My vision blurs as the first tear falls down my cheek, quickly followed by another, and another. I dig the heel of both palms into my eyes, begging them to stop, but they don’t.

“Stone,” he murmurs softly, squeezing the thigh he’s still holding on to. “You don’t—”

“No,” I snap. “Please. I need to get this out and tell you.”

He must sense my seriousness because he remains quiet, waiting for me to continue.

“My car was the first on the scene. It was late and there weren’t many cars out, plus I wasn’t more than a few minutes behind her. Catching up didn’t take long, despite being too late. I called 9-1-1 immediately as I fumbled out of my seatbelt, flying out of the car. Aida hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt. She never did. It was something I hounded her for countless times over the years. She had flown through the windshield and was lying on the concrete when I got to her.

“It’s hard to know for sure because everything was kind of a blur, but it couldn’t have taken the medics more than a few minutes to show up. It felt like an eternity, though. When she was ejected from the car, glass sliced her throat, cutting her carotid artery open. She was basically choking on her own blood, and there was nothing I could do. The sound she made and the way she flailed and thrashed around still haunts me to this day.”

My mind takes me right back there. The smell of burning rubber and fresh blood is something I’ve never been able to forget. No matter how hard I try. It was an unusually warm night, and I couldn’t hear anything in my surroundings other than the sound of death. When you hear about people witnessing death, they always say how silent death is. It’s not. Or at least it wasn’t that night. Every gurgle, every failed attempt at breathing, was magnified in my ears as she withered away.

Thick, warm blood coated my hands, my arms, my clothes, as I tried to stop it from pouring out of her. Her eyes were locked on mine as she struggled. As she died. The life was sucked out of her so fast, there was no saving her. I’ll never forget the hollow, empty way her eyes looked when her body finally stopped fighting.

One of the memories of that night that sticks out the most to me, one that took me a long fucking time to get over, was that if I hadn’t fought with her that night, if I hadn’t been so harsh, she’d never had been in that car in the first place.