98 km/hr.
Fuck it. I slam the accelerator hard. The Ford is now visibly approaching me.
133 km/hr.
A maniacal squeal leaves me when I pass the guy in his slow-moving cage, which I doubt can remain stable on anything over a speed of one hundred and ten.
The car in front of me swerves left toward the fast lane, and I’m immediately greeted with another slow car.
For half a second, I imagine not hitting the brake. I picture myself careening left to join the fast lane myself—without looking.
Ramming into a car at this speed would crush the metal frame. Make me lose the little control I currently have of this machine.
Instead, I press the brake. My whole frame slumping at my thought process.
Is this it?
Is this hypomania?
I’ve never felt like this before. The most recklessI’ve been is when I hooked up with a guy in an alley behind the bar where I met him. That was in my early twenties.
I blink hard, knowing full well that I shouldn’t be closing my eyes for that long on a highway.
Nothing goes wrong.
My legs aren’t squeezed between my seat and the dashboard. The steering wheel isn’t lodged inside my chest. The windshield isn’t peppered across my skin, splitting it open with a thousand cuts.
A few minutes later, I’m exactly where I need to be—sitting numbly in a familiar leather chair with gilded armrests while Cynthia, my regular stylist, watches me through the mirror with open uncertainty.
She hadn’t taken my new instructions well.
For years, I’d come to her with the same request. The same maintenance cut. The same carefully managed version of myself.
Today, I changed all of it.
By the time she’s finished, she still looks unconvinced.
I don’t care.
The moment I step outside, I freeze.
Levi is standing across the small parking lot, leaning against his car. His gaze is already fixed on the salon entrance.
On me.
I immediately look away.
Even from this distance, I see his body lock up. His chest rises sharply before falling again, as though he’s forgotten how breathing works.
Shit.
Without giving him a chance to speak, I fish my keys from my bag and head straight for my car.
I hear his door open behind me, then the loudness of the door shutting.
By the time he starts his engine, I’m already pulling out. And he follows.
Of course he does.
