AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Dawn’s first rays grip the edges of the horizon, painting the sky in hues of pink and orange, the colors bleeding into the darkness like watercolors on a wet canvas.
I marvel at the beauty of it all, even in the thick of this fucked-up situation. Even as anxiety gnaws at me from the inside out.
How am I going to get back home?
“Please,” I whisper.
She lifts a shoulder in a lazy shrug. "I did my good deed, yeah? For the sisterhood."
I squeeze my fingers around the steering wheel, tightening them to the point of pain. "Please. Just let me call someone to come get me. To let them know where I am at least.”
She shakes her head and another piece of hair falls free from behind her ear. “I can’t risk it. Sorry.” Except she doesn’t sound sorry at all. She sounds indifferent really.
I nod a few times. "What about if you called them then? Or put them on speakerphone? Or just tell them where we are? I don't even have to talk at all."
Her silence hangs heavy in the hair, and I can’t tell if she’s reverting back to her silent treatment or if she’s wavering in her resolve. But I have four miles to plead my case, so I decide I don’t have a hell of a lot to lose at this point. The thought of who might be at the rest stop lingers in my mind, a terrifying unknown. Given my recent luck, it’s likely there’s another unhinged psychopath just waiting in the wings.
"Hunter."
She side-eyes me, but doesn't say anything.
“He’s, uh, five.” I glance at her, finding her eyes on me already. So I keep going. “And I sent him away with his grandma, the moment we knew something bad was about to happen. But the assholes on motorcycles came so quickly, and there were so many of them.” I pause, my mind flashing back to those moments. I can’t believe that was only today. Or yesterday, I guess. My stomach sinks as I realize that it could’ve been days ago. I don't know what was in that syringe or how long it knocked me out for.
I can’t let myself think about it too much, or I’ll fall into a tailspin. And I don’t have the luxury of being vulnerable right now. Not until I’m back in Rosewood.
Until I'm home. With them.
I swallow over the heartbreak of it all and continue, my voice quiet. "There were dozens of them, and they opened fire on the house like it was nothing. Like they were playing a video game. The violence they unleashed was . . . it was devastating. And all I kept thinking was how not even five minutes earlier, I was teaching Hunter how to tap dance and catch butterflies in the backyard. How twenty minutes before that we were eating dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets in the living room fort we’d made the day before. And I-I have no idea if he made it out safely. Or if they found him somehow.”
Tears fill my vision, and I blink reflexively, sending them cascading down my cheeks in twin rivers of heartache.
The woman next to me clears her throat, and I look over at her in time to see her pull out a phone from somewhere.
Gratitude ripples through my limbs, flowing all the way to my fingertips. I wiggle them to disperse the pins and needles feeling. “Thank you.”
"I'll call. You stay quiet. And if I suspect for one second that this is a trap somehow, I'll kill you faster than you can blink."
I blink a few times reflexively, my lashes fluttering like they’re scared they’ll never be able to move again. “Alright. Thank you.”
"What's your boyfriend's number?"
“Uh.” My mind blanks. Totally and completely empties out. “Shit. I don’t have it memorized.”
She rolls her head along the headrest to deliver a glare so sharp and potent, I actually wince.
I roll my head from right to left, working out some of the tension tightening my shoulders. “But I know Cora’s phone number by heart. Coraline Carter. She’s my cousin and my best friend and she lives in Rosewood. She’s probably with my boyfriends right now.” My lips twist to the side as I imagine her giving the Reapers hell because that’s what she does when she’s scared: she lashes out.
"Fine," she snaps.
I rattle off the number and she puts the phone to her ear. I can faintly hear the ringing through the silence of the car.
Once, twice.
C'mon, Cora. Answer your phone.
Like she heard me, she answers on the third ring.
"Hello?"
