my throat, and my body immediately tried to run, tried to escape. Like I was back there in the middle of it. “The night before our last day, there was a rager, and I’d passed out on a sofa at some point. I woke up, and the first thing that struck me was that the house was moving. Or it felt like it was. I panicked. I didn’t know what was going on.” My words came faster as I spoke, but I couldn’t slow them down. Just like I couldn’t slow the memory down. Now that it was on its way out, it was coming out whether I liked it or not. “I thought we were in an earthquake or a landslide. An avalanche even. I must have been yelling because I was met with laughter. I finally realized I was in a vehicle. But I wasn’t on the seat. I was on the floor. We were joyriding. My dad wasn’t driving. He was in the passenger seat, my mom on his lap. I didn’t recognize the guy who was driving. I later found it was Ace Carrick.” I only learned who he was when I saw the police report years later.
“Shit. I’d never tied the two together…” He trailed off.
“On purpose. They buried it. They must have paid people off. I’ve never gotten a straight answer. But he died that night in the accident.” Maybe because he was dead, it was never pressed. Or maybe they felt bad for me being a child and didn’t want me to be the face of the death of a beloved rock star along with my scar to the public for the rest of my life.
“I can’t imagine anyone getting away with that nowadays.”
“It would never happen. Not with how the paparazzi and social media are.” While my body acted like it was an hour ago, my brain treated it like another lifetime, disconnecting me from the situation. I watched it from above as I went on. “When I started to calm down, I got myself into a seat and put my seatbelt on. I kept asking them where we were going, but they wouldn’t give me a straight answer. Finally, I got it out of them. They were going on a supply run. They’d run out of liquor. From where they’d rented this cabin, we had to go partway down the mountain to get into town. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep. I didn’t get why they’d even brought me. My dad gave me some half-assed answer about thinking I’d enjoy the ride down the mountain because it was like a roller coaster. I understood why it felt like I was falling.”
I closed my eyes. “Ace whipped around the turns and switchbacks. My stomach turned. It was pitch-black, but I remembered from our drive up how treacherous the drop down the side of the mountain was. I freaked out and told them to slow down. I begged. They laughed more. And the rest went too fast. I’ve been told we must have hit black ice, but we spun out. The car collided with something and stopped us for a second, but it was a false safety. They started laughing again, and then suddenly, we fell.” My voice went hollow. The emptiness in my chest took over when I let myself relive the memory. I saw my breath in the car, and the stench of iron in the air filled my nostrils. I swallowed thickly, fighting the bile rising in my throat, trying to find my voice. “When I came to, the horn was blaring, but the car was silent. I hung upside down by my seatbelt. No one was laughing anymore. I felt warm and wet. I quickly figured out blood was running down my face and into my eyes.”
“Fuck.”
“The next time I woke up, I was lying on a table getting stitches in my face.”
Arik was quiet. I didn’t blame him.
What could he even say?
What could anyone say?
“So the accident left you scarred and killed a world-famous rock star and your mother while your dad walked away presumably unscathed, and no one knows,” he said at length.
“Very few people.”
“No wonder you don’t talk about it.”
“It’s not that.” I rubbed at my sternum, trying to ease some of the tension there.
“Why don’t you talk about it?”
“It feels like a secret my family has kept for so long it’s not mine to share. It’s my father’s. It’s Ace’s kid’s and his wife’s. Who knows if Ace’s kid would even want people to know the reality of it.” My words opened me up, leaving me raw and exposed to this stranger. I don’t even know why.
He put his hand on my back. “That’s really heavy.”
“Some days it is. Other days, I block it out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?” I frowned.
“For bringing them up. I’m sure everyone does, and I don’t want to be that guy or seem nosy.”
“You don’t seem nosy.” Much the opposite. “No one asks. It’s too taboo.”
“It’s not the most fun conversation to have. They probably feel like they are putting you out or are too awkward to even ask,” Arik mused, running his fingers through his windblown hair.
“So what’s your excuse?” I asked teasingly, wanting desperately to lighten the mood.
“I have no excuse. You’re disarming.” He paused, then added, “I guess with you, my filter is broken.”
“Just with me?” My chest warmed unexpectedly.I liked Arik’s company way more than I should.
“Just you. I’m pretty closed-lipped with everyone else. It’s hard to know who you can trust. Especially after the burn down of Nicole and me.”
“I feel you there. I’ve spent my entire life like that. There is no privacy in this business.”
“I can’t imagine.” He searched my face.