Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 132649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
“She went from relatively pleasant to almost catatonic and, I don’t know, I can’t describe it. I’d never seen anything like that in my life before. She was lifeless, almost robotic. And she was speeding. I wasn’t drunk, I wasn’t even slightly buzzed. I was sober, but like I said, I’d agreed to let her drive because she was insistent and I didn’t want another argument. I just wanted to get the evening over and done with and move on with my life.
“I told her to slow down. It was about three in the morning. The roads were empty…”
He stopped speaking, again getting that faraway blank look in his eyes.
“Trystan?” Iris whispered. Her voice jerked him from wherever he’d gone and his eyes were tormented as they swept over her face.
He gulped in a breath of air like a man deprived of oxygen, and when he spoke again his voice was shaky, almost reedy.
“I haven’t told anyone else,” he admitted. “Not even Quinny or Dazza. It was just… so—” His words failed him and his lips thinned as he retreated into silence again. Not for long though and this time she didn’t have to prompt him. He continued as though compelled to. “She told me she loved me. That I belonged to her. That if she couldn’t have me n-no one else could, then she jerked the steering wheel and drove the car straight into a tree.”
The silence was broken only by his harsh gasping breaths. Iris, however, found herself quite unable to breathe as the shock of his words stole the air from her lungs and left her reeling in horror.
She desperately cast about for something—anything—to say, but he spoke before she could, “It wasn’t at all how I’d imagined something like that would be. Like the movies”—his mouth twisted in irony—“make it seem. I was fully aware throughout it all. I was in pain, bleeding, I knew something was wrong with my face, but the shock kept me from recognizing the full extent of my injury.”
His fingers absently brushed over his scar. “They told me the shard of glass that caused this missed my carotid by half an inch. But I didn’t know that at the time, of course. I didn’t care about me right then. I was more concerned about Trish and she was—” His face spasmed in grief and horror, and Iris’s hands went up to cup his jaw, her thumb tracing the ridge of his scar. “Trish was groaning, her face and head were…” He shook his head and made a low, despairing sound, as if he were reliving the moment. “I couldn’t help her, my arms felt like lead. I tried to reach for her, to stem the bleeding, but she was gone seconds later. And even then, I didn’t pass out. I wish I had, but I remained conscious, trapped with her corpse until the rescue services arrived. I was told it was under five minutes. It felt like five hours. The first person to arrive was a pap…” Now it was Iris’s turn to moan in horror. “He took pictures while I begged him to call an ambulance. To this day I’m not sure if he was the one who called 911 or not. The rest you know. Trish died. And I lived. But there were times”—his voice was bleak and Iris wanted to stop him from saying what she knew he would say next. Only, her throat had seized up and her eyes were blurry with tears and when he said the inevitable, her horror emerged on a broken sob—“there were times I desperately wished I hadn’t lived. Because having her death on my conscience is eating away at my soul.”
“Trystan, no,” she moaned, her face wet with tears. She leaned toward him and pressed her lips to his for a brief, heartfelt kiss. “Please, don’t say that. You didn’t kill her, her death does not belong on your conscience.”
“I knew she was troubled, Iris, I should have helped her. But all I could think of was getting her the hell away from me. I should have left her alone. I should never have slept with her when she was so broken.”
“You didn’t know. How could you have?”
“I can’t forgive myself for not seeing it until it was too late. I felt like the worst kind of abuser. She was vulnerable and I used her.”
“You had consensual sex, there was no coercion or manipulation involved. Did you make any promises to her when you got together?”
His eyes flickered uncertainly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean did you talk about having a long-term or permanent relationship with her?”
“No, from the very beginning we were clear on it being a promotional stunt. When it got intimate, we both agreed afterwards that it shouldn’t have happened,” he tilted his head as if he was remembering something. “In fact, Trish was the one who instigated the sex. When I protested beforehand that we were making a mistake, she kissed me and said something along the lines of, ‘If only all mistakes could be such harmless fun.’ That’s what she called it, harmless fun.” His lips twisted at the memory. “I came here to try and make sense of it all, get my head straight, think about where I go from here.”