Ten(22)

“No, but I could have been right by your side, loving you while you saved yourself. Or I could have been broken with you.”

I hear a horn in the background and fear roots itself inside my chest. “Alex, tell me where you are.”

“I’m going home.”

“I’m your home. Tell me you’re not driving yourself? You-”

“What does that mean?” she asks, interrupting me.

“It means that you belong here with me. I never stopped loving you. How could I stop loving you?”

I pull up to a stop sign and place my head on the steering wheel. “Where are you, Alex? I’m coming to you.”

She’s crying.

“I’m coming up to Jewels junction.”

My head lifts from the steering wheel at the traffic coming in the opposite direction, and my life flashes like cut scenes in a movie as her words cripple me.

“Why has he turned his lights off? Back off my ass, buddy! Go around!”





“I’m your home. Tell me you’re not driving yourself? You-”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that you belong here with me. I never stopped loving you. How could I stop loving you?”

I’m soaring, every molecule inside me is alive and humming with possibility. This is what I envisaged in my daydreams. We could be a family, and he can finally meet our son. Dalton still loving me. This is all I wanted and yet I’m terrified and still hurt about everything. Can I trust him? Can I move here after everything? No, I couldn’t bring DJ to this family. My boy is too innocent to have this life thrust upon him. Once they have him they’ll never let him go and he’ll become another one of their victims to manipulate and turn into one of them.

“Where are you, Alex? I’m coming to you.”

I notice the guy behind me has turned his lights off and is riding up my ass.

“Why has he turned his lights off? Back off my ass, buddy! Go around!”

Life can change so quickly. In an instant, everything that is becomes everything that was. I know this better than anyone. What I don’t know is why fate aspires to keep me and Dalton apart. If we’re created as one and spilt into two to find each other once again in a new life, then why the hell is it so hard for us to be allowed to be together?

All real life-changing love can’t be easy, Alex. Because then we wouldn’t know how special it is once we have it.

The car clips me, hitting me with a little nudge that’s enough for me to push down on the brakes and try to bring the car under control, but it’s like pushing on air. Nothing happens and my world is sent into chaos.

The pull of gravity is like being sucked by a vacuum in every direction. The pain is too much to register. Sickness threatens as my body is thrown forward then halted by my seatbelt jolting me back and winding me. The airbag explodes in my face, busting my nose, and I can feel wetness coating my face which I know is my own blood. Glass shatters and rains down on me like confetti, and my voice is lost to screams that come without permission. DJ’s face flashes into my mind. His first cry when they put him on my belly after I struggled to get him into this world. The first time he opened his eyes and really looked at me. His smile, his first words, him waving me off to come here.

When the car finally comes to rest I’m upside down and destruction litters my surroundings. The horn is stuck and blaring, and all I can think about is DJ leaving his guitar too close to the amp, eliciting a loud humming sound. Pain ricochets through every nerve in my body and threatens to steal me to the sleeping world. He can’t lose me, I’m all he has. “DJ…DJ.”

“Don’t move. I’ve called an ambulance. Oh, God. Baby, don’t move, it’s going to be okay.” Dalton’s voice whispers through the broken window.

“DJ…DJ,” I murmur as tears mix with the blood I’m losing.

“What’s DJ, baby? Is that a person? Who is he?”

Pain slices into me and I can’t grasp onto the breath I need so badly.

“He’s… our… son”





“He’s our son,” she murmurs through a broken breath before her eyes close.

She’s delusional. Brain trauma. Tears build in my eyes and true, undiluted fear washes through me. My hand shakes as I reach in to check her pulse. She can’t fucking die on me, I won’t allow it. How can this be fair? We were so close to getting the truth we should have always had, and instead I’m given nothing. It’s not enough. No amount of time will ever be enough, but I’ll be damned if we don’t have a least this lifetime together, and die old and decrepit, holding each other in our own bed with beautiful memories of a full life together. Other cars stop and voices hum around me but I can’t hear the words. I lie beside the broken car and hold her hand, willing her to be okay. Blue and red lights light up the darkness and I’m being moved away from her. I don’t want to let her go. The world spins and nothing feels real. I need something tangible to hold onto but nothing is solid. The world dips and melts away as I watch firefighters begin cutting the car to free Alex from inside. Hopelessness shrouds me as I watch, powerless to save her, to help her in any fucking way.

“What the hell happened, Dalton? Dalton?”

I turn to see Jimmy standing by his patrol car, shouting at me.

“Loving her and her loving me killed her,” I whisper, refusing to believe my own words. I drop to my knees and pound the ground beneath me as my mind splinters and my body turns numb.

“She’s not dead. Come on, get off the floor. You weigh a freaking ton.” I move unconsciously as he guides my body to his car. “We can follow the ambulance.”




I feel lost. I try to sip the coffee I’ve been given but I choke. I can’t function. I need to breathe her air, see her chest rise and fall, and hear her lips mutter my name.

“Ten.” My head lifts to see Six coming at me. “What do you need?”

I’m so fucking grateful to know him, to have him in my corner. I need him now and for what’s to come.

“This wasn’t an accident. I couldn’t stop it happening. I watched her get rammed and when her car flipped I think I died with every rotation.”

“Who was driving, your uncle?”

“I don’t know, what I do know is my uncle set this up. He cut her brakes, that’s enough. He has a vendetta against her brother that needs to be settled, and everyone will suffer until it’s done. But it’s not his score to fucking settle.”

“The Jonah guy that fucked you over and sent you down for ten years is who he wants and will harm everyone until he gets him. It makes me think he was worried about this guy to want him so badly but why now?”

“The drugs came from my uncle so he lost money and I did the time. He had some fucked up agreement with her Dad to get Tim on the force. I knew he was corrupt, doing deals with people who sent me down for a decade, that’s its own betrayal, and now the sheriff is dead all bets are off. ”

“Motherfucker.”

“Alex had nothing to do with it though. I don’t think she knows the whole truth about what went down and they moved her out of town before anyone could fill her in. She thinks I just didn’t want to see her all this time and then… fuck. The shit I’ve let happen to her and she didn’t have any clue why until yesterday, and then we had each other again. She was in my arms and now she’s lying in a fucking surgery room.”

His hand comes down to rest on my shoulder, giving it a much needed squeeze, and I need the reassurance that I’m not alone in this, and that someone is on my side and understands my reasons for letting things go down the way they did. I have some serious making up to do and those doctors working on Alex better make sure I get the chance to do it.

“Tell me what you need and it’s done.” Six nods and the deadly look in his eyes tell me he means he will do anything I need of him. One thing about prison, you’re isolated from everyone you once knew and locked in a cage with another person. You either kill each other or you create a bond. Six is a brother to me and if he asked I would do anything for him and vice versa. I need to cash that in now.

“I want the driver, and if we have to go through my uncle to find out who he is, then so be it.”

“Okay. I’ll let you know what I find out.”




Waiting around for an update is slow torture. It’s deathly quiet in the small room they have put me in to wait. I’m sure this is the room they take you to when they have to inform you of someone’s death. I shake my head to clear that morbid thought. There’s another couple in here, and the wife is sniffling into a piece of tissue. It’s the only sound and it’s coating my body in premature sorrow. It can’t end like this.

The door opens and both me and the man with the woman startle and stand. The woman is shaking and can’t move.

“Alexandria Murphy?”

My stomach knots and tension stiffens every joint in my body, making it impossible to move.

I must give him a signal that she’s with me without even knowing I have because he comes over to me and pulls off a hair net hat thing.

“Are you her husband?”

“No, a friend. I brought her in.”

“Okay, well I have to have the nurse contact her next of kin.”