Feels Like Home

Part Eight

Letty's POV

Next morning I woke and panic welled up inside me. I kissed him. He could hardly expect me to fall back into a full on relationship with him. Could he? I wasn't ready for that. I might love him but I only knew that I loved him instinctively. He had a lifetime of memories to back his feelings up. It wouldn't be fair to him. To me.

Kissing him had felt right. So right. Yet it had been so wrong. How could I kiss him? How could I let myself give him false hope? I didn't remember him. It wasn't right. My heart wrenched in my chest. I didn't want to make things awkward by bringing it up but I didn't want to ignore it.

That's when something inside me snapped into action. I got dressed and headed off out the door.

Without knowing where I was going I wound up in the cemetery where Dom had told me I was buried. I didn't know where exactly my grave was at but I decided I might as well see it. I walked through the dew covered grass, feeling my toes get damp in my sandals.

The headstone was at the far end of the cemetery. The black granite glimmered slightly in the early morning sunshine. There it was, my name embossed in the black granite in contrasting white. Leticia Ortiz, Beloved daughter, sister and friend to all. September 7th 1983 - May 30th 2009." The words were impeccably chiseled into the granite.

My breath caught in my throat as I realised it was real. Then I found it funny. Funny that I had been mistaken for dead.

Then it crossed my mind whoever they buried had a family, someone out there who loved them and would have loved the sense of closure that they could have gotten from having a funeral as a means of saying goodbye. I felt tears trickling down my cheeks. Which would hurt more? To have a family who were pain stakingly searching for you only for you to be buried under someone else's name, never to be found? Maybe it was worse to find the person you'd thought was dead but get them back without their memories? How could anyone ever find the answer?

I sank to my knees in front of the grave and cried. That was the date that Letty had died and I was born. The person I used to be had faded into shadow of herself when I'd had the crash. The person I was now was defined by the memories of that horrible accident.

I was running from something or someone. That detail was fuzzy. I was pushing over 100mph and the matte grey Plymouth was struggling to keep going. I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles were white, my grip getting tighter with every passing second. My heart was racing and I was sweating underneath my leather jacket. Panic was overwhelming me.

A metallic ringing sounded through the air as the car pursuing me clipped the back of my car. My car skidded. The other car knocked into the side of me and I lost control of my Plymouth. It rolled towards the side of the road in a shower of sparks as the metal came into contact with the road. The glass smashed in around me. Sharp pricks tore at my skin. I could feel a trickle of blood running down my forehead.

The car screeched to a halt just at the edge of the road. A figure climbed out of the other car. His face obscured by the dark night. I started to rise to my feet, my palms scratched by the broken glass which was scattered across the road. The pain gave me a reason to fight. I bit my lip, repeating to myself to keep fighting on.

The shot of a gun rang through the otherwise silent night air. A flash of light burnt my eyes and I fell backwards, striking my head on a rock.

The person I'd been before was defined by fear, a dedicated determination to stay alive and by strength. I knew they were not the traits that defined a person but they were what I'd constructed my personality around. I'd let myself be defined by self perseveration rather than work out who I really was. A sin I was now paying for.