Chapter 32 #2
“He was leaving her?”
August nods, staring at the road like he’s seeing something projected across it. “He said if he found a place, I could come with him. He said we’d figure it out. He said I didn’t have to stay in that house forever.”
“Oh my God.” My voice is barely there. “He was going to leave her, and that’s when it happened?”
“I hear it.” His laugh is hollow and awful. “I fucking hear it.”
“Even if it wasn’t Jake,” I whisper. “You told me he learned everything at her knee.”
August’s grip tightens on the wheel until his knuckles pale under the ink. “Holy shit.”
“Holy shit,” I agree.
We go quiet.
The road keeps moving, because the world is rude like that. It doesn’t stop for revelations.
“Everything I thought I knew was a lie,” he whispers.
I let out a dark little laugh. “Welcome to the club.”
His face twists. “Fuck, Lennon. I’m so sorry.”
He reaches for me again, and this time I bring his hand to my mouth before he can pull away and kiss his knuckles.
“We escaped them,” I say against his skin.
His hand flexes in mine. “When this is over, I’m going to spend a week touching you without looking over my shoulder.”
My pulse stutters.
“Only a week?” I ask.
His gaze drops to my mouth for one dangerous second before he forces it back to the highway. “Don’t start with me in this car.”
“I’m not starting anything.”
“You are absolutely starting something.”
“I’m poisoned and frail. This is a medical emergency. You can’t accuse me of seduction.”
“Baby,” he says, rough and low, “you breathing in my direction counts as seduction.”
The word baby rolls through me, warm as whiskey. I close my eyes because if I keep looking at him, I’m going to forget my body is a crime scene and climb over the console anyway.
“I love when you forget to be careful,” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer for a second. Then, very quietly, “I’m only careful because you matter.”
August’s eyes flick to the dash.
“Oh shit. We’re almost out of gas.”
The mundane panic of it is so absurd I almost laugh too. “Of course we are.”
He checks the mirror, flips the blinker, and takes the next exit. The car dips off the highway onto the empty frontage road.
A gas station glows ahead and August pulls in under the canopy and parks at the farthest pump, angled so he can see the entrance, the road, and me.
The dome light comes on when he opens his door, and for a second he’s all shadow and broad shoulders. Then he leans across the console, one hand braced beside my hip, and kisses the crown of my forehead.
It is the softest kiss in the world.
It still sends heat straight through me.
His mouth lingers there. “Stay with me,” he murmurs into my hair.
“I am.”
“I mean it.”
I lift my hand and catch the front of his hoodie, holding him close for one stolen second. I tilt my face up, and his eyes drop to my mouth.
We don’t kiss.
Maybe because his restraint is another way he loves me.
His fingers brush my cheek, so careful I want to cry. He’s always so damn sweet.
When all this settles, I can’t wait to meet Owen. I bet the two of them are absolutely adorable together. A little mini-August? C’mon.
We’ll both be free of his family and then we can start our forever.
The thought is stupidly romantic. Too big for the inside of this truck and ridiculous for the night we’re having. But I let myself have it anyway.
I hear the gas start chugging into the truck and wrap my arms around myself in the residual heat.
It’s chillier now with the engine off. My body can’t decide if it’s burning up or freezing, which is fun.
Very fun. Ten out of ten, would not recommend being maybe-poisoned by your husband and then fleeing to a hospital far, far away.
I let my eyes close.
Just for a second.
While the gas pumps, August grabs the squeegee and starts washing the front windshield, scraping off the moths that have been massacring themselves en masse against the glass for the last couple of hours.
I watch him through my lashes as he leans over the hood, shoulders flexing under his hoodie, mouth set in that focused line he gets when he’s taking care of something.
Taking care of me.
My eyes drift closed again.
And then I hear the driver’s side door open and the voice out of my nightmare.
“Lennon.”
My eyes fly open.
For half a second, my brain refuses to make sense of what I’m seeing. Jake is sliding behind the wheel where August was sitting two minutes ago.
Jake.
In the driver’s seat of August’s truck.
“What the—”
He reaches for the key August left in the ignition.
Oh my God.
I sit upright so fast the world lurches. “Jake?” I gasp. “How did you find—”
He turns toward me, calm and already shifting the truck into gear like he has every right in the world.
He smiles, and it’s not his public smile. Not the one that makes folks at church lean in because he sounds like a man who knows how to be listened to.
This smile is just for me.
“You think I only had one way to track you? You don’t go anywhere without that damn laptop.”
My stomach drops.
Outside the truck, August’s yelling my name and yanking on my car door handle. “Lennon! Get out! Get out of there!”
The nozzle is still in the tank when Jake hits the gas.
For one wild second, everything happens in a blur of sound: August shouting, the hose snapping free with a metallic crack, an alarm going off, and my own scream tearing out of me as the truck lurches away from the island.
“Jake!” I grab for the door handle. “What are you doing?”
“Taking you home where you belong.”
Over my dead body.
I yank at the handle, but it won’t give. Jake’s got one hand on the wheel and the other on the lock button, clicking it over and over.
“Stop the truck!” I scream.
“You’re just sick, Lennon.” His voice is so steady it’s like he believes he’s soothing me. “You’re exhausted and confused. You’re letting him do this to you.”
“August isn’t doing anything to me!”
“He’s unstable, Lennon. You know that.”
I turn and look through the back window. August is running after us across the gas station lot, his face white with terror under the lights. He slips on a patch of spilled water or gas or God knows what and catches himself on one hand before launching back to his feet.
The sight of him running toward me breaks something loose inside me.
“I said stop.”
Jake’s face hardens. “You never know when to quit, do you?”
The gas station exit is coming up too fast. Beyond it is the frontage road, the empty dark, the whole world narrowing down to Jake’s hands on August’s wheel.
No.
I grab the wheel and yank it with both hands.
The truck veers hard to the right.
Jake shouts and jerks against me, but he wasn’t expecting a fight from me. Not the woman he trained to apologize for taking up space.
The truck jumps the curb.
For one suspended second, the headlights catch nothing but grass and ditch and a flash of silver culvert before we crash.