AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Want me to drive?”
I looked down at his bare, bloodied feet. “I can do it.”
“Okay, but simmer down, okay?”
“Fine,” I said, and very suddenly thought of the perfect way to distract myself. “Um. I have a quick question for you. If we’re going to see your family soon.”
“Yeah? Let’s hear it.”
“Do you have a wife? Girlfriend? Your daughter’s mom? Is she in the picture?”
He shot me an incredulous look. “Really? We’re having that conversation now?”
“Well, you just fucked me now, so yeah. I’d like a chance to brace myself for… whatever. It’s not too much to ask. To avoid, you know. Weirdness.”
He was silent for a moment. “Holly’s mother is dead.”
I negotiated swiftly around a series of Jeep-swallowing-sized holes in the road. “I’m, ah, sorry to hear it.”
“It was a car accident,” he said. “Holly was two. We’d had a huge fight, and Trish took the car to pick up Holly at the baby-sitter. At ninety miles an hour. She was a rage-driver. Very hot-headed kind of woman. She ran a light, and a truck plowed into her. Spun her around, flipped her car. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt.”
“God,” I whispered.
“Holly wasn’t in the car. But she very easily could have been.”
“That’s so awful,” I said. “I’m glad your daughter was okay.”
“My parents died that same way, oddly enough,” he said. “It really laid me out for a while. Lucky for Holly, my brother and sister were both there to help.”
“Ah. I see. Yeah. That was… lucky.”
“I was a mess. For a long time after. We were already in trouble as a couple when it happened. At that point, I was sick to death of her tantrums and about ready to throw in the towel. But after the accident, I was so angry at her for depriving Holly of a mother. And at myself for handling things badly. Getting her all wound up. The whole thing was a total shitshow.”
“I can imagine,” I said carefully.
“It put me off relationships for years. I haven’t had what you would call a serious girlfriend since then. Sex, yeah. Plenty of sex. But no strings.”
“Is that what we just had? No-strings sex?”
“I don’t know what we just had. It just happened. Just drive, okay?”
I did so, as the light started to fade. The clouds faded to a darker pink, then a sullen purplish gray like a bruise, and then, it was fading twilight, with fog gathering all around. A cloud was sitting on the top of this mountain, and we were about to plunge into it.
He put his hand on my arm. “Slow down. Let’s wait for Ethan here. If we go any further, we’ll get lost in that fog. I don’t think you could even see the road.”
My instinct was to keep moving at all costs, but Shane was on the phone with his brother again, so clearly, they had a plan, along with my baby sister.
I jerked to an abrupt stop, and the long grass stopped swishing loudly against the undercarriage.
“They’re coming,” he assured me. “Any time now.”
Sure enough, in barely over a minute, a helicopter took form out of the darkness, like a wraith in the clouds. It got bigger, louder. It hovered over the Jeep, insanely loud, then moved over to the open ground. It hovered there until we got out of the Jeep.
I grabbed my bag, and we started making our careful way over the rocky ground. Slow going for Shane, with those tormented feet. The helicopter touched down.
The door opened, and two men jumped out and ran toward us.
Shane stopped as they came closer. The look on his face took my breath.
