Page 14 of Twisted Empire

5

Tatum

My eyes widened,and I skittered away from Elias. It was just a reflexive action, but I saw him flinch at my apparent fear.

“What are you talking about?” I finally said. My voice came out a lot higher pitched than I hoped.

Just when I was beginning to trust him again, he sprang this news on me. Now my mind was whirling once more, confusion and anxiety spiking in my guts. Did I make the right choice to let him in, or was I going to wind up regretting it like I did every other time?

“I’m talking about the fact that a guy is dead because of me.” Elias looked slightly pale, but I could feel heat radiating off his skin.

I gulped down my nervousness and inched closer. “How?”

“I’ve never told you about this, but when I was younger, I had a bit of an issue with drugs.”

I nodded slowly, my skull heavy. “Your father mentioned that to me a few weeks ago. Only vaguely, though.”

Elias let out an irritated puff of air. “Of course he did,” he said stiffly. “It started when I was about fifteen or sixteen. I’d smoke a joint every now and then with my friends. Typical teen shit. But then we started going to lots of parties. In those circles, they’re pretty wild. It isn’t just booze and pot. There’s coke, all sorts of pills, acid.”

“I went to a few parties like that myself,” I said with a rueful smile. “It’s not just a rich-people thing, trust me.”

“Did you ever take anything, though?”

“No.”

“I did. I thought I had it all under control. Never during the week when I had school. Only weekends. I didn’t think I was addicted or anything like that. Getting blasted with friends was just something I enjoyed.”

I wrinkled my brows. “So what happened?”

A vein was pulsing in his temple. He clenched his jaw. “I was heading home one night. Totally fucked up, buzzing like crazy.” He paused. “You ever been on Abernathy Road? It’s that major coastal road, all the way east. Bunch of cliffs on the side overlooking the ocean.”

“I haven’t been on it, but I know where it is,” I said with a nod.

“I was driving there. Everything was pretty dark and quiet. Then I saw these lights heading for me. Another car coming in the opposite direction, on my side of the road. Even though I was all jittery and energetic from the coke, my mind was somewhere else. My reactions were slow too. I dunno why. Maybe from the painkillers I had on top of everything else.” He paused for a moment. “Anyway, I tried to swerve out of the way to miss the other guy, but I moved too late. Sideswiped his car, and he went right off the edge into the water. Died on impact, from what they told me.”

My eyes and mouth were frozen wide open in an expression of stunned surprise. I couldn’t even form a coherent response.

“So there you go,” Elias went on bitterly. There were rigid cords in his neck. “You’re not the one going around knocking people off cliffs. I am.”

Something about his previous words jarred in my mind, forcing me out of my shocked silence. “Wait. You said the other car was on the same side as you. So were you on the wrong side of the road?”

He shook his head. “No, the other driver was. He was drunk. Apparently when they did the autopsy they found that his blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit.”

I lowered my eyebrows. “Well, I don’t mean to sound totally heartless, but doesn’t that mean the accident was mostly his fault? Even if you were totally blitzed, you were still on the right side of the road.”

“That’s exactly how I tried to justify it at first,” he said, staring past me at the wall. “But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how much I was to blame. I saw his lights heading for me several minutes before it happened. The stretch of road I was on is pretty straight. So I had all that time to realize what was happening and swerve out of the way to let him pass. But I was so fucked up, it just wasn’t clicking with me. It felt like I was in a fucking dream or something. Didn’t even occur to me till the very last second to try and move. Plus I was speeding, too. I was probably at least thirty miles over the limit.”

“It still wasn’t entirely your fault,” I said softly. “The guy was blind drunk. He put everyone else on the road in danger with his behavior.”

“So did I. I shouldn’t have been driving. If I wasn’t off my face on whatever shit I snorted earlier that night, I would’ve been able to move off the side. I wouldn’t have hit him. He wouldn’t have died.” He threw his hands up. “So sure, he was drunk and on the wrong side—I get that, believe me—but I was in the wrong too. Badly. That man is fucking dead because of me.”

“Oh, Elias…” I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t think it was entirely his fault at all, but I could see where he was coming from. If I were in his shoes, I’d feel like shit as well.

His jaw tightened. “That’s not even the worst part.”

“How so?”

“I never got in any trouble for it. Not a bit.”

---