Page 70 of Final Temptation
She kept the nightmares at bay.
It’d been weeks since I’d woken up from a night terror.
I felt like an imposter living my life. I was supposed to be the recovering alcoholic who struggled day in and day out.
It was how I defined myself.
I knew it was a shitty thing to do—to tell myself I wasn’t worthy of a good life. The habit of punishing myself for what happened all those months ago, almost an entire year at this point, was a habit I worked through every day to break.
I walked through life as a fraud—a phony. Myles Cooper was the guy who drank too much and fucked a new woman every night. Not the guy who had a girlfriend. Not the guy who hadn’t had a nightmare. Was it really possible that I was getting better? That I was healing and changing all at the same time?
My thoughts got the better of me, the football game just soft white noise in the background. As my body sank intothe couch cushions, my eyes fell shut, feeling heavier with every second that went by.
It was an out-of-body experience. I stood on the side of Old Creek Road, headlights blinding me in the distance.
A truck to my right.
A car to my left.
A crash meeting in the middle.
A crash so loud, it echoed in the dark, empty night.
I was an outsider looking in, unable to move my feet and incapable of calling for help. I was a ghost, and this was all in my imagination.
Except it wasn’t just a thought dreamt up to haunt me, it was real fucking life.
My feet were planted to the ground, neither one able to step forward. My fingertips reached for the car door, slipping through the handle. I couldn’t get a grip on it.
My face reflected through the passenger side window—pale and terrified.
“WAKE UP, MYLES!” I screamed into the night sky.
It wasn’t a reflection. It was me. I was in that car.
“WAKE THE FUCK UP!” I cried out into the void for no one to hear.
I shook my head; the impact from the crash eventually jolting me awake. Reaching down, my hands patted my legs, the feeling in them still there.
“Oh my God.” I looked to my left. “Logan!” I shook him awake, tearing off my seatbelt in the process.
“What the fuck is going on?” he mumbled groggily.
Out the window, there was smoke. It was dark. It was clear we had been in an accident. But we were okay—just a little banged up.
What the fuck did we hit?
I shoved my shoulder into my door, opening it as Istumbled out. I wasn’t hurt from the accident. I was drunk—completely wasted—but I’d never sobered up quicker in my life than right now.
There was a truck. The front was smashed and the smoke thick.
“Logan, what did you do?” I screamed.
“Oh my God!” a terrified yelp left his mouth.
“Dude, we gotta get the fuck out of here. We can’t be here when the cops come. We’ll be fucked!”
After stumbling out of the car, I ignored every word Logan said. We couldn’t leave; we needed to get help.
