Page 77 of That One Night in Vegas: A Lesbian Romance
She couldn’t open her eyes, and Cassia wasn’t sure what
was happening, but everything was silent. In a city that was
never quiet, it was utterly unnerving. Her heart continued to
beat, but it didn’t feel right. Her body felt like the wreckage
around her. Mangled. Twisted. Crushed. A wall of pain was
coming up to hit her, the wave sucking at her, licking at her
limbs like the fire that roared through her prone body.
We were in an accident. I’m going to die.
Her brain was fuzzy and dark, and everything felt funny,
like it was coming to her from far away, another dimension.
She knew she was dying because memories started coming at
her. Memories that were more real than whatever was
happening to her body. She thought of her sisters, their smiles
and their laughter. The soft baby giggles of her niece. The
hard, cold eyes of her father, the black pits that bore a hole
straight through her as they shattered everything she knew
about him when he’d confessed to killing her mother. She saw
herself running her fingers, child’s fingers, through her
mother’s lush, soft blonde hair.
The memories turned to questions that flooded her, as clear
as if someone were sitting next to her, whispering them in her
ear. How do we justify ourselves after we’re gone? How do we
want other people to tell our story? Just facts? How should
emotion be conveyed? What about all those significant
moments? Minutes that people won’t understand. Decisions
they’ll never know the reasoning behind. Do we become just a
lump of our worst or our best? Is that how we’re reduced and
remembered, our humanity, our struggles, our loves and
passions, our wants and needs turned into a few lines of print
that live on if we’re lucky?
