The last thing he remembered before the crash was Jeremy’s laughter, and then his own rising over the music. What they’d been laughing at he couldn’t recall, but they were both happy. This was meant to be just another drive, another night of having each other at the beach house, away from the world of Heathfield and his brother’s disapproving looks and razor-sharp words of malcontent. He’d crossed a line with Marcus tonight, and dragging Jeremy into it had been a mistake in hindsight, but Jacob couldn’t bring himself to care. All he wanted was to reach across to the passenger’s seat and pull Jeremy into a hot kiss, and he almost did.
But then the truck appeared out of nowhere, lights flaring into the windshield. Jacob scrambled for the steering wheel and the Aventador swerved out of the way and off the road. It tumbled through a ravine and then everything went black for a minute or two. The metal twisted where it hit the rocks, and then again with a loud crunching sound when the sports car barreled through the brush and smashed head-on against a tree.
When Jacob came to he was barely feeling any pain, but that changed the moment he started moving. He felt the warmth of his own blood streaming down his temples from a gash just above his right ear, and a pressure in his lungs that didn’t seem to lessen the more he struggled through the twisted metal of the car’s mangled frame. His legs felt as though they’d caught on fire and he could barely move them without tearing up, but his arms were faring just a bit better. His head was pounding and his eyes couldn’t find purchase in any one object for longer than a fleeting moment, but he still managed to drag himself out of the wreckage, wincing and groaning the whole time as he made his way into the clear ground next to what remained of his precious Italian sports car.
He was alive, but only barely. Selfishly, he allowed himself a moment of respite on the cold grass; breathing reduced to mere wheezes that only caused him that much more pain. He felt more blood coming out of him, soaking up his shirt and trousers. Jacob closed his eyes only for a moment, inwardly thankful that he was still alive, even as his brain scrambled to make sense of what had just happened.
Then a thought came to him and a cold chill ran down his spine.
“J-Jeremy,” he barely managed, his voice falling to no more than a whisper. The boy raised his head with no small amount of difficulty and his eyes scanned the area for any sign of his friend. He didn’t find any at first. “J-Jer…. Jeremy!” Jacob called out, louder this time, and his voice felt like glass shards on his throat. He winced but tried again. “Jeremy!” No answer. He started to panic.
Jacob called out for the boy a few more times and then rolled onto his back, slowly propping himself on his arms, grimacing and shedding tears the whole time, but still determined to find at least a trace of his friend. But in the dark it was so hard to spot anything. The smell of gasoline spilling from the tank made him dizzy, and his legs went from burning-hot to ice-cold in the span of a minute, but he refused to let that deter him from looking. He dragged himself around what remained of the car, hoping to find his friend sitting on the grass, or at least trying to make his way out of the wreck. What he saw instead made his blood run cold.
He was lying on the grown at least six feet away from the car; face down on the grass, his body motionless. Jacob crawled over to the boy using every ounce of strength he had left and leaving thick trail of blood in his wake. “Jer—Jeremy… Jeremy…” When he reached him, Jacob rolled him on his back. That was when he saw it. His face was covered in slashes, not an inch of it clean of blood. His eyes were open but vacant, and a large piece of metal was lodged in the side of his neck, blood spilling generously into the ground from the gash it had made. “Jere… Jer…” Jacob pulled his friend into his chest, felt around for a heart and then screamed when he couldn’t find any. “Jer… No… Jeremy… Please—please don’t…” Tears filled his eyes and clouded his vision—he felt so cold. Why was he so cold? “Jer… I’m so… Jer, please wake up… Please, please… Please… Wake the fuck up!” He screamed some more, shook his body, held it tighter against his own aching chest. “Why… No, Jer… Why… why…?”
When the paramedics found him he was still holding on, crying and begging for Jeremy to come to. They tried pulling him from the body, but he only snapped at them kicking and pushing even after the pain became maddening and he didn’t know whether his tears came from the aching or the truth the was still fighting to accept. It took a sedative to make him let go. But even then, in the darkness of his addled self, he kept calling out to his friend; crying, desperately hoping even though deep down he knew there was no hope. He knew what he had done.
