Chapter 14 #3
I heard his voice at the exact same moment the realization hit me.
He wasn’t dead. My head snapped up, panic giving way to frantic searching as I tried to locate where the sound had come from.
Then I saw him. Austin stood just beyond the wreckage, a few yards back from the intersection, his expensive car parked neatly behind the third stop sign.
Untouched. Perfectly intact. Like it didn’t belong anywhere near the chaos in front of it.
He was holding a phone in his hand. Not his phone.
It was a flip phone. Old. Out of place. Not his usual phone.
Something for things you didn’t want traced.
I let out a breath. Then another. Then another.
I was trying to make my brain catch up with my eyes, trying to convince myself that what I was seeing was real.
That the worst thing I’d imagined hadn’t just happened.
Austin was fine. He was fine. As the truth settled in, something else drained out of me too.
The adrenaline. The panic. The sharp edge that had been holding me upright.
Between my encounter with Killian and the sound of metal colliding through my phone, my body had been running on borrowed energy.
Now it gave up. The world swayed again, the alcohol reminding me just how much control it still had over me.
Austin started running toward me, but he stopped a few feet away.
The hesitation on his face was immediate and unmistakable.
We both knew why. We didn’t know what we were anymore.
“Blair, I…” he started, breathless. “I’m sorry.” Then his expression shifted. The concern drained away, replaced by confusion as his eyes took me in properly. “Are you drunk?”
“What?” I asked, my thoughts lagging behind the moment. “I heard the crash. I thought you died.”
He took another step closer, swearing under his breath. “Blair… fuck. You’re drunk. Fuck.”
“I thought you were dead,” I repeated, because he still wasn’t hearing the part that mattered. He wasn’t understanding how terrified I’d been. How close I’d come to breaking.
Something finally clicked. Austin’s face fell as the meaning reached him, real pain flickering across his features as he looked at me, at the way I was standing, at the way I was swaying.
But it only lasted a second. He shook his head, dragging a hand through his hair in frustration.
His gaze darted from me, to the wreckage, then back to me again.
Then back to the wreckage. He looked like someone trying to solve an impossible equation.
Like he didn’t know which disaster to address first.
“Go wait by my car, Blair, okay?” he said quickly. When I didn’t move, his voice rose. “Blair. We can figure everything out after, but right now I need you to wait by my car. Okay?”
I flinched at the urgency in his tone, nodding even though I didn’t understand what the problem was.
My body obeyed before my mind caught up.
I walked toward his car, glancing over my shoulder as he ran back toward the wreck.
Austin went to the red car first, leaning into the driver’s side window.
Words spilled out of him too fast for me to hear before he pulled back and rushed to the silver one.
He spoke to that driver too, voice sharp and urgent, then turned and ran back toward me again.
I opened my mouth to say something. Nothing came out.
It felt like I was operating on autopilot, like my body had slipped into a mode I didn’t know existed.
I tried to sort through what I was feeling, but every emotion overlapped until none of them made sense on their own.
The relief I’d felt when I saw Austin alive was overwhelming.
Unmatched. It was like being told a life-saving treatment had worked after being certain you only had a week left.
I’d run toward him because I needed him.
Because I did need him. But I didn’t want to.
I wanted to walk away from him. And at the same time, I wanted nothing less.
I needed to walk away. And I needed him.
“Blair,” Austin said again, closer now. “Get in the car. Please. Get in the car.” I frowned, my feet rooted to the pavement.
I couldn’t get in the car. Could I? Getting in the car meant staying.
And I wasn’t sure I was allowed to do that anymore.
I started to shake my head, but Austin let out an urgent sigh of frustration.
He stepped toward me and placed both of his hands on my shoulders.
I tried to shrug him off, but he didn’t let me.
“Blair, get in the car, okay?” he said quickly.
“We can talk after. I can’t be here when the cops come.
I need you to understand that. I can’t be here—and neither can you, because you’re really drunk.
” Because of what he was. Because of what he’d been.
He looked straight into my eyes, searching my face like he needed me to grasp how serious this was. How non-negotiable.
“Okay,” I finally mumbled, pushing his hands away from me.
He stepped back immediately and opened the passenger door.
I climbed inside, my movements slow and uncoordinated.
The moment he shut the door and got into the driver’s seat, he threw the car into reverse, pulling away fast and heading in the opposite direction from the crash.
I watched him reach into his pocket and pull out the flip phone.
I wondered who he was about to call, until he slammed it against the window.
I flinched. He hit it again. And again. Each impact was sharp and deliberate.
After the fifth strike, the phone was barely recognizable.
Austin rolled down the window and tossed it into the night, watching it disappear into the darkness like it had never existed at all.
I still didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything at all.
Austin kept driving, his eyes flicking to the rearview mirror every few seconds like he expected headlights to appear behind us at any moment.
Eventually, I turned away from him, pressing my forehead against the window instead.
I focused on my body—on the way everything inside me felt wrong.
Really wrong. I closed my eyes as the road stretched on.
I wasn’t sure how long he drove, only that it was long enough for the party to feel impossibly far away.
Long enough that I didn’t recognize anything around us anymore.
My stomach clenched hard. “Pull over,” I muttered, my eyes still shut.
“What?”
“Pull over,” I repeated, louder this time, urgency breaking through as I clapped a hand over my mouth. The car swerved to the side of the road. I barely registered the stop before I shoved the door open and stumbled out.
The moment my feet hit the pavement, my stomach emptied.
I heard Austin get out of the car. I heard his footsteps behind me.
None of it mattered. My entire body was focused on one violent, uncontrollable thing, every last bit of alcohol and panic forcing its way out.
When it finally stopped, when my stomach had nothing left to give, I straightened slowly, wiping my mouth and struggling to breathe.
Only then did I take in where we were. A backroad.
Empty. No houses. No buildings. No lights.
Just asphalt, trees, and silence. Just him. And me.
“Are you okay?” Austin asked quietly. His voice was small.
Smaller than I’d ever heard it. I looked up at him.
Concern sat plainly on his face, raw and unguarded.
He looked like he wanted to come closer, like his body was fighting the instinct to reach for me.
But he didn’t. I was glad. I wouldn’t have let him.
“I’m fine,” I said, running my hands through my hair. My voice was steadier now. Grounded. “I’m fine.”
“Blair.” His voice caught on my name. He took a step toward me, and I watched him carefully, gauging the distance he thought he was allowed to cross. “I’m so sorry,” he said. The words made my mouth twist.
“You’re sorry,” I repeated flatly. “You’re sorry that you’re a drug dealer who ruins people’s lives?” The calmness of my own voice surprised me. My body felt clearer now, the alcohol no longer blurring the edges now that my stomach had purged it. I was here. Present.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. He looked sorry. Genuinely. But how much could that possibly mean? “I tried to tell you,” he rushed on. “I tried, Blair. I was just—” He swallowed. “I was scared.”
“You were scared?” I echoed.
“Yes,” he said quickly. “I knew what would happen if I did. I knew you wouldn’t want anything to do with me.” I closed my eyes. Because he was right. I wouldn’t want anything to do with him.
And yet—
The fear that had ripped through me when I heard the crash flashed through my mind again. The certainty that he had died. The way my body had moved without permission, the way I’d run like I couldn’t survive if I didn’t reach him. The terror had been real. So why did it exist at all?
“Blair.” His voice sounded stripped of everything I’d known it to be.
No confidence. No charm. No swagger. Just fear.
“I’m so sorry.” I opened my eyes again. “Please,” he said.
“Just listen to me. Just hear me out. I promise, after that, you’ll never hear from me again.
You’ll never see me again. I’ll leave you alone.
I’ll let you go in peace. Just… hear me.
” He looked at me like he was bracing for rejection.
Like he was already preparing himself for me to say no.
I didn’t. And because I didn’t, he took a breath—and began to speak.