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His scent is in here. His and his knockoff girlfriend’s and their…
I glance in the rearview mirror at the booster seat.
I was under the impression Kordin’s affairs started two years ago, but this kid is school age. I never saw the child, only the mom, so while I don’t know that Kordin’s the father, I don’t know that he’s not either.
My chest feels like it’s being held in a giant’s fist, the viselike grip crushing my rib cage until I’m wheezing.
There’s so much I don’t know about the man I’m married to. There’s too much I don’t know about him.
Reece follows me forty minutes north of town, the temperature outside dropping the further we go. It hasn’t snowed in Fox Hollow yet but several surrounding areas have already gotten a couple inches, so it’s only a matter of time.
Despite the landscape having a thin white dusting, the roads are clear, making the drive easy.
By the time I park at the top of a powder-coated ravine, my hands are still jittery but my breathing’s once again under control.
I gather everything I need before emptying a bottle of sap all over the interior. Just as I’m climbing out, I shift it into neutral.
“Did you get the VIN number?”
I lift it to show Reece, careful to keep the numbers facing me in case he has a photographic memory and wants to look it up later.
“Sometimes there’s another—”
“I thought you said you knew me, rook?” I hold up the other one. “Do you have a lighter?”
He scowls. “No.”
“What kind of criminal doesn’t carry a lighter?”
“One that doesn’t smoke.”
I roll my eyes at him but pull a box of matches from my hip pack.
Scoffing, he says, “You don’t smoke either.”
“I could,” I counter before striking a single match and throwing it in through the open driver’s door. I shut it, then meet Reece by the Mustang’s rear end, the growing orange light from inside already spreading up his sharp jawline.
Wordlessly, Reece and I push the Mustang over the edge, where it rolls down the frozen-over hillside, picking up speed in its descent. We watch as it crashes into the bottom, the entire interior consumed by flames.
“You don’t smoke,” Reece says quietly. “Lighters are to destroy yourself, matches are to destroy everybody else.”
The Mustang explodes into a thunderous blaze of screeching metal and sizzling leather. Everything around it brightens from the fire, its glowing reflection gyrating on the surrounding vegetation, making it look like a sea of restless energy.
Pulling myself away from the hypnotic scene, I turn my gaze on Reece. “I’ve never used matches to kill somebody.”
“Just a bike chain?” Amongst the flames mirrored in his dark eyes, there’s also humor.
He’s not scared of me. Or repulsed by me.
Because he doesn’t actually know me.
If he did, he would’ve never asked me to leave Fox Hollow with him.
“We got one more stop,” I say before I can change my mind.
Once we’re through the cemetery’s wrought-iron gate, I tell him where to park. Out in the open air, I weave us between headstones ranging from small to large and simple to ornate. My steps slow a few away from the one I’m here for. It’s both simple and small, yet not simple or small enough. I wish it was a nondescript pebble I could throw into the ocean, so I could be free of him once and for all.
There aren’t any lights this far in, and the sky is nothing but rolling white clouds like a fleet of pirate ships, sails fully billowed on the horizon, yet the waning crescent moon—a mere sliver above us—still manages to battle its way through the opaque coverage just enough to cast a hazy spotlight on his name and his name alone.
