The Wreck by Marie Force Read Free Book Online Page B

night of the accident, but he’s still digging around. I told my dad
Sam never drove the way they said he must’ve been driving before the wreck.”
    “That’s bothered me, too,” Carly wrote.
“I hope your dad can find a way to clear Sam’s name.”
    “People in town are talking about us
grasping at straws to clear Sam. They’re saying my dad is abusing his
position.”
    Carly shook her head.
    “If there’s a chance, even the slightest chance, it wasn’t Sam’s fault, don’t we have to do all we can to get to the
truth?”
    “Of course you do,” she wrote. “Don’t
worry about what anyone says.”
    Brian held out his arms to her.
    She put down the pen and reached for him.
    “Before everything happened, if you’d
asked me when I was happiest with you, I would’ve said it was when we were
doing this.” He pulled back to kiss her and smiled when he added, “I would’ve
said we were at our very best under the willow tree.” He ran his lips
over the pink blush on her cheeks, his voice going soft and thick with emotion.
“But after not being able to talk to you during the worst two months of my
life, I have a whole new perspective on what I love best about you. I can talk
to you about anything and everything. I never realized how important that was
to me until I didn’t have it anymore.”
    Her eyes shimmered with tears as she
caressed his face.
    He held her close to him for a long time.
“Do you feel like taking a walk?”
    She shook her head.
    “We won’t go anywhere near Tucker Road.”
    Ashamed to admit that the only place she
felt safe anymore was at home, the idea of leaving the house made her feel sick
and panicky. Once she had made it as far as the gate, fully intending to walk
around the block, but her heart had pounded so hard she’d thought she was
having a heart attack. She’d had trouble breathing and had vomited right there
in the front yard.
    She’d felt like she was losing her mind,
and it had scared her so badly she hadn’t tried it again. Brian and her family
had been so focused on her not talking, they hadn’t figured out yet that she
couldn’t bring herself to leave the house. And after what had happened earlier,
she wasn’t prepared to add to the pile of “problems” her sister had referred
to.
    Brian sensed her hesitation. “Never mind.
We’ll do it another time.”
    After her sisters took off to meet their
friends, Brian coaxed Carly out of her room. They spent the rest of the day
with her parents, Craig, and Allison. Brian’s parents stopped by to have a
drink, and after sunset they left with the Holbrooks to watch the fireworks at
the town common.
    “You’re sure you don’t want to go
see the fireworks?” Brian asked for the tenth time.
    With a smile and the wave of her hand,
she told him to go on ahead if he wanted to.
    He pushed off the floor to get the porch
swing moving again. “Not without you.”
    Carly could tell she surprised him when
she turned and pressed her lips to his.
    He wrapped his arms around her and kissed
her with two months’ worth of pent up desire and frustration. His tongue
tangled with hers, reminding her of the passion they had shared from the first
time his lips had tentatively touched hers at an eighth grade dance. Nothing,
not time nor maturity nor even tragedy, could dampen it.
    She drew back from him and wondered if
she looked as dazed as she felt.
    “I’m sorry, honey. I don’t mean to push
you.”
    Carly stood and held out a hand to him.
    Startled, Brian laced his fingers through
hers.
    She tugged him to his feet.
    “Carly?”
    She led him inside and started up the
stairs.
    “Where are we going?”
    She smiled over her shoulder. In her
bedroom, she turned to him and slid her hands under his T-shirt.
    He shuddered. “Carly, honey, this is not a good idea.”
    She raised an amused eyebrow and reached
for the button on his shorts.
    “What if your parents come back early?”
    She crossed the room and flipped the lock
on the