Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
FLETCH
Poppy is always cute.
But she’s never cuter than when she’s tired. If anything, it makes her more … joyful. Even sweeter.
Not the syrupy kind of sweet, which I wouldn’t be able to tolerate. Just kind. Complimentary. It’s like this is Poppy at her purest form.
It’s 1:30 a.m., and we’re in eastern Ohio, approaching the Pennsylvania border.
We were forced off I-71 hours ago when an accident closed the freeway, routing us through the winding country roads of Amish country.
It’s probably scenic during better circumstances.
The weather has taken a turn, though, so it’s slow going, and every weather alert and warning sign about black ice only makes it worse.
“I shouldn’t have let you keep driving,” I say, hiding a yawn. She slows to pass a horse and buggy, the driver barely visible under a heavy coat and hat. “We’re stopping at the first hotel available.”
“It’s fine,” she says, her posture way too good for how late it is. Her eyes tell me she’s tired, but her smile just won’t stop. Honestly, I think it’s infecting me, because when I’m not grumbling about the weather, I find myself strangely buoyant. “I’m from Rochester!” she says.
“Yeah, but you usually drive a truck with snow tires, not a raspberry with bald tires,” I say.
She grins, biting her bottom lip like she’s trying to hide how pleased she is. “You’re cute for remembering what I said.”
“Oh, did you say that? I didn’t know.”
“My mistake,” she says, but she doesn’t wipe the smile off her face. I’m not sure she can.
My legs are stiff from being cramped in the car for coming on eighteen hours.
Eighteen hours.
How has she handled driving for so long? If I’m this uncomfortable just sitting, I can imagine how much worse it is for her. “How are you holding up so well?”
“It’s easy,” she says. “We both have something big waiting when we get home.”
Did her eyes tense when she said that, or am I imagining things? Maybe she’s feeling some of the same disappointment I am that after tomorrow …
After tomorrow …
“Hey, we don’t have each other’s numbers,” I say with all the nonchalance of a man asking a woman for her digits in the middle of the night.
It’s a good thing she’s so focused on the road, or she’d see how flushed my stupid cheeks are.
“With us staying in separate rooms when we get to Cleveland, we’ll need to coordinate. For breakfast, and stuff.”
The excuse is so weak, it can barely stand. Poppy’s cheeks rise even higher. “I love that idea,” she says.
How is she even warmer than usual? More open? What’s it like for her, walking around with her heart on her sleeve? I wondered if she was developing a crush on me before, but now I’m positive.
And her positivity is as infectious as her smile.
“Because we definitely want to coordinate showing up for breakfast together,” she says, making me rethink her crush. At least until she adds, “Otherwise, how will anyone mistake us for a couple at breakfast and pressure us to kiss?”
“Whoa,” I chuckle. “How you doing there, Poppy?”
With her eyes on the dreary road ahead of us, she angles her face toward me and puckers her lips suggestively. “Come on, Ollie Pop. Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking it.”
And then she starts to giggle.
And I start to laugh.
And then everything changes.
It happens so fast, I don’t even have time to yell a warning.
One second, Poppy’s giggling with her eyes crinkled in the corners, the next we’re sliding sideways across black ice.
The snow-covered fields rush past us in a blur.
She yanks the wheel hard left, overcorrects, and we spin once—twice—before the back tires catch the edge of the asphalt and send us careening off the narrow country road.
The car plunges nose-first into the drainage ditch, deeper than it looked from the road.
We hit hard, the impact throwing us forward against our seatbelts.
The airbags explode outward with a loud pop, smacking us both in the face.
They deflate just as quickly, leaving behind a cloud of white powder that burns my throat and makes my eyes water.
I’m too shocked to process. For a moment there’s nothing but our ragged breathing and the tick-tick-tick of the hissing engine. The headlights are mostly buried, but there’s just enough light reflecting off the snow in front of us to show me Poppy’s dazed, red face.
“Are you okay?” I ask Poppy. I reach both hands out, taking her face carefully. Her eyes are dazed, and her nose and forehead are red with what looks like a rash. She blinks and coughs. Her hair is dangling down, covering half her face.
“Are you okay?” she asks, echoing me like she didn’t hear me. “Oliver, I’m so sorry.” The words come out in a half-sob.
“It’s not your fault,” I say. She sobs again, and I take her face gently, firmly in my hands and hold her gaze. “Poppy, this wasn’t your fault.”
Her eyes slam shut. “Yes, it was,” she whispers. She reaches for her seatbelt, but I stop her.
“Wait,” I say. I put my feet firmly down, bracing for when I unbuckle and the seatbelt stops holding me up. “I’m going to come around the car and pull you out, okay?”
“I can do it,” she says, but her eyes are big with panic, and her breathing’s too erratic.
“No. Stay there,” I say.
I unbuckle and push against the door, but it won’t give.
I shove, and nothing happens. Thinking fast, I climb awkwardly into the backseat, cursing my big, dumb size as I try to maneuver into the smallest back seat that ever existed.
But when I’m finally back there, I try the back door, and it opens.
I step out, and my foot sinks two feet into the snow.
The car is nose-down in the ditch, with the driver’s side tilted higher than mine.
My door is buried nearly to the window in packed snow and earth—no wonder it wouldn’t budge.
I pull out my cell phone to call 911, and I curse.
No service. I scan the empty road in both directions, but the road is dead.
We’re on our own.
I trudge around the back of the car to Poppy’s side and throw open her door. “Okay, ready? I’ll pull you out.”
“I can do it,” she says, but she doesn’t sound right. She’s shaking her head as she fumbles with the buckle. “This is my fault. This is my fault.”
She unbuckles and tries to swing her legs out, but she falls forward and cries out in pain.
“Poppy!” I scoop her up and pull her from the car, holding her in my arms. “What is it? Where are you hurt?”
She wraps her arms around my neck and buries her face against my shoulder. Her body’s shaking—with shock, I’m sure. “I rolled my ankle in Wilson this morning. Right before I got to the café.”
“You what?” I ask angrily, thinking back to every time she’s gotten out of the car today. She stayed behind me so I wouldn’t notice. And like an idiot, I didn’t. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She starts crying, which makes her shaking worse. “I’m sorry, Oliver. I know I shouldn’t have been driving, but I didn’t think it was that bad. It was so selfish of me—”
“WHAT?”
She cries harder, and I kiss her head, her hair soft and smelling like coconut. “You silly, silly little elf,” I grumble. “I’m the selfish one. I should never have let you keep driving so long or so late. If I hadn’t pushed you, this never would have happened.”
“You didn’t push me,” she cries into my shoulder. “I did this. It was so stupid—”
“Yeah, it was stupid. You hid your injury because you don’t think you matter enough. I should have driven.”
“You couldn’t,” she says, so busy trying to reassure me that I did nothing wrong, that the fault is all hers, that it makes me kiss the top of her head again. “You barely fit as it is.”
“Then we should have stayed. I should never have made you feel like you had to hurt yourself to help me.”
If I thought she’d been crying before, it’s nothing to this. I turn and climb carefully, slowly, out of the ditch, up to my knees in snow at first, but by the time I’m at the top, it’s only halfway up my sneakers.
The adrenaline in my body burns too hot for me to shiver, but it’s well below freezing.
I search for any place to deposit Poppy so I can go back down to the car and grab our coats and bags.
Snow-covered fields stretch endlessly in both directions, dotted with the dark shapes of what might be barns or silos in the distance.
There’s a guardrail post a few feet away that I could set her against, but she’s shivering so hard, I hate putting her down.
“This is just for a second,” I say, propping her up against the post. As soon as she’s out of my arms, the cold hits me, sharp and brutal as the wet soaking through my sneakers.
I put my hands on her face and force her to look me in the eyes, making sure she understands.
“I’m grabbing our stuff. I’ll be right back. ”
She nods, but I’m not sure how much is getting through to her. She’s trembling like an icicle on a branch. I plod back down to the car and am back with our things a couple of minutes later.
I zip up her coat and pull the hood over her head. Then I drape my coat around her shoulders. My hoodie will suffice for a few minutes, at least, and Poppy’s in shock. She needs the warmth more than I do.
“I can’t take your coat,” she says through badly chattering teeth.
“You will.”
I try to drape her arm around my shoulders to help her walk, but the height difference is too much.
So instead, I swing my backpack around to my chest and drop down into a squat in front of Poppy.
“Hop on,” I say. “Don’t protest. It’s not forever.
There’s a barn up there, and if there’s a barn, there’s probably a house nearby. ”
“There are—” she shudders so hard, it’s hard to understand her “—no lights.”
“This is Amish country,” I remind her, looking over my shoulder. “Now get on.”
She climbs onto my back, and I heft her up. Then I reach down and grab her rolling suitcase, which isn’t exactly rolling in the snow so much as dragging.
“I’m … so … sorry,” she shivers in my ear.
“Poppy, stop it. This is my fault. I made you feel like you matter so little, you couldn’t even admit you were injured. We should still be in Wilson, letting you recuperate.”
“But your family—”
“Will live with or without me there,” I say. My breath rises in angry puffs in the moonlight. “Honestly, it’s a relief to miss as much as I have.”
The wind is angry in my ears, which are starting to ache from the cold.
It is so cold.
And that barn doesn’t seem to be getting any closer.
Poppy’s shivering is getting worse by the minute, and as much as I hate to admit it, I can’t keep piggybacking her and carrying our bags through this snow for much longer.
And that’s when I hear it: the steady clip-clop of hooves.
I whip around and almost laugh with relief. Poppy’s going to be okay. We’re both going to be okay.
The Amish buggy we passed earlier has caught up with us.