He Killed Me Then Loved Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Fresh From the Shop
Phillip drives his sports car at Hallie in front of two hundred people on SAT morning, the brakes fail and she dies, then wakes at 6:40 the same morning hearing the same words.
Two hundred people watched Phillip Chichester drive a sports car straight at me on the morning of my SAT.
It started at six, at my window.
I live in the carriage house behind his family's garden.
From the glass I watched his father walk him down the driveway to the red car.
"Fresh from the shop, son," his father said. "My own mechanic brought it back last night."
He put the keys in Phillip's hand himself.
His father never went near the cars. He looked up at my window and waved.
"Good luck today, Hallie!" he called.
I waved back. He had paid for my school since I was twelve, and I had never once seen him unkind.
I was nineteen and retaking the test for his family's foundation scholarship. My first score missed the cutoff by forty points.
His family had given me the carriage house and my tuition.
Phillip had hated me for every year of it.
He sent me out in the rain for his coffee and then poured it on the porch.
He smashed my water bottle on the gym floor in front of our whole class.
He told every friend we had to stop talking to me, and they did.
He told his mother that I had stolen a bracelet, and she searched my room while I stood in the doorway.
She found nothing, and he never apologized.
I never fought back. I kept my face still and my mouth shut, and I told myself that was winning.
At seven I stood in the testing center lot with my pencils in my hand and my admission ticket in my pocket.
Two hundred other test-takers waited on the curb for the doors to open.
Then the red car turned into the lot and stopped across the only exit.
Phillip had the window down. Beckett Lowry sat in the passenger seat with his phone up, recording.
"Hey, scholarship!" Phillip shouted. "Big day! Want a ride?"
Everyone on the curb turned to look at me.
"No, thank you," I said.
Beckett laughed. "Come on, Phil. Make her jump."
Phillip grinned and revved the engine so hard the whole lot heard it.
I did not move.
I had never given him my fear. I wasn't going to hand it over in front of Beckett's phone.
"Last chance," Phillip called.
I stared at him.
He put the car in gear and floored it.
The car came across the asphalt faster than he could have meant it to.
I saw him lift his foot and stamp on the brake.
The brake lights stayed dark.
His face changed. He yanked the wheel and it was too late.
"Hallie!" he screamed. It was the first time in seven years he had said my name without a sneer.
The bumper took me at the knees.
The curb took the back of my head.
I heard Beckett's phone hit the ground.
I heard a girl on the curb scream and keep screaming.
I lay on the asphalt in my good blue sweater with my pencils scattered around me, and I could not feel anything below my neck.
Phillip's face hung over me, white and wet.
"No," he said. "No, no. It was supposed to be a joke."
I tried to tell him I knew.
Nothing came out.
Then everything went quiet, and I died there in the lot with two hundred people watching.
A bell rang.
It rang again, tinny and loud, and I opened my eyes.
I was in my bed in the carriage house with my alarm going off on the nightstand.
The clock said 6:40.
My blue sweater hung over the chair, and my pencils sat in a row on the desk.
My head did not hurt. My knees did not hurt. I held my hands up in the gray light, and they were warm and whole.
I pressed my hand flat on the sheet. It was real, and so was the sunlight on the wall.
I had died, and I was nineteen again on the same morning.
I heard a car door slam in the driveway.
I went to the window with my heart slamming against my ribs.
Everard Chichester stood beside the red car with his hand on his son's shoulder.
"Fresh from the shop, son," he said. "My own mechanic brought it back last night."
He put the keys in Phillip's hand.
He looked up and waved at me. "Good luck today, Hallie!"
I did not wave back.
Phillip would drive that car at me in an hour, and its brakes would fail.
The man who had just handed him the keys had said the car was fresh from the shop.
I did not know yet what that meant. I knew I had heard it twice.
So I put on my shoes and decided I would not be standing where he expected me.
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