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“It means I got out of town for a couple days.”
“You’re being awfully cagey, Aves.”
“I’m not telling you where I am,” I say flatly.
“Look.” In the background of Nathan’s call is a sudden burst of wind and a clattering sound. “I’m just looking out for you. My dad—” He drops his voice. “My dad is tracking the GPS on your phone right now. You should smash it the second we end this call and stop him from finding you.”
Ice washes through my veins. “He’s tracking my phone?”
“Yeah. It’s out of some misguided urge to keep you safe, I guess.” He lets out a dry laugh. “He thinks if he can keep tabs on you, then you won’t get stolen away again.”
“Nathan, this is fucked up.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. I swear, I didn’t give him the number. My mother stole my fucking phone while I slept and went through every text to find which number was you.”
Fuck. That does sound like something Eliza would do. Either in a misguided attempt to keep me safe, or out of a need to appease her increasingly unhinged husband.
“Bye, Nathan.”
“Smash it,” he says urgently. “Make sure—”
I hang up before I have to listen to him say another word. He’s not part of this. Not in the way my aunt and uncle are. But somehow I feel like he’s complicit. He could have warned me before this, at the very least. A hot flush burns across my cheeks. Every last one of them is a rat. There’s nobody left to trust.
Except Rome.
First things first—get rid of this fucking phone. Kill the GPS signal screaming out my location. Then find Rome, and...I don’t know. Make him wrap me up tight, hide me somewhere until my heart settles down and my vision clears.
I drop the phone to the floor of the house and go to look for something to smash it with. In a closet off the kitchen, I find a toolbox. A hammer. I’m poised to crush it when another notification pops up.
Jennifer.
They know where you are. They’re coming to get you. Taking the jet. Waiting for the weather to swing around before they take off. You have a few hours at most. You need to run.
I reach down, shaking, and type two letters in:ty
I press send.
And then I bring the hammer down, again and again and again, until there’s nothing left but a little pile of crushed metal and shattered glass.
* * *
“Avery.” The door to the cabin bangs open and Rome rushes in. “I think we should—” I watch him take in the scene. Me, sweating by one of the big glass windows, hammer cocked like the phone is a spider and I’m waiting for it to run before I take it out for good. “What happened?”
I drop the hammer into the destroyed remnants of the phone and swipe a hand across my forehead. I’m numb, except for the insistent throb of anxiety around my heart. The anxiety flashes outward and threatens to consume me, but the numbness fights it back.
“My uncle was tracking my phone. My burner phone that I bought specifically so I couldn’t be tracked. He’s coming out here to get me.”
Rome crosses the cabin in a few big strides and takes my hands in his. I have a sickening sense of deja vu. This is like when we were in the basement. I can feel the mattress underneath my body and the pain from my IUD, from the collar, from the knife wounds up and down my arms. I can feel the nausea of being so dehydrated that I knew, I knew, that there was nothing to throw up but bile. The air between us shimmers. I can’t remember whose idea it was to die together, but this feels like the moment we decided on it. If he suggests it again—
“Were you serious about the wedding stuff? Because I am.” It shines in his eyes, how very serious he is. How much he means this. “And if you are, I want to marry you. Today. Now.”
I shake my head to clear my thoughts, a clarity bursting through the cloudy fear like sun through a rain cloud. Getting married isn’t a death sentence. If we have a death sentence, it’s there whether we get married or not. A bolt of pure, unadulterated joy spears the center of me.Marry Rome now. Now. He can be my husband before the sun sets again tonight.
“Who’s going to do it? Is there—is there actually a way?” An hour’s not long enough for us to drive anywhere. It’s not long enough to go to some city, convince a clerk at an office to get us a marriage license, and have it done. The little time we have feels like it’s sliding through my fingers, like sand from an hourglass that I can’t keep hold of.
“My dad’s an ordained minister. He already offered.” Rome smiles a tentative smile. It’s the most beautiful, heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen. “We can do it now, Aves. Right now. Here.”
I can feel every second as it ticks by as if there was a clock louder than every other sound in the world. I can feel the time running out. It drains from me like blood.
