Page 86 of She's With Me (She's With Me 1)

He swears and swerves, my body jerking to the left onto Charlotte, the SUV narrowly missing the cop car as Mason drives through the fields at top speed. His Range Rover is built for this terrain; we’re luckier than most, and Charlotte and I turn around to look out the back window, watching the scene unfold as we speed away.

“Do you see Julian’s truck or Aiden’s car anywhere?” I ask.

“I can’t see anything!” Charlotte admits, trying hard to see through the chaos.

Mason suddenly turns, sending Charlotte and I toppling over with a swear.

“Sorry,” Mason throws over his shoulder at us, taking another sharp turn, and I feel the familiar smoothness of asphalt instead of bumpy grass beneath the tires.

Looking back out the window, there are only trees. The only evidence of what just occurred are the loud sounds and flashing lights in the distance. Mason turns again and speeds down the road, quickly putting as much space as he can between us and the shit show back at the Tracks. We’re on a dark road, illuminated only by Mason’s headlights. No one else is on this road. No one follows us.

We made it.

18

The hour-long drive back to my house is a long and stressful one. I try calling Aiden’s phone every five minutes, and worry every time it flips right to voice mail. About twenty minutes after we make it away from the Tracks, Annalisa answers her phone. She confirms that Noah and Chase are with them and that they got out okay. She also says that Aiden isn’t answering her calls either.

Now, it’s about two thirty in the morning, and we’re all huddled on my porch, worried out of our minds about Aiden. Clearly none of us are comfortable enough to call it a night and go home until we know if he got arrested or not.

I thought my mom would be back from work around three or four, but the car in the garage tells me she’s already home. At least she’s asleep, so I don’t have to explain why we’re having a slumber party out on the porch in the cold. Let’s be real, she probably wouldn’t care anyway. She hasn’t in a long time. She sent me a don’t-stay-out-too-late text around midnight, and I haven’t heard from her since.

A car turns onto my street, the bright headlights illuminating the dark houses.

“Is that . . . ?”

The blue jeep passes my house and continues down the street, answering Charlotte’s question.

“Should we call him again?” Noah asks. “Maybe he’ll answer the twentieth call in the last hour?”

“He’s driving, that’s probably why he isn’t answering his phone,” Mason reasons, but we can all tell it’s not with much conviction.

“Maybe I should take a drive to his house, just in case he decided to go home instead,” Julian suggests.

“If he shows up anywhere, it’ll be here. He said he would meet us here, he’ll be here,” I say with as much confidence as I can.

“It’s been an hour and a half since the cops showed up, maybe we should think about bail money—” Mason starts.

“He didn’t get caught!” I insist.

“Maybe we should turn on the news and check if there were any high-speed police chases,” Chase says, only half-joking.

“He couldn’t have gotten arrested, guys. We have an unspoken blood pact that one of us can’t get arrested unless another one of us is there beside him. That’s brotherhood right there,” Noah explains in his backward logic.

“That’s only true when you do something stupid, Noah. The saying is that you get arrested with your best friend for doing something stupid, not illegal street racing and gambling,” Chase corrects.

“Being a street racer who couldn’t outrace cops would be stupid!” Noah explains. “Therefore, he can’t get arrested because one of us isn’t sitting in that jail cell with him.”

We roll our eyes, secretly glad about Noah’s natural ability to cut some tension.

“Noah, no one knows about this stupid blood pa—” Julian is cut off when we hear the beautiful sound of Aiden’s Challenger coming down the street.

A chorus of relieved sighs are heard as the black Challenger stops in front of my house, and Aiden emerges from it. Learning my lesson from the last time I made a complete fool of myself in front of everyone, I resist the urge to throw myself into Aiden’s arms. He walks up to the porch and we all break into relieved smiles.

“See! I told you all! Tell them about the blood pact, Aiden! Tell ’em!” Noah exclaims.

Aiden looks at him, confused. “What?”

“He knows,” Noah says to Charlotte, who’s standing on his left.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com