“Tori, I love you. We can work this out. Please,” Chase begs. “You promised you’d never leave me.”

I toss the ruined flowers at his feet. “And you promised you’d never hurt me.”

The weather in the city of Chicago is an ever-changing beast, it could be the middle of July and when the sun dips below the horizon it can be cold. Just like it is now, on a May night, when I’m shivering from the wind whipping through my bones as I walk along the lake front. I revel in it though, the cold seeping in, freezing me, strengthening the ice inside.

I’m numb, just the way I want to be.

I ran from Chase in the cemetery. Ran all the way out of the expansive greens and to a gas station down the road. I called Stacey and she was able to come pick me up. As I lowered myself into the seat of her car, I noticed the Challenger that was sitting in the parking lot, idling. Chase’s devastated face tugged at my heartstrings, but I tightened the pegs so they were strung so taut, they have no give.

Inside the car, Stacey didn’t even try to hide her curiosity and kept glancing between me and the black car with wide eyes. “Thanks for coming, Stacey,” I bit out. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.” With one last worried glance, she nodded and started the car.

I’d had her drop me at my building, but I couldn’t bring myself to go up. So, I wandered down to the waterfront, though I’m not sure what the fuck I thought I’d find here. The dark expanse of water is cold and uninviting, the park is empty of pedestrians, with the exception of a few teenagers drinking and getting high. I traipse back to my apartment and try to forget what it was like when Chase had me pressed up against the wall. As I enter my home, I try to forget how it felt like to cuddle on my couch with Chase, to eat Chinese food on a blanket on the floor.

I move into the hallway and stare at the door to my bedroom. It feels like there is invisible caution tape over the door, WARNING: Memories that will shatter you lie ahead. I don’t know how long I stand there, but eventually I make my way into the kitchen, a room that was rarely used until Chase started spending time at my apartment. I need a place where he isn’t surrounding me! I open a cabinet and grab a bottle of whatever, and make a beeline for my guest room. Plopping down on the floor, my back against the bed, I check the label. Vodka, perfect.

Hours later, I pour the last shot and toss it down. My cell phone sits on the ground in front of me and I continually watch it light up. Chase, Stacey, Chase, Chase, Stacey, Chase…. It’s getting harder for my finger to connect with the reject button, but I squint and try to meet the two despite the way they both wobble about. A giggle slips out and I think maybe I’m really, really drunk. I like this feeling, it’s so much better than the alternative.

L ife’s not fair.

That’s the fucking understatement of the century.

As I pace my bedroom floor, I have the urge to destroy the entire goddamned room. Everything reminds me of her. Her big-ass unpacked box of shoes sitting in the corner. A handful of bobby pins scattered about the nightstand. Pink panties still on the floor beside my boxers from when we woke up and made love on the way to the shower.

I stomp out of the room and away from the heartache, only to find myself staring at the yellow wall.

When I clench my eyes closed, I see the bright, sunshiny color of little Sarah’s dress and its beautiful and perfect. Yet, when I open my eyes, I can’t match the fucking color. I snap my eyes shut again and my heart seizes in my chest as I remember the little girl, so out of place on the busy road. Smiling the world’s most adorable, toothy grin. Shiny strawberry curls bouncing on her head. Her sweet, yellow dress that made her prettier than any flower on God’s green earth.

My breath is sucked from me when I remember how it felt to realize it was too late. That no matter how hard I yanked on the wheel to avoid them, my car would flip and crush them anyway. I remember the moment I came to after a medically induced coma, days later, in the hospital after countless surgeries, to successfully remove the piece of metal from my skull and the first words out of my mouth were, Please God, let them be okay.

Turns out, they were not fucking okay.

I killed them.

I killed a man and his sweet, baby girl.

In front of his wife. In front of her mother.

Fucking sick!

When Ashley came to see me, I cried and cried and it had nothing to do with the raging shit-storm of a never-ending migraine that possessed my brain. She regarded me with her own tearstained cheeks.

You killed them, she’d said.

You slaughtered that woman’s entire family, she’d said.

I’d begged her to forgive me. Tried to explain to her that it was an accident. And still, she told me she would never be able to get over knowing I’d killed a man and a little girl—accident or not. That night she dropped her ring, along with my dreams, into my lap.

As I pop my eyes back open and stare at the taunting yellow wall, I choke back a tortured wail that threatens to rip straight from my soul. Scrambling, I locate my phone and try for the hundredth time to reach my Tori. To make her understand.

When the line picks up on the third ring, I launch into begging. But drunk giggles in the background are all that can be heard.

“Tori,” I say loudly in hopes she’ll hear me and listen. “Please forgive me, baby. I had no idea you were the woman—the woman I took everything from. You have to believe me when I say there was no time to react. I tried. For fuck’s sake I tried but I couldn’t get away from them in time.”

Her blubbering to herself gets softer and softer until I soon hear her running a bath. I clutch the phone to my ear and quietly listen to the sounds that are her. All of her makeup is here. Her hair shit. Her bathing products. Hell, even her toothbrush is here.

I stand on shaky feet, the phone still desperately attached to my ear as I search out a suitcase. After I unzip it, I toss it onto the bed and begin loading it with the things she’ll need. I toss a couple of pairs of shoes in the suitcase but I plan on holding the rest for ransom. At least until she talks to me.

“Why?” I hear her sob in the background and I collapse onto the bed at hearing her voice again.

Because…life’s not fair.

My heart aches in my chest.

As she begs God to leave her the fuck alone, I am jerked into the gutting memory from hours earlier at the cemetery.

“Are you happy now?” she screams up at the sky. “I’m fucking done! You can’t hurt me anymore, because I have nothing left to lose.”

Me. You have me.

I reach for her. “Tori, I love you. We can work this out. Please. You promised you’d never leave me.”

She jerks her head toward me and murders me with her gaze. Her bloodshot eyes are hate-filled and my entire being crushes from one simple look. “And you promised you’d never hurt me.”

The smashed daffodils are thrown at my feet as she stalks away from me, her wails nearly waking the dead. And I stare after her, arms outstretched, begging for her to come back to me.

When her crying can no longer be heard and only my sobbing is left, I stand on shaky feet and stumble my way back to the car. I climb in and sit there for minutes or hours or fucking eons for all I know.

I found the one woman who understands my pain. Who completes me in every sense of the word. And I killed her goddamned family.