It started as a flicker, one broken image after another, flashing in my head like film spliced out of order.Rain.Laughter.The smell of cheap vodka and regret.
For weeks, I'd been trying not to remember that night. But memories have a way of clawing their way back, especially when the ghosts decide you're ready to see them again.
It was supposed to be simple. One drink. One talk. One chance to stop everything from unraveling.
There were three of us: Kane, Jules, and me.Three people who used to make sense together, before the story, before the betrayal, before I decided that saving myself was worth rewriting the truth.
We left the party just past midnight. The rain had started, soft at first, then insistent, hammering the roof of my car as if to warn me. Jules hummed in the passenger seat, head tilted against the window, eyes half-closed. Kane sat in the back, drunk but far too lucid for my comfort.
The argument started before we hit the main road.
"You took everything from me," he said, voice slurred but heavy with something real."You think I didn't see the files, Adele? You think I wouldn't know my own words?"
I gripped the wheel tighter. "Kane, please, not tonight."
"Say it," he snapped. "Say you didn't steal it."
The wipers beat across the windshield like a metronome. I swallowed. "You think I wanted to? You think you ever would've finished it?"
The silence that followed felt like a wound.
From the passenger seat,
Jules stirred, her voice slurred. "God, not tonight, you two." She gave a small, sleepy giggle. "Married people fight less than you do."
Kane exhaled sharply, not quite a laugh. "She's not my wife," he muttered.
"Thank God," I shot back before I could stop myself.
He leaned forward then, his breath hot against my neck. "You think this ends with you winning?"
I didn't answer. The road curved left. My grip slipped slightly, rain, nerves, guilt, all of it blending into a single blur of motion.
"Slow down," Kane said. "Adele, you're driving too fast."
"No, I'm not. You're just drunk."
"Adele Korrin, you are going to get us killed"
The way he said my name, full, complete, only his voice knew how, made something twist in me. I turned my head for just a second, enough to look at him, enough to see Jules roll her eyes and smile.
My hands slipped on the wet wheel. The headlights of an oncoming car flared.
Then the curve. Then the scream. Then the sound of metal folding in on itself.
We hit the tree. Once. Twice. Maybe more. The car spun, glass shattered, time fractured. When I opened my eyes, everything was sideways.
"Jules?" My voice cracked. No answer.
Her head was tilted against the window, blood trailing from her temple like a red ribbon.
"Kane!" I turned. The back seat was empty. The door hung open, rain pouring in. I crawled out through shattered glass, knees cutting open, palms slick with mud.
He was lying a few meters away, chest barely rising. His lips were moving.
I fell to my knees beside him. "Kane, oh God"
He tried to speak. The sound was wet, broken, but I heard it. I swear I did.
"A.K…"
It wasn't anger. It wasn't blame. It was recognition. And that hurt more than anything.
Then the smell of fuel hit me. A low hiss. Fire catching.
I dragged myself back to the car, yanking at Jules's seatbelt, screaming her name. The buckle wouldn't move. My nails split, blood stained the belt, the fire crawled closer.
"Come on, please, please!"
When the explosion came, it threw me backward. The world went white.
After that, I don't remember much, just sirens, light, the rain still falling like it hadn't seen enough yet.
When they asked what happened, I didn't think. I didn't plan. I just said it. The words slipped out before my mind could stop them.
"Kane was driving," I said.
They nodded. It made sense. He was drunk. He had a record. I was shaking. Jules was gone.
It was the perfect lie. So perfect that even I started to believe it.
But the thing about lies is, they don't stay buried. They wait. They grow roots in the dark.
When I wrote the obituary, I made him sound noble, misunderstood, poetic, broken. A tragedy people could romanticize. And the book that followed, the one that made me who I am, was born from the ashes of that lie.
But now, years later, I can still hear his voice. Not angry. Not cruel. Just there. Underneath the hum of my laptop. Behind the rhythm of my own writing.
"You promised to finish it for me," he whispers."
I close my eyes.
Maybe this is what ghosts really are, truths we tried too hard to bury, still breathing through the cracks we left behind.