Chapter IV
iv
out there, something I can’t see and despite it all, despite the heat and the cold and the pain, so much pain, my heart leaps up into my throat from fear.
I open my mouth. No words escape. They can’t. I taste blood again.
That’s bad, isn’t it? I’ve got enough sense left to know that’s bad, really bad. Maybe whoever is out there will help me?
What did I see? I roll my head against the headrest, blinking stinging sweat and blood out of my eyes. Maybe some tears. Fuck, everything hurts.
I saw something. I know I saw something. I didn’t just drive off the road, though, fuck, that’s what they’re gonna say, isn’t it? Sad, distraught, drove off into the dark and totalled his fucking car and a sob shudders out of me, but that makes everything hurt even more than it did before.
I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be alone, and here, and I thought earlier tonight I was the most hurt I’d ever be, but that’s a fucking joke now, isn’t it? I shouldn’t have left. I wasn’t going to stay with him, but I shouldn’t have left, or I should have gone to Rachel’s or Jordan’s or—
Pain seizes my heart and I don’t know if it’s physical or emotional, but I don’t care.
I try to push at the metal that surrounds me. My fingers are clumsy. They feel twice the size I’m sure they are. My head throbs with every beat of my heart. My fingertips slide over the buckle of the seatbelt. It’s wet there. Warm. I lift one trembling arm.
The tips of my fingers look dark in the moonlight. Blood? I whimper and drop my head back onto the headrest again.
Doesn’t matter if I get the seatbelt undone. My legs are stuck. I feel that. I can barely keep my head up, and my hand drops to my side.
Something rustles outside again. I whimper and screw my eyes shut. Help me, please, help me. But what are the odds of someone coming across me here? Probably a fox. God, I’m going to die out here alone except for some animals who might even eat me when—
A face appears in the broken window next to me and whatever sound I want to make sticks in my throat at the sight of the man I see.
He’s handsome. Hair dark and tangled, cheekbones high, skin