Chapter 8 Liam
Liam
The highway stretched out before us, long and empty, with the mountains shrinking in the rearview. My dad’s old truck rumbled like a warhorse past its prime, but it was still kicking hard enough to win the fight.
Poppy sat in the back with a book open, earbuds in, her legs swinging as she hummed along to something only she could hear. She watched the trees go by, but every now and then, her eyes flicked to the side mirror—like she half-expected a shadow to crawl out of the past and follow us.
Jenny sat beside me, one leg pulled up, arms wrapped around herself as if the seatbelt wasn’t enough. Her hair was down now, long and blonde at the roots where the red dye had grown out, catching bits of sunlight through the windshield.
“Hungry?” I asked.
She looked at me like she wasn’t sure if it was safe to smile yet. “Depends. Is this one of those road trips where we stop for decent food, or the kind where we end up regretting a gas station burrito? But then we have all those snacks also.”
“Decent food,” I promised. “I don’t hate you enough for the other thing.”
That earned me the tiniest grin.
Good. I wanted her to smile again.