Chapter Eleven
“WHAT THE FUCK, Surry, you didn’t say we were going to be driving this long!”
Josh hasn’t stopped complaining since Tacoma. The highway unspools in a gray ribbon, rain spitting on the windshield, wipers ticking a steady metronome against my nerves. The silence that is emanating off Brenden is heavier than the constant whining from the back seat.
“I know, it’s nearly a six-hour drive. I’m sorry.
” I keep my gaze on the window, where firs and maples smear into a watercolor of green and slate.
“But nobody outside my family—and now you two—knows about this place. So will you just shut up and deal?” I am, in fact, not sorry at all.
And he is getting on my nerves at this point.
He huffs behind me. Brenden’s fingers rest lightly on the wheel, his presence heavy.
Mountains drift in and out between low clouds—Rainier a ghosted crown, St. Helen’s a scab of history, Hood distant and clean.
Being surrounded by the twenty four active volcanoes actually lowers my nerves, and brings me peace.
The farther south we go, the more the world loosens—traffic drops, shoulders widen, trees thicken until the highway feels tunneled by pine.
Brenden doesn't talk much. He hums sometimes, a low vibration that seems to come from somewhere deeper than his throat.
His knuckles rest loosely on the steering wheel, tanned skin stretched over bone.
He's got the kind of quiet that fills a car like water filling a glass—complete, without bubbles or gaps.
The center display glows cobalt blue against the darkness of the dashboard, illuminating the lower half of his face.
When Take Me To The Beach by Imagine Dragons pops up, the entire cabin transforms around us.
Not because of the lyrics—I don't even need them.
Just the pulse of it, something yearning and salt-tanged, tugging the ribcage open like an insistent tide pulling at a dock.
I feel my shoulders drop, breath deepen into my belly.
I grew up following winding coastal roads that eventually surrendered to dunes and sand, the asphalt giving way to something less certain.
I learned to read the choppy whitecaps and shifting wind patterns before I could solve for x or grasp long division.
The song isn't ours, not yet, but the want inside it feels as familiar as my own heartbeat—like sun-browned hands outstretched toward cool, beckoning water. Before I know it, I’m signing along to the words as if they’re carved into my soul.
The phone rings, silencing the music as Corver’s name floods the screen. I lean forward, tapping the green circle to answer.
“Where is this place again, Surry?” His voice comes through the speakers before I can even say hello, clipped. I swear these men look really tough, but are the most impatient whining babies I have ever met. “Hard to navigate when the address is some state secret.”
“Not a secret,” I say, then sigh. “Okay, it’s a secret. We don’t say it over lines. Ever. My dad is strict. I watched him kill a guy for breaking that rule.” I glance at the rain-gritted window. “Do you want to be next?”
Silence. A cough on their end that sounds suspiciously like Richie covering up a laugh. Even the song takes a breath.
“We’ll meet at the gas station I sent you in Eugene,” I add, softer. “Then you guys follow us for the last leg. Don’t worry – I’m not leaving you lost.”
“Alright then, I’ll trust you, see you in Eugene,” Corver replies.
“Good,” Brenden cuts in, voice like gravel over heat. “See you soon, brother.” The call ends. His hand slides down to my knee.
I should pull away. I do, kind of—turning to the window so his hand falls.
I’m already melting, and I can’t afford melting.
Not when the calculus of everyone I love being alive keeps rearranging itself in my head.
He just puts it back, palm warm against the inside of my thigh, and leans in enough that his breath ghosts my neck.
“You’re mine, Siren,” he says, low and certain. “You’ll see. Hades himself couldn’t keep you from me.”
I swallow. He doesn’t squeeze—just anchors. I tell myself I hate it. My body calls me a liar. Behind us, Josh mutters something about getting a room. I roll my eyes and keep watching the trees race north as we go south, and I pretend my pulse isn’t syncing to the song.
Eugene smells like wet asphalt and diesel.
We pull into the gas station—a squat rectangle of buzzing lights and old coffee.
I hop out, the air sharp with rain and petroleum, and call my father.
I need Selene’s voice. I need to know she’s still threaded to this world with something more than stitches.
He answers on the second beat. “Hello, my sweet Surry. Are ye home yet?”
“No, Papa. Eugene. We’re waiting for the others. Thank you for trusting them.”
“They make ye happy, mo chroí. And I’ve vetted ’em. Nothin’ in their closets I can’t live with.” A pause. “You didn’t give the address over the line, did ye now?”
I laugh despite everything. “No, Papa. I wrote it for Brenden on paper, he unfolded just enough to read it, then we burned it. Like you taught me.”
“That’s my girl.” I hear a shuffle. Voices. “Ye want to speak to yer sister?”
“Yes, please.”
There’s muffled sound through the line and then Selene’s voice ricochets down the line—bright, breathless.
“SISSY! Are you there? How is it? Did the apple tree bloom? How’s Bridget?
I’m so jealous! I want them to send me home already!
I can’t wait to see you. Samuel has asked about Alisha about twenty ti—OW!
Don’t injure me even more than I already am, Samuel! ”
God, she’s a hurricane. My chest aches with love and the shape of fear it carves.
“I’m in Eugene,” I say, smiling helplessly into the rain. “I’ll tell you everything when we get there. Do they have a discharge date?”
“Tomorrow, maybe the next. Extra scans, blah blah.” She huffs. “Papa’s ordering a med bed and a nurse on the Island. Once I don’t need all that shit I can come down there and stay with you. Surgery went smooth, four hours, you know that. I want my own pillows. Oh! Mama—”
The line shifts and my mother’s voice arrives, soft steel. “So, who’s da handsome lad ye’re wit’?”
“Mama. Not now.”
“Ah, this’s th’ only fella we’ve seen ye wit’ since ye left th’ Compound. Humor yer mother, love.”
“When you get here,” I say. “I’ll tell you then. I love you. Punch Samuel for me?”
“Aye, I’ll do that, so I will. I love ye too, a stór.”
I hear an outraged “What was that for?” and Selene’s witchy cackle. My mother exhales a laugh. We say our goodbyes and then the line clicks off. A text from Selene lands immediately, full of hearts and knives and something about stealing Alisha’s man as a joke that will definitely get her killed.
I look up. Brenden is perched on the hood, phone in one hand, eyes scanning the screen, although I am not sure what he is studying with such intensity.
He changed when we realized how far we were driving, we all did.
He’s now in high-tops, slutty little thigh shorts, a T-shirt damp at the collar from rain, hair pulled into a low bun.
He looks like temptation dressed in black cotton.
I hoist myself onto the metal beside him.
It’s cold through my jeans. He, however, is not.
He tilts his head toward me without looking, like he knew I was always going to sit here.
“Thanks for all of this,” I say. The rain is finer now, a mist that clings instead of falls. “You guys don’t have to stay. You weren’t the target. It was a message. You’re welcome to regroup there, but you don’t have to play bodyguard.”
“Oh, I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, and I apparently need to repeat myself hourly,” he slides his phone into his pocket and turns, caging me between his thighs with infuriating ease.
“But I will be guarding that body.” He looks me up and down for emphasis, making me blush.
I swear I am going to have circulatory issues from how often he does that.
“From the moment I saw you in my room until my last breath. That body belongs to me now.” He winks. Fuck.
He grips my hip and pulls me closer. Heat sparks—quick, all encompassing. “Did you forget?” His voice is velvet over barbed wire. “You’re mine. And I’ll make sure everyone knows it. You included.”
My mouth opens and closes like I’m learning to breathe for the first time. “Okay,” I hear myself say.
Okay? Who am I? My traitor body purrs. My brain throws up its hands.
“Good girl,” he rumbles, and it vibrates across the metal into my bones. The words should feel like a collar. Instead, they feel like a promise.
He smiles like a wolf who just watched a door swing open to look in upon its prey. I am not prey.
“You’re right, you’re not prey,” he adds. “You’re fierce Surry—stronger than you know. Queen of the castle. Look how many people you assembled in a day. You’re invincible.”
“Fuck, did I say that out loud?” My words come out in a mumble, making me think I am starting to go crazy.
“You did.” He looks almost amused. “One day, I’ll punish the man who made you feel like prey. I’ll wait. Till then, I’ll prove I’m nothing but your servant. To worship your body and mind until I die.”
His phone rings. He ignores it. The chorus of Take Me To The Beach rises again—a haunt of tide and heat. Neither of us moves.
Headlights swing in. Two vehicles pull alongside Brenden’s—an overloaded truck with off-road tires and the attitude of a siege tower, and a sleek BMW hatchback.
Doors fly open and people spill out, stretching, laughing, shaking out the road from their bones.
The air fills with shouts, the skitter of gravel, and the sound of relief people make when a long drive finally ends.