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He winked, his playfulness catching. “Maybe I’m feeling a bit unpredictable tonight.”
“You can say that again,” I quipped, and he laughed a bit harder.
“You know, that’s what I like about you. You can roll with the punches and still have fun,” he quipped, and I looked down at my hands in my lap, smiling to myself. I didn’t really know what to say, so I stayed quiet.
Suddenly, Ryan’s laughter subsided, and he muttered, “Uh-oh, looks like we’re running on fumes.” He gestured to the fuel gauge, and I glanced at the dial, seeing that it was clearly past empty.
Like the kind of empty that meant we probably wouldn’t make it the rest of the way down the street, let alone wherever he was taking me.
A flicker of concern crossed my face. “Do we have enough to make it to the next gas station?”
Ryan grinned, a hint of mischief in his eyes. “We’re living on the edge tonight, Maci. Hold on tight.”
He pressed on the gas and fishtailed around a turn before speeding off down the road like a bat out of hell. I gripped the hand rest on the car door, giggling in delight as we raced through the night. In the distance, about a mile away, I saw a gas station and Ryan only seemed to speed up more.
It wasn’t far. We should make it, hopefully.
Instead of slowing down, Ryan pressed harder on the gas pedal, the engine roaring to life like an angry lion. My giggles turned into a mixture of nervous laughter and excitement, and I started to get a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Ryan, slow down!” I exclaimed, gripping the hand rest even harder, but he only seemed more determined to embrace his reckless speeding like he was a Nascar driver on the last lap. I swallowed hard, telling myself everything was going to be alright. He was just showing off for my sake. That’s all this was.
Until it wasn’t.
As we hurtled towards the gas station, the world outside morphed into a dizzying blur. The bright lights of the station smeared across the windshield, streaking the night with elongated lines of white and yellow.
Slow down!
My heart thundered in my chest. A knot of dread coiled tightly in the pit of my stomach, growing with each fleeting second that brought us closer to what felt like the inevitable.
My fingers gripped the handrest with a vice-like intensity, my knuckles whitening under the strain.
Too close.
Fuck. He isn’t slowing down.
If anything, he was still accelerating, the car’s engine emitting a high-pitched whine that screamed in my head.
Panic surged through me. My breathing became shallow, rapid bursts of air that did little to quench the growing hysteria spiraling inside of me. I could feel the car’s tires lose their tenuous grip on the pavement, skidding with a treacherous squeal that seemed like a harbinger of doom.
With a sudden, violent jolt, the car careened into the gas station. It was going too fast to navigate the turn properly, the back end fishtailing wildly out of control.
A sickening crunch shattered the air as the car collided with a pump, the sound a grotesque symphony of breaking glass, rending metal, and the tortured screech of twisting steel.
A burst of flames engulfed the pump, the air thick with the acrid scent of burning fuel. I could feel the heat radiating from the fire, and the world quickly became a blur of orange and red.
I acted quickly, my instincts kicking in. I shoved the car door open and stumbled out of the car, only to look back and see that Ryan had done the same thing.
The flames greedily licked at the car, the once sleek vehicle now a blazing inferno. Panic surged through me as I ran to Ryan’s side, the heat intensifying with every step.
“Ryan, we need to get further away! It could blow!” I shouted, my voice barely audible over the roar of the flames.
He nodded, his expression set firmly with determination and abject fear. We sprinted further from the erupting chaos, the air quickly growing thick with smoke. Behind us, the car, now completely engulfed in flames, seemed to pulsate with an ominous energy. As we reached what felt like a safe distance, a deafening explosion shattered the night.
The force of the blast sent shockwaves through the air, rattling everything around us. I instinctively threw myself to the ground, shielding my head. The explosion echoed in my ears, leaving them ringing and my eyes burning from the smoke.
When I finally dared to glance back, a plume of blazing smoke billowed into the sky where the car once stood. The remnants of Ryan’s car were now scattered across the gas station, each fragment still burning brightly in the dark of the night.
It was like waking up from a nightmare only to find out it was real.
