Page 47 of Memories with Fire

“I don’t know what reality you’re living in, Hailey, but it sure as hell isn’t the one I live in,” he interrupts, eyes emblazoned with anger, his hands clenched at his sides.

My head rears back, and I take a step away, surprised. “Excuse me?”

“I called you. I called you every fucking day for weeks. Weeks, Hailey. I texted you, most days multiple times. I emailed. I called Cindi, and I even had Carter show up at your house once,” he says, venom slipping into his words. “So please, explain to me what reality you live in where I’m the asshole when you couldn’t even pick up the fucking phone.”

I throw my hands up in the air in clear frustration. None of that happened and we both know it. “Really Luke? You’re going to stand there and lie to me? When you know damn well there was no way I could pick up a phone to talk to you.”

Luke’s head falls back to look up at the sky. He’s probably trying to think up some other lie since I’m not falling for this one. I can’t believe I’ve slowly been letting my walls down around him when I knew it was a bad idea. Knew it would just end in more heartache for me.

“Enlighten me, Hailey. Why wouldn’t you be able to pick up a phone?” he asks, still looking skyward.

“You know damn well why I couldn’t do that,” I snarl at him. I shouldn’t need to spell this out.

His head snaps forward, eyes flashing with anger. He walks down a few of the steps towards me, moving deliberately, his jaw working back and forth as he glares.

“I have no idea,” he says, enunciating very clearly, “why you wouldn’t be able to pick up the phone. So rather than standing here getting even angrier at each other, why don’t you just tell me what I don’t know.”

For the first time, my confidence in him knowing what I’m talking about wavers. It’s the look in his eye and the way he holds himself. He’s truly angry right now. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him angry. There’ve been plenty of times I’ve been angry, annoyed, or frustrated at him, both when we were younger, and since he’s been in Santa Rosé, but he normally just sluffs it off and digs deeper to get further under my skin. He’s not doing that now.

My eyes narrow at him. “You really don’t know?”

“I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about, Hailey!” he bellows, and I physically shrink back. “I called you. Every. Fucking. Day. You didn’t answer!”

“I – I couldn’t,” I stumble over my words, “I couldn’t answer, Luke.”

He’s down another step, his eyes focused intently on me, still blazing with aggravation. “For the love of all that is holy, please tell me why.”

I swallow hard, my stomach sinking. I feel like I could hurl, because I suddenly believe him, and I don’t understand what this means.

“I was in a coma.”

CHAPTER 16

HAILEY

The color drainsfrom Luke’s face. He wobbles back and forth, and for a second I think he’s about to fall.

“What do you mean, you were in a coma?” he asks, the anger extinguished. He’s a little dazed, and a lot confused. “When? How? What happened?”

I force myself not to take a step towards him for the comfort I know his arms could provide. I hate talking about this. Hate thinking about it. It was the day my entire life changed.

“On the way home from dropping you off at the airport,” I tell him, my voice just above a whisper. I watch as his eyes close, and a pang of pain hits me in the chest from seeing anguish on his face. “I was coming back over the mountain from San José. I came around a curve in the road, and there was a car coming the other direction. He came around too fast, and I didn’t see him until it was too late. We hit head on.”

There’s a gurgle of sound from Luke that leaves no doubt in my mind he had no idea what happened, which opens up a slew of new questions.

“I was in a coma for three weeks. When I woke up, you were the first thing I thought of,” I tell him honestly, tears welling in my eyes at the memory. “I didn’t ask what happened, I didn’t ask where I was. I asked for you.”

Luke’s watching me, his head shaking in disbelief, agony written deep in the crinkle of his eyes and lines bunching in his forehead. I can’t imagine what he’s thinking hearing this for the first time, ten years after the fact.

“My mom…” I trail off, a tear sliding down my cheek.

“Your mom finally answered the phone almost a month after I left,” he snarls, but his voice isn’t as loud as it was before. There’s no mistaking the anger is back, but it’s not directed at me. “I was about to get on a plane to come back here and find out what the hell was going on. She told me I needed to stop calling. That I had to let you go and move on, because you didn’t want anything to do with me anymore.”

My eyes close as my heart breaks for different reasons. Tears are silently moving down my cheeks as the weight of Luke’s words rest heavily on my shoulders.

“She told me you didn’t call. I thought she meant after you’d found out about the accident. I thought you didn’t want me anymore because I was damaged.” My eyes open to look at him. “I thought you didn’t love me anymore, or maybe you’d never loved me to begin with. I spent months wishing that stupid car had killed me.”

“Oh, hell. Hailey.”

---