#riplincoln

“I’m sorry.”

He huffs the words through gritted teeth.

He doesn’t think she’s heard him as she continues slamming all of her body weight against the passenger door in an effort to force it open. He feels the car shudder with every shove of her shoulder. Feels her determination to break them free slowly turn into desperation as the door refuses to budge.

He continues to watch her struggle even when blood slowly trickles into his eyes and blurs his vision. He can feel every second slipping away and yet, this moment he knows is infinite. There will never be another moment more than what they have been given and that makes this everything. And so he watches her with awe, wanting to commit all of her to memory no matter how futile the task may be.

“No.”

Her voice is hard and sharp. She is staring back at him now. Green eyes boring into his blue ones.

“There has to be a way out. You’re not dying here. Not today.”

The car begins to tremble back and forth again under her renewed resolve.

He wonders just how bad his death will hurt her. He knows she’ll make it. He knows she is strong. He just wishes she wouldn’t have to bear it.

“Argh!” She cries out. “God freaking, dammit!” She collapses against the door. In her slumped position he watches defeat slowly sink in and her shoulders sag underneath it all.

“I would chose you.”

The words are spoken so softly that he thinks he might have imagined it. It’s not until she looks up and he can see the tears brimming in her eyes that he knows she has accepted what he has known. What he should have known all along. What would have been imminent the moment he kissed her under her porch after their very first date. They were all doomed from the very beginning. Life was fleeting and it really was just a matter of time before his car would slide on an ice patch in the road and careen off the highway. Any moment he might have been shot, hit by a car, struck down by lightening. And yet, it has been all these moments with her that he has felt most alive.

“I would choose you,” she repeats quietly. “In a 100 different lives, even if each time would all end as miserably and painful as this one, I would always choose you.”

He thinks it is the most intimate confession ever dared to be uttered aloud. To know what he is leaving behind makes this all the more heart-wrenchingly painful.

“I’m sorry”, he tries again.

“I’m sorry that this isn’t one of those lives that we’ll get to be together. I wanted..to grow old with you. I wanted our children to have your smile, I wanted the white picket fence, I wanted to hold your hand when we were both 80 and grey. I wanted all of those things with you, and I’m sorry that we won’t get to have them.”

She doesn’t try to hold back her tears now and he watches them fall across her cheeks before he feels her tears wet his face and her lips on his.

She cradles his face in her hands as the darkness starts creeping around the edge of his vision.

“You suck, you know that?”

He hears the quiver in her voice and feels his heart ache even more.

Drink a Beer Luke Bryan