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glad the dim light made it impossible to read the message in her eyes. And his. This wasn’t a time for expectations. Or declarations. It wasn’t a time to break the rules.
    To care too much.
    â€œSo what happened?”
    Maybe if she hadn’t spoken with such compassion he could have stood, walked away. Maybe.
    He had to be able to walk away from her.
    â€œShe died.” Like millions before her. And millions after. Like Kelsey Stuart the day before. Too much like Kelsey Stuart.
    He heard Tricia’s glass touch the table. Felt her sit back against the sofa. And then nothing. Heard nothing. Felt nothing.
    â€œI did everything I could.” His voice belonged to a stranger, someone who was sitting a distance away, speaking of things Scott refused to think about. “It wasn’t much.”
    Quiet had never been less peaceful. Or a muted room more filled with loud and bitter truth. He watched a drop of perspiration move slowly down the bottle of beer. Thought about picking it up and pouring it into his mouth.
    â€œMy ability extended to a phone call on my still-operable car phone. And to waiting for someone to come and do whatever needed to be done.”
    â€œCould you get to her?”
    Tricia’s voice slid over him, inside him, chafing the nerves just beneath his skin with her compassion.
    â€œWe hit on her side of the Porsche. She was thrown into my lap. I was afraid the car might explode so I moved her just enough to get us clear of the wreck.”
    He’d made a mistake, doing that. The car hadn’t exploded. And her neck had been broken. If she’d lived, he’d have paralyzed her by that move.
    Someone, at some point, had said better to have been paralyzed than blown up. Might even be something Scott would say to a victim. But it didn’t ease the guilt.
    Neither did the beer he gulped.
    Tricia didn’t move, didn’t reach out that slender handto touch him. He was immensely thankful for that, yet he hated being with her and feeling so separate. So alone.
    â€œLeaning up against a rock on the other side of the road, I held her and prayed for someone with medical knowledge to come past. Two cars passed. Stopped. But couldn’t help.”
    â€œWere you hurt?”
    Depended on how she defined that. “A few cuts and bruises…” A broken left forearm where Alicia had landed, slamming his wrist against the door. Not that it had hurt. He’d been so numb he hadn’t even known about the injury until hours later.
    When everything had hurt. He’d gone crazy with the pain….
    Scott got up, went for another beer. When he came back, Tricia was sitting just as he’d left her. Disappointed, relieved, he sat again.
    â€œFor forty-five minutes I waited there with her sticky blond hair spread over my arm, her sweet face going purple, and watched as she died in my arms.”
    â€œIt wasn’t your fault.”
    Slamming his beer onto the table with unusual force, Scott turned, pinning her with a stare that he knew wasn’t nice, but one he couldn’t avoid, either. Other than in bed, his passion was always firmly under wraps. He couldn’t seem to keep it there at the moment.
    â€œIt was completely my fault,” he said, gritting his teeth so hard they hurt. The pain was tangible, identifiable, welcome. “I was larger than life, speeding like the spoiled, immature punk I was, so certain that I was above it all. Above the law…and death.”
    â€œYou didn’t do anything any other kid hasn’t done.”
    Other kids might speed. But most other kids didn’t kill their fiancées while doing it.
    His first reply was a derisive, humorless laugh. Followed by, “So many times I’d heard people—my friends even—say that I had it all. But in the end, I had nothing.”
    Depleted, Scott picked up his beer, slid down on the cushion until his head touched the back of the couch and stared at