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“Thatcher, you made your fucking point,” I said, gripping down on the seat. I was trying so hard not to cry, to not show this guy my fear, but his car shot off like a bullet again, and the blood pumped violently in my ears. I closed my eyes. “Please.”
I didn’t know why I was pleading with him. The guy was clearly a sociopath, and he didn’t bother to laugh this time. He just drove. We ended up on the back roads (way outside of campus), and on an empty stretch of road, Thatcher decided to test the limits of his car.
He went so fast, so terribly, frighteningly fast, and I thought I would die. I thought this was it, and I’d be left with him. The scream I bellowed out was something out of a horror film, and I didn’t even hear it over the sound of the car. Thatcher went at top speed, and the acceleration only increased upon coming toward a moving train.
It was like he was charging right for it, and I lost my voice at that point. There was nothing left. There was nothing. I thought he’d literally hit the train and kill us both.
He stopped just short.
The wheels labored, spinning out a bit. Burning rubber hit the air as the car stopped at an angle just before the start of the tracks. The train zoomed its final cars past us, and I was shaking by the time I swung in Thatcher’s direction.
“You’re fucking crazy. You’re fucking…” I held it back. I refused to shed tears but I was so goddamn close. “What is wrong with you? Have you lost your mind? Did you ever have it?—”
I stopped my rant. Mostly because he wasn’t listening. He still had his hands on the wheel, facing the street in silence, and I didn’t see the point.
Point or not, I was going to start in on him again, but I noticed something else. Thatcher’s hands were not only ghost white on the wheel…
But they were shaking.
His entire body was, his forearms, his biceps. His body was in a constant state of shake. Like he himself was scared, but he’d been driving. He’d been in control, so why was he scared?
“Thatcher?” My adrenaline was going down, my swallow hard. “Thatcher?”
He didn’t hear me. Like he was a shell once more. That hollow vacancy had returned to his stark blue eyes, and my heart restarted its quick beats. Something looked wrong with him, and I didn’t know why I reached out to touch him. I was scared as fucking shit and wanted nothing to do with him.
“Touch me, snowflake,” he gritted just before I could. My fingers stopped mid-touch, his trembling bicep within inches of my outstretched fingers, centimeters… He faced me. “And I touch you back.”
His words held promise and equal parts darkness.
Fuck this shit.
Fuck him and all this shit. I unstrapped my seat belt, shaking.
“Snowflake—”
I grabbed my purse, literally getting out of the car on the side of the road. I almost tripped in my heels and face-planted in the dirt.
“Snow—Aspen, get back in the car. Aspen, I’ll take you fucking home!”
There was no way I was getting back in the car and certainly not with him. My heels caught in the dirt, and I was so desperate to get away, I took them off. I lost my sunglasses too with my initial stumble, but I was so frantic I left them.
“Aspen!”
I started running then. I had no plan. I had no phone, but I didn’t care. I just had to get away from him, and my heart started swiftly once more at the memories that suddenly invaded my head.
This felt so familiar.
Me running… Thatcher chasing. He got me when I ran so many years ago, but not before someone saw me. I’d made it nearly to a local diner outside of the campgrounds the cabin was on, and it was that short escape that saved me. Someone had spotted me and called the cops.
They had because they’d seen Thatcher catch me.
I still remembered his weight on my back. He’d been younger then but still big, and there’d been emotion on his face when he swiveled me around. He had emotion for the first time. That dark and twisted boy had shown me something.
Desperation.
He hadn’t wanted me to leave, and he made sure I hadn’t.
“Aspen!”
