Chapter 1: Another February 13th

I can still see her contemplative gaze as her fingers play with my curls of blond hair. "We'd better get going, then," she murmurs. "I don't have much time." And then she is kissing me like it is the last time she will ever get to do so. It isn't quite the last time, but unbeknownst in this moment, it will be soon.

And then we are at my back door, and I am begging her not to leave.

"And I meant everything that happened back there - that's all I can say, that I meant it, and I wish it hadn't taken me so long." She is rambling, gaze full of regret that constricts my heart like a noose. Gives me a sense of foreboding.

"Are... are you in trouble?" I latch onto her as she lunges for the door again. "You can trust me."

She gazes at me with sadness and love. "You can trust me back," and her voice is broken as she fiercely kisses me goodbye before springing out the door, screaming into the night, "JULIET!"

And then I am running through the woods, the fog thick around me. Thicker than pea soup, as I yell for Sam. The jumps forward in time are quite sudden, like someone is fast-forwarding for a few seconds and then resuming the tape in a funny, sick game.

I have just reached the edge of the trees, my eyes barely focusing on the new clearness before me when I see the headlights. Hear the screech of brakes more painful than a record scratch. Two bodies illuminated in harsh light, diving. The yell of a name that isn't Sam's. There is only one body now, flying through the air, looking far too graceful for the present moment, as though she is a gymnast coming off the high bar, and for just a second, I expect for Sam to stick the landing, right herself on her feet like a cat.

But she doesn't, and her body skids into the pavement so hard that it sickeningly bounces once, and then comes to a shuddering halt. Another form is bending over Sam in abject disbelief, and I know it must be Juliet, even as I fling myself into the road.

"NO!" And I gather her up in my arms. "Sam... S-AAM!" The last call is spliced and primal, and I feel like a creature that has lost its mate. I can feel the warmth draining from her, and with horror I watch the light in her eyes start to fade.

But then it holds on, for just a glimmer, and she is shaking furiously.

"What have you done, Sam?" I croak. "Why?" Juliet is of no help, kneeling beside me and bawling and not caring who sees or hears. Behind me, somewhere far, far away, a car door slams. Footsteps approach, but I can only focus on one thing at a time - first priority, the woman in my arms.

"It was... meant to be this way," Sam murmurs chokingly.

"Please," I weep. "Don't die..."

"H-hold me," Sam gets out. "One more time." And we come together as one, sharing a sweet kiss, and I know she is bidding me farewell, though I refuse to accept it. Then Sam curls into me, the last glimmer of white flys from her irises, and she is still. The footsteps behind me stop - the driver of the cursed truck, no doubt - but nothing is said. I stare at Sam's lifeless body, unmoving.

"Go get help," I whisper, my voice bizarrely calm. Juliet sits there like a deaf-mute. "GO GET HELP!" I scream at her, and she springs away, towards the truck driver and they both hustle to the cab; I hear someone mention a carphone.

"NOOOOO!" I scream into the night, clutching Sam close like she is a baby and coming apart in wracking sobs, the glare from the headlights blinding my vision...

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! The alarm clock blares through my consciousness almost pathetically, whining like a toddler that hasn't gotten a cookie, and I spring into the real world, gasping, arms flailing against the sheets. My heart plummets further into my stomach as my body drops sharply with it, and I hit the floor hard when I half-fall out of bed. The glare is strangely still there, and I shield my eyes against it, against the brightness streaming through my floor-to-ceiling windows that still makes me feel like I'm waking up in the middle of the sun.

Just thinking the phrase makes another memory from that accursed day spring to my head unbidden, of Sam saying the phrase in perfect time with me. The charged look we shared after.

Ten rotations of the sun, it has been. Ten rotations of waking up in the middle of that sun but not feeling its warmth. And the cold is always - always - the worst every time I go to bed on February 12th, Cupid's Day. And of course, this year, February 12th fell on a Friday, which makes the sharp stab of grief ever more cruel.

It's been ten years since I lost Sam Kingston, the love of my life.

Wordlessly, I get myself up off the floor and stagger for the shower, going through the motions as I cleanse my body even as I can do nothing to cleanse my tortured mind and soul. If I hadn't had that party - that stupid, stupid party - she would be alive. And maybe we would be...

But who knows what we would have been? I'd like to think that we would have worked, and maybe someday have gotten married. What would she be doing now? Have a career, perhaps?

I shake my head like a wet dog, as I pull the towel around myself. Why dwell on the hypothetical when it never will happen? I've never been able to give myself a satisfactory answer, much less let the question go.

Reaching my closet, I yank out my uniform and methodically prepare myself with care. Button the dark shirt. Thread my belt. Pocket my gun in the holster.

Ridgeview, Washington only has a moderate amount of crime - not too little so that we are bored by paperwork, but not too much to leave our units scrambling from stress. I step from my door into the unseasonably warm summer sun - 65 degrees the day before Valentine's Day! This is the Pacific Northwest, not North Carolina! - and clamber into my cruiser, coasting towards downtown even as I keep a careful ear on the scanner.

"All units: civilian down on West Street - apparent heart attack, paramedics have been called..." Yup. A dreary, predictable morning.

If I am honest with myself, I joined the force after college in large part due to Sam. To prevent what happened to her from ever happening again to another young girl, or any child. So far, my success has been a pretty mixed bag. I have received the unfortunate assignment that no officer wants, to force your feet to move up to that front door and knock - usually in the middle of the night - and tell the terrified parents behind it that I'm terribly sorry, but your child has been in an accident... It never, never gets any easier.

I swing into the Ridgeview Police Station and exit my cruiser, striding into headquarters and willing myself to focus. I reach my desk with only a few hellos, and begin attending to the morning reports from night-owl patrols. I've been on that beat before, and still am amazed that the reports are coherent and detailed, much less legible. Making a few nitpicky edits, I work up a rhythm filing them away into the database.

Around mid-morning, my desk phone rings, and I answer quickly. "Hello, this is Officer Kent McFuller."

"Hey, Kent, it's Elody. How are you feeling today?"

I smile a smile crinkled with sentimentality and age. When I was in high school, I had never expected for any of my friendships to last beyond that time. And certainly not with the last people I would have expected to have contact with. But that is what Sam left in her wake. From the moment that triumvirate of girls dragged me into their pew at her funeral and insisted that I sit with them, we became friends, and friends we would remain. Elody confronted me with sympathy in that very pew, asking me point-blank if I had been in love with Sam. At my astonished gaze, she admitted that she had seen Sam kiss me goodbye at the party.

"You know, a few more years of this, and this tradition will start to get schmaltzy," I crack. She laughs, but I can hear the sadness in her voice, even over the phone. "How ya been, Els?"

Elody ran as fast as she could from Ridgeview the moment graduation was over, and hasn't looked back. Neither have Ally and Lindsay. Not one of them looked back, well, except to check on me. Keep tabs on me.

"I've been all right," she admits.

"Hey, we're having bipolar weather patterns, like in your neck of the woods," I joke, trying to keep the conversation light for just a little longer. Elody is a publicist down in North Carolina, and more than once has decried the seesawing climate there on Facebook.

She giggles, but it feels forced. Then her breathing goes quiet. "Can you believe it's been ten years?"

And, there we are. We have arrived at Sam. I breathe deeply. "No," I smile sadly, wistfully. "I can't."

A pause, and then. "I miss her."

"I do too," my voice rumbles low, gentle, trying to sooth her.

"Well, Lindsay should be calling you later today," she changes the subject briskly, and the old Elody is back. "And I'll badger-text Ally to pick up the phone until she does too. I gotta go pick up the kids from daycare. Almost lunch." I forgot that she's three hours ahead.

"Bye, old friend," I murmur as I hang up. No sooner have I laid the receiver to rest than it vibrates again. "Hello, this is Officer Kent McFuller."

"Ugh, do you always have to answer the phone like that?" The scorn is not nearly as grating as it once was, and over many years I have learned to recognize when it comes from a place of affection.

"Hey, Lindsay."

"Just calling to make sure you... well, to see how you are holding up today."

I sigh. "It's that day, Linds. It will never get any easier."

"I know," she murmurs, almost motherly - an adverb I never expected to match to Lindsay Edgecombe. "Just don't die on me, McFuller."

I wince at her bluntness. "I've been dying a little bit every day for ten years, Linds."

"Ugh, you're so romantic, I can't even deal! You sound like my husband when he's drunk!" she teases. "Please come out to the big city when you're on leave. Patrick and I would love to have you."

"Keep a block open for Easter?"

"I'll put the deets in my calendar app the second you send them," she chirps. "Bye, love."

"Bye."