Crash - Part Three Read online

  Crash – Part Three is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or their likeness is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 Miranda Dawson

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover design by Cover Shot Creations (covershotcreations.com)

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  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Author’s Note

  Mailing List

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  The tears came immediately and I fell back against the wall, slipping down onto the floor as my legs gave out on me. This was the second time my world had collapsed in on me while in a hospital. I still had nightmares about the first time. After the accident that took my brother’s life, I had spent a few weeks in a hospital while the doctors had examined—and later amputated—the lower half of my leg. After the leg had been cut off, I was monitored for both physical and psychological damage.

  The first few days of that had been a blur as I drifted in and out of sleep, and I retained only faint memories of my mom and dad looking down at me with solemn faces. Four days after the accident I was finally well enough to sit up, drink some water, and consume some meager hospital food. That was when Mom and Dad broke the news. My brother was dead. William had died in the crash from serious head wounds. The only consolation was that he had suffered no pain.

  That news broke my heart, but while it had never fully healed, I had got on with my life eventually. William was never gone from my memory, and there wasn’t a day I didn’t think about him, but I managed to put him to one side for twenty-three hours a day. Most days, anyway.

  As I sat on the hospital floor, tears streaming down my face, I looked back up toward the room in which Isabella Murphy, Carter’s wife, was lying with Carter by her side. He was still looking at me, just staring at me with his warm, compassionate eyes. How could someone look so perfect when they had just been caught committing the ultimate act of betrayal?

  Married. He was married to another woman, and he had lied about it. Carter had said that “Bella” was dead, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, it occurred to me that he must have also been lying about where he was going all the time, as well. How many times had he said he was working or going to a business meeting when he was actually visiting his wife?

  I locked eyes with him, daring him to leave the hospital room and give me some excuse, any excuse for this new turn of events. He didn’t move. He just stood there and looked at me. I thought I saw tears building in his eyes, but I had far too many of my own to trust what I saw.

  My view of Carter was interrupted when a doctor walked in front of me and into Isabella’s room. I could see the doctor start talking to Carter, but he didn’t look away from me. Finally, he tore his gaze away and gave his attention to the doctor. Whatever the news was, it wasn’t good.

  I buried my gaze between my knees and resumed my pathetic sobbing. I wanted to move, to walk away and never look back, but my real leg was far too weak to support me. Even sitting on the floor, I knew I had no energy in me to stand up.

  After a few moments, I felt a hand on my shoulder and my breath caught in my lungs. I hadn’t heard Carter approach and couldn’t handle speaking to him right now. Makeup was probably all over my face and I no doubt looked a mess. I knew I shouldn’t care about my appearance right now, not for him, but years of trying to look my best and draw attention away from my leg had made me overly paranoid about these things.

  “Emily?” a soft voice whispered in my ear.

  I knew the voice, and it wasn’t Carter’s. I wiped my wet eyes and I looked up to see John crouching down next to me.

  “John?” I whimpered. “What are you doing here?”

  “Sorry, Emily. I’m so sorry. I figured it out, but a bit too late.”

  “Can we get out of here?” I asked him.

  John grabbed hold of my hand and heaved me up. I stumbled a little on my false leg, as if I were getting used to it all over again. It was in a hospital hallway like this that I had first practiced walking on the leg outside the safe confines of my physical therapy room. Now I felt like I needed to learn to walk again for the third time in my life.

  “Did you speak to him?” John asked, holding me tight around the waist.

  I shook my head, sniffing and unable to speak.

  “There might be a good explanation—”

  “No,” I said, firmly, finally finding my voice. “Don’t say that. There’s no possible explanation for this. Don’t make excuses for him.”

  “Okay,” he replied meekly.

  I could tell John wanted there to be an explanation for this. He wouldn’t want me to go back to how I was before—not trusting men and throwing myself into work—but that was not his decision to make. To be honest, it wasn’t my decision either. Carter had made the decision for me—he had betrayed me, and now I would never let myself fall in love again. Nothing John could say would ever change that.

  My ears had been filtering out all the surrounding noise around me, but now the sounds were coming back. Doctors were shouting at each other. Shoes were squeaking on the floor as nurses hurried between rooms, moving from patient to patient at a speed that always amazed me. Among all the noise and clattering of gurneys and carts, I heard a voice call out to me.

  “Emily,” Carter said weakly.

  I was now at the end of the hall and his words should have been lost in the din, but somehow his voice reached my ears. I froze, but John kept walking until my stiff body tugged him back. He looked over my shoulder and figured out why I had stopped.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked.

  I had no idea. Well, perhaps that wasn’t quite true. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to pretend that the woman in there was a stranger, or his sister—anyone but his wife. I would run to him, wrap my arms around his firm, wide shoulders and pretend this had never happened. But life didn’t work like that. I could never go back to that wide-eyed innocence from just a few days ago.

  Deep down, I think I knew that had all been a dream. People like Carter didn’t happen to people like me. There would be no happily ever after for a girl with an artificial leg. Save that story for the next Disney princess.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, regaining some control over my voice. “Take me home, John.”

  Chapter Two

  “You can’t do this every morning,” I said, stretching my arms and stifling a yawn. For the fourth consecutive morning since the incident at the hospital, John had woken me up with a fresh cup of coffee and my favorite sugary cereal. People going through traumatic breakups could eat whatever the hell they wanted, so I figured I might was well make the most of it.

  “It’s not a problem,” John replied. “I was making myself some coffee, anyway, so it’
s easy enough to make a second cup. And this crap you shovel down for breakfast hardly takes a lot of time to prepare. You know these colors are not natural, right?” He picked up a pink shape from my cereal bowl and held it close to his eye. “I think this one glows in the dark.”

  “Oh, hush,” I replied, yanking my breakfast from his hands and managing to spill some milk on the bedroom floor. “Making me coffee is one thing, but you really don’t need to stay at my place every night. You just signed a lease on a new apartment—why don’t you go enjoy it?”

  John shrugged. “It’s weird being on my own. I’ve never actually lived by myself before, and I’m not too sure I like it.”

  I could actually believe that. John was an incredibly outgoing person—a social butterfly, of sorts—and rarely spent any time in his own company. He was so different from me that I wondered how we remained so close.

  “Are you working your way through the internet’s collection of gay porn? I’m sure they will keep making more when you run out.”

  “Very funny,” John replied with an exaggerated raising of the eyebrows. “I’ll have you know I am spending most of my time working. Two days of non-stop masturbating was more than enough for me,” he added under his breath. “That’s what I don’t like. If I spend too much time by myself, I focus on work to the exclusion of everything else. It’s not healthy.”

  “Why don’t you get out once in a while? You’re gay and in San Francisco—you’re practically living the dream.”

  “Like I said, I’m busy with work, and—” John paused.

  I cringed and looked up at him from my cereal. He’d figured me out.

  “How on Earth did you get the topic of conversation onto me?” he asked. “It’s you we should be talking about. You’re the one who is going to have to get out and about at some point. There is a world outside this apartment.”

  “That nearly worked,” I said. I’d managed to keep all the conversation off me for a couple of minutes—almost a record. “I know you’re going to want to give me that speech about how I should try to move on and get my head back in the game, but that’s really not necessary. I’ve had a good cry and felt sorry for myself for long enough. Every woman has her heart broken at some point, but broken hearts do mend. I’m going to be fine, John.”

  I’d shamelessly copied parts of that speech from a romantic movie I’d been watching the day before. The actress had pulled it off a lot better than I had, of course, but John seemed to believe me.

  The part of my brain that processed logic told me that everything I had just said was true. Women—and men—really did get their hearts broken, and those hearts really did mend. I was nothing special. Unfortunately, the logic part of my brain was currently being attacked from all angles by the far stronger forces of jealousy, betrayal, hatred, and love. It was like David versus four Goliaths, except David’s slingshot was broken and the Goliaths had tanks.

  “I’m not sure I believe you,” John said, “but there’s not a lot I can do about that. Has he… you know… has he called you, or anything?”

  I bit down hard on my lip to stop myself from crying. I would have found it almost impossible to ignore Carter’s calls and messages over a prolonged period. At some point in the previous four days I would have caved and responded to him or answered a call. Except he hadn’t called. Not once. Nor had he texted me. Not one phone call or message in the four days since I saw him with his wife at the hospital. Did he just not care about me anymore? Perhaps I just wasn’t worth all the effort it would take to get me back.

  I gave a quick shake of the head and looked back down at my nearly-empty bowl, which now contained just a few soggy bits of color. The comparison to my life was impossible to ignore.

  “Good,” John said. “It’s good that he hasn’t tried to get in touch—that way you are not tempted to talk to him. You can get a clean break. What you need is a distraction and I have the ultimate distraction. One that never fails to get your attention.”

  “Work,” I said, knowing the answer immediately. Before Carter, my life had been all about work. Even my best friend was tied to my work. With Carter no longer in the picture, my life would likely go back to just being me in front of a computer.

  “We have something new to work on,” John said.

  “Please don’t tell me we are being sued again,” I said, exasperated. “It took too much time and money to get the last lawsuit crushed.”

  “Nope, not that. It’s good news. But let’s not discuss it here.”

  “Want to head to SF Station?” I asked. “It should be noisy enough that we can talk with some degree of privacy.”

  “Sounds good. You should get showered and dressed first, though. You don’t want to inflict that—”John waved a finger in my general direction “—on the public right now. We don’t want to get banned from our favorite coffee shop.”

  ---

  “Hi, Emily,” Jane said as I walked in the door.

  There were plenty of customers in the line waiting to be served, but Jane had no qualms about yelling over them. John and I were probably her favorite customers—we caused minimal fuss and always left a good tip. I waved a hello, but waited until Jane was ready to serve us before talking back. I’d not left the house in a couple of days and wasn’t ready to have loud, public conversations just yet.

  “Morning, Jane. Just the usual today, please.” The usual meant a soy milk latte, but after the week I’d had, something stronger might be required. “Actually, make that an Americano with a double shot of espresso.”

  Jane raised her eyebrows at my out-of-character request. “Tough morning? You’re going to be bouncing off the ceilings after this one.”

  “I expect it will just raise me to a normal operating level, to be honest,” I said. Bouncing off the ceiling seemed a long way off for me at the moment. I took my coffee and contemplated adding some milk before settling for strong and black.

  “There was a man in here the other day asking after you,” Jane said calmly.

  My hand shook just as I had started to pick up the coffee. I dropped it back down as if it were hot to touch, with some spilling over the side. I took a deep breath and looked up at her.

  It was then that I realized she had been talking to John. He had noticed my mistaken assumption, but Jane was clueless as to the unspoken stupidity on my part. Of course Carter would not have asked after me in the coffee shop. He hadn’t even sent me a text message or tried to call, so why on Earth would he be asking the local barista about me? God, I felt like an idiot.

  I quickly mopped up my mess and took my coffee over to a corner table, one that somehow remained unused despite it having the best access to plugs and the Wi-Fi router. Sometimes having intimate knowledge of a coffee shop could be useful. Now it was time for business. No more feeling sorry for myself or thinking about Carter—I had a business to run.

  Chapter Three

  “So, who’s this guy asking after you in coffee shops?” I asked John once he had sat down at the table.

  “Well, I had been hoping it was Benedict Cumberbatch taking me up on my offer to explore the other side of his sexuality, but alas, from Jane’s description, I think it was just Tom making another attempt to get back together with me.”

  “I thought he was the one who ended it?”

  “He was, but I guess he’s missing this,” John replied, smiling and pointing at his cute, but cheeky face. “We split up because Tom didn’t like never getting to see me, so it’s not like we fell out or one of us had an affair.”

  “You’re not tempted to get back together with him?” I kept a straight face and hopefully kept my feelings to myself. I had never been a huge fan of Tom and thought John deserved a heck of a lot better. Tom had a good job, a nine-to-five with a solid income. He was a good catch on paper, but he just couldn’t understand that some people had less conventional lives, John included.

  John paused for a second and then shook his head. “No, not really. The sex was good, but
not great, and there are plenty more fish in the sea. I’m not going to settle for mediocrity when I’m living in San Francisco.”

  “Good point. Anyway, what’s this big work-related news you wanted to talk about? I hope it takes a long time to implement, because I could use the distraction.”

  “It’s not a small project,” he said. “I only really have the outline at the moment.”

  “Come on. Spit it out, John.”

  “What’s one of the biggest problems we have when analyzing the data that we get from our beta testers?”

  “You’re really going to drag this out, aren’t you?” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “Just play along with me.”

  “Okay, okay.” I paused, thinking back to the last time I really sat down and focused on the data that we had coming in.

  LimbAnalytics had a decent amount of information available now. The pool of people with missing limbs was small, but it was also one that was very willing to help out with experiments that may end up improving their quality of life. More data would be better—it always was—but we had plenty to work with.

  Our focus at the moment was on the pressure points between the body and the artificial limb, because that was what caused the most problems. Artificial limbs had advanced quite a bit from the days of wooden legs, but they still weren’t very good at adapting to the different types of use people put them through.

  My leg was the perfect example of this. It was built for walking. If I tried to run in it, then I would quickly fall over. I could change the leg—I did have a spare one that was designed for rapid movement—but that was an additional expense that many couldn’t afford. What if one leg could serve both functions? LimbAnalytics’ technology could one day help with this. If someone was running, then the software would pick up the additional pressure being applied and adjust the limb accordingly.

  When John and I first started out, we had stupidly thought that this would be an easy problem to solve. We were quickly corrected. The problem was people; they don’t act in a consistent manner, and that creates a lot of data that our software can’t make heads nor tails of.