Chapter 35 Devon
DEVON
The car weaves dangerously back and forth along the road as Axel struggles to maintain control of the wheel while keeping the gun pressed into my abdomen.
“Devon?”
Kairo’s voice washes over me like a warm blanket and I briefly close my eyes, savoring it.
This’ll be the last time I hear it.
“Devon, are you there? Where are you? Why aren’t you at the apartment? I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry for—”
“Stop,” I gasp as the barrel of the gun digs deeper into my abdomen.
I can’t handle Kairo’s apologies.
If he starts, then I’ll never get through what Axel’s forcing me to say.
“You locked me up like an animal. You knew what I’d been through and you still locked me up.
Don’t pretend that you care, don’t pretend that you did it for me.
You did it for you. You trapped me and wouldn’t let me leave.
Do you have any idea what that felt like?
I’m not property. You can’t just lock me up! ”
“I know,” Kairo replies, and the sorrow in his voice is smothering. “I’m sorry, Devon.”
“Hurry the fuck up,” Axel hisses, shoving the gun into me. “Stop rambling!”
“We’re over, Kairo. You hear me? I don’t want to see you again. I hate you. Everything you did to me and my family? I hate you. I don’t want to see you ever again. Don’t call me, don’t talk to me, don’t even think about looking for me. You leave me alone, you leave my parents alone—”
“He has you, doesn’t he?” Kairo’s words cut through me like a blade, and I gasp.
The tears I was fighting suddenly flood my eyes as a wave of hopelessness washes over me.
Words catch in the back of my throat and the wipers rapidly careening back and forth over the windshield blur into nothing.
“I’m sorry,” I sob, the damn breaking. “I’m so—”
“Hang up!” Axel yells, taking his hand off the wheel. “Hang the fuck up, you bitch! What did I fucking expect? You can’t even handle one simple phone call, can you? You fucking cunt, give me the phone. Give me the phone!”
He lunges for me and shoves the gun under my chin, but I push it away.
His other hand grabs my wrist so painfully that my phone is forced from my grasp and it clatters to the floor somewhere between my legs.
We both fight to get it as the car swerves dangerously and in a panic, I abandon the search and lean over Axel to try and grab the wheel.
“Axel! What are you doing?”
“You’re fucking useless! You fucking piece of shit, where is it? Where the fuck did it go? When I find it, I’m gonna ram that thing so far inside you that you’ll never forget what I said ever again—”
His head jerks up as he yells, clipping my chin and sending my head snapping backward.
The wheel slips from my grasp as one of his hands seals around my neck.
The car skids and lurches and Axel’s furious face swims in front of my eyes.
Then, we’re both suddenly weightless.
The seatbelt tightens against my body and past the windshield, all I glimpse is a world of white.
“You fucking bitch!” Axel screams, finally realizing that his abandonment of the steering wheel has consequences.
The weightlessness ends when the car lands, but the momentary respite ends as the vehicle continues crashing down an embankment.
The last thing I see before darkness takes me is the snow giving way to a looming trunk of a tree.
I wake to a repetitive dinging sound that’s so loud it makes my teeth hurt.
Stupid alarm.
What could I possibly be late for?
It repeats, a constant ding-ding-ding, but just as I try to open my eyes, the sound starts to get fainter.
Maybe I can sleep for five more minutes.
Cold seeps against my back and cradles my head in its icy hands.
Something catches and tugs in my hair and my mind drifts to Kairo.
Is he leaning on my hair?
Did we fall asleep together?
Kairo…
Kairo wasn’t with me.
The tugging fades as does the rhythmic beeping, but as consciousness trickles back to me, everything else warms to the front of my mind.
My shoulder hurts.
My face hurts.
My arm hurts.
And my leg…
It’s not until I try to roll over that I realize I’m moving.
Opening my eyes, the blurry night sky fades in and out of focus through the branches of dead trees stretching high above me.
The freezing cold against my back doesn’t fade.
In fact, it grows worse as each movement drags my shirt up my back and exposes my bare back to the icy chill of the frozen dirt beneath me.
Dead leaves and frozen sticks catch on my numb fingers.
They scratch my back, pull at my clothes, and catch in my hair.
“Fuck—” A soft thump rises in front of me and my suspended leg falls to the ground.
Pain radiates through my hip.
I close my eyes, fighting to clear the sluggishness from my mind.
We crashed.
Axel was so desperate for the phone that he took his hands off the wheel and his eyes off the road.
We crashed.
We crashed.
I’m awake and alert now, rolling onto my stomach just as Axel tries to grab my leg again.
As I climb onto my knees, he lands on top of me and forces me back down into the dirt.
I scream, clawing at the dirt while he grips my hair and yanks my head upward.
“You’re not going anywhere, bitch, unless it’s with me!”
He shoves my head back down, silencing my scream in a mouthful of leaves and dirt.
I can’t breathe.
He pins me down, and the ground is too cold and unforgiving against my nails to offer me any help.
I’m going to die here.
“Familiar?” His voice is venom in my ear, his hands like manacles around my wrists and his weight sickeningly familiar.
“Please,” I gasp, choking on the leaves stabbing at my tongue.
“You’ll get up and walk?”
“Yes!”
“Swear it.”
“I swear!”
Whether it’s the cold or the urgency of the situation, Axel accepts my words immediately and climbs off me.
I struggle to my feet and stumble as uneven ground sends me back onto the forest floor.
Up the incline, the distant ding from the no seatbelt warning radiates through the air while a broken headlight from the crashed car flickers in the same rhythm.
“Get up!” Axel barks.
The cold numbs my knees and palms.
As I shift my weight to stand, my frozen fingers brush against something cold and rough.
A fallen branch from one of the nearby trees.
It’s difficult to make out in the dark but while it’s thick, it’s narrow enough to fit in my hand.
My body reacts before my mind catches up.
Grabbing the branch, I jerk my arms up as I stand and swing the wood at Axel’s head.
There’s a crunch as the branch hits his skull and Axel yelps, hitting the ground in a flurry of frozen leaves, snow, and clumps of dirt dislodged from the branch.
Then I run.
The branch slips from my fingers as I sprint toward the car, my only spot of safety wherever we’ve ended up. It’s the direction of the road and from there
I’ll just run.
I’ll run until the soles of my feet bleed. I’m not going back.
“Devon!” Axel’s voice echoes through the trees, but I don’t stop.
I run and I run.
My shoes slip on the leaves, the embankment threatens to toss me back down into his cruel arms, but I fight through it.
I claw my way up past the tree, past the crashed car, and over mounds of dirt to reach the top.
My head spins.
Warm blood trickles down my cheek.
My heart pounds and my joints ache almost as much as my arm does.
But I made it.
Empty road stretches out into yawning darkness in either direction, offering zero comfort or hope.
Skid marks in the snow are my only hint toward which direction we were driving when we crashed.
Up here, snow is falling in thick clumps as if the cloud above has torn open.
The air turns a bite colder, if that’s even possible, and I stare toward the emptiness with despair flooding my chest.
What do I do?
“DEVON!”
I run.
With my heart hammering and my feet pounding, I sprint down the road as fast as I can, leaving Axel behind me to get swallowed up by the storm.
I just have to get away.
Get distance.
Then I can think of what to do next.
I have to get away.
Wooziness from the crash sweeps up and I stumble, slipping on the snow and crashing down hard onto the road with a yelp.
With my head spinning, I push myself back up and brush my sticky hair out of my face just as two glaring bright headlights skid around the corner and charge straight toward me.
I’m too tired.
I’m too slow.
I’m sorry.