Page 2 of Best of Me

As much as I love being a cop, car wrecks are the worst for me. My parents were in a horrible accident when I was in middle school; my dad got behind the wheel drunk and wrapped his car around a telephone pole. Of course, that jackass walked away with barely a scratch, but my mom wasn’t so lucky. It was the passenger side of the vehicle that had wrapped around the telephone pole, leaving her with a shattered pelvis, a punctured lung, and a bleed in her brain. In the end, her injuries were too great for her to recover, and she died a day later.

“10-4,” Cal calls back, and with a flip of a switch, the sirens are screaming and we’re on our way.

The accident scene comes into view, and I see a mid-size, blue vehicle in the tree line with parts and pieces scattered about. As we draw closer, the details come into focus with startling clarity. Time stops and that sick feeling from earlier turns to pure fucking panic. Policy and procedure be damned—I’m out of the car and hauling ass toward the scene before Cal even has the squad car in park.

“No, no, no! It’s not her. Itcan’tbe.”My throat constricts and my chest heaves as I draw closer. “Jettas are common— It could be anyone...”I try and reassure myself, but it’s in vain.

I stop in my tracks when I see her hot pink monogram decal on the trunk, my heart dropping to my feet. “Fuck.Fuck!Val, baby? Valorie?” I yell her name, taking off at a sprint. Cal lands a hand on my bicep, trying to stop me, but I shake him off. There’s nothing on this earth that will stop me from getting to my girl. Not even the pleading, frantic shouts of my partner.

I draw up short when the front end of the car comes fully into view. It’s mangled to the point of being unrecognizable, but even still, I’m holding on to hope that Val’s fine. I’m desperately clinging to the notion that she’s going to walk away with nothing more than a few bumps and bruises—no worse for wear. But it’s utterly destroyed, and there, in the grass, is the woman I planned to make my wife.

She’s covered in glass and blood, broken and bent in the most unnatural angle, completely still. I squeeze my eyes shut, sucking in ragged breaths, praying like hell that when I lift my eyelids, this will all have been a nightmare—that Val will be sitting up, awake and fine.

However, when my eyes open, the scene is wholly unchanged, except now the tinny smell of blood—her blood—fills my nostrils, along with various fluids leaking from the engine.

A guttural scream tears past my lips as I drop to my knees and pull her into my arms. My brain switches to autopilot, and I check for a pulse, “Please, baby, please.” My voice grows hoarse as I beg her to open her eyes…flinch…anythingto let me know she’s still with me.

Shards of glass from the shattered windshield dig into my knees, but I don’t feel anything but a staggering sense of loss and despair. I know I shouldn’t be touching her, moving her, and there will be consequences to my actions, but none of that matters as I cling to her, sobbing, blood seeping through the fabric of my once- pristine white shirt.

“Kincaid!” Cal shouts, his hand coming down hard on my shoulder. “The ambulance is here. You…you gotta let the medics get her.” His voice cracks on his last words. He knows what we’ve just rolled up on. We’ve all known a fellow brother in blue that’s responded to a scene where he knew the victim. But this time it’s different.

This time, it’s me.

It’s my accident scene.

It’s my loved one.

It’s my life—my fucking future—that’s vanishing before my very eyes.

He drops to his knees beside me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders in support. “Please, you gotta let the guys take her. We’ll follow them to the hospital.”

I glance over my shoulder at my partner, seeing my own grief reflected back at me, before looking back down at the woman I’d been planning to spend the rest of my life with. Shaking my head, I pray to God for him to bring her back; I plead with Him to take me instead. But it’s useless…He’s not fucking listening.

With her head cradled in my blood-streaked hands, I lean down and press my lips to her skin one last time. Even in death, she’s still the single most beautiful person to ever walk this earth. The first time I ever laid eyes on Valorie Parsons, I could’ve sworn I was looking at an angel.

And now…she is one.

chapter one

Mallory

One Year Later

My heart beats erratically in my chest as I approach the welcome sign on the way into town.Welcome to Bay Ridge. Population: two thousand and six.

Make that two thousand and seven,I think to myself, forcing my foot to remain on the gas pedal when all I really want to do is hit the brakes, swing a U-ey, and haul ass away from every single bad memory attached to this place…this county…this entire freaking state.

My best friend says I need to perceive this move as something positive in my life and that I need to stop letting my past haunt me. But that’s the thing about perception—she’s a fickle bitch.

It’s funny, really, how a simple shift in the way you see things can change everything.

Case in point: I spent the majority of my childhood in my twin’s shadow; the dark to her light. I wasted years believing I was less than her, a disappointment, a failure...all-around not good enough.

Turns out, I’m none of those things, and that dark place I called home for so long was an illusion brought on by dear old mom and dad shining the brightest light they could on all of Valorie’s achievements, thus casting all of myperceivedshortcomings into her shadow.

When I think back on everything, it’s blatantly obvious. I’m not stupid, or selfish, or ugly, or unlovable. I simply had the misfortune of being born to shitty parents who never wanted me to start with.

The worst of it though is the way I let their actions poison my relationship with Valorie. Through their ceaseless cutdowns and comparisons, I began to resent my sister.

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