Love You To Pieces

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

The sun sinking into my skin is a good deterrent from the arguing going on in front of me. With my face turned up to the cloudless Texas sky through the glass of the car window, it’s easier to pretend I’m somewhere else.

With some other group of friends.

Scotty’s voice is whiny, high, and nasally in the way it usually is.

Though given that I’ve only known him for maybe a week, I don’t know if this is his normal or if he’s just putting on his best impression of a bratty teenager for some reason.

Tyler, on the other hand, always manages to sound like he’s halfway between a snarl and a sneer, which only softens when Ariana is in his line of sight.

With her currently in the back seat with me, that’s apparently too far for him to remember that he should be a bit nicer if he wants to get into her pants. Again. For the third time today.

“Sadie-Rae doesn’t care.” My name on Tyler’s lips drags me unwillingly back to the conversation as my eyes open to stare up at that perfect sky. All I need to make the day better is a nice wind, a porch swing, some fucking silence, and distance from these assholes.

But clearly, judging by my current situation, that really is too much to ask for.

Shifting in my seat, I look up at the rearview mirror, a little unnerved to see Tyler’s dark gaze expectantly fixed on mine.

He lifts his brows, clearly waiting for an answer, and I sigh when I realize I have absolutely no idea what it is I’m supposed to be replying to.

“What?” I ask, shifting a little and pulling up my leg to get more comfortable on the vinyl seat that was patched, duct-taped, and now covered with threadbare blankets someone probably stole from their dead grandmother.

He rolls his eyes as if I’ve interrupted some vital part of his day by not hanging on his every single word.

As a dollar store manager, I can only imagine he strives to feel important in any other aspect of his life, whether it’s in a car with someone he barely knows, or talking to a gas station attendant like they’ve never done their job before.

Which, honestly, has not been the highlight of this trip.

And we’re only three fucking days in.

“You sleeping back there?” he asks in his cocky, self-assured tone that’s truly a work of bravado.

He gives me a sneering grin while Scotty messes with something on the console; probably trying to affix one of the little action figures to the dashboard where the sun has worn away the adhesive of the tape on their bases from how long they’ve been there.

“Close enough.” I shrug. Sleeping is hard in a car with the two of them constantly bitching or bragging while my headphones charge off the power bank blinking between my knees.

Mercifully, I should only have to wait another ten minutes or so for them to be full enough for me to use them to drown out the childish bullshit in front of me. “What did I miss?” Not enough, clearly.

“The concert isn’t for two more days,” Tyler tells me, like I need to be reminded how many days I have left of dealing with them.

I’ve already started wistfully dreaming of ways to get back home without getting in this fucking car, but so far, my dwindling bank account has provided no realistic answers, only illogical fantasies.

I’ve seen enough horror movies to know how hitchhiking ends, after all. And I’d rather not end up dead in a Texas ditch to be eaten by crows and coyotes.

“Yeah,” I agree when he pauses. I’m not a child, and I fight not to bristle at his tone.

It’s the same one he uses for Scotty, for gas station workers, and anyone other than Ariana when he wants to fuck.

“I remember.” Not only do I remember, I’m actively counting down the miles with every exit we pass.

“I know a guy,” he says. “Out past Reddington.” I have no idea where that is, and I don’t really care. Nor do I understand why it’s relevant that he knows a guy. “It’ll add half a day to the trip, but we were going to get there with plenty of time anyway.”

Obviously, that’s not a shock to me. I’m banking on the extra time to spend away from these people. Ariana glances up at his words and pulls her earbuds out. “You’re talking about Drew?” she asks, a hint of anticipation in her voice. “He lives out that way now?”

The two of them share a few words about Reddington, Texas, which are lost on me. So is the identity of Drew, until I break in with, “Who’s Drew?”

Ariana looks at me and smiles, apologetic in all the wrong ways. The expression is nothing like Emma, who gave me the sweetest looks of concern, and stopped to apologize when she went off without me, or like Sasha, who—

Quickly I trample those memories, refusing to compare Ariana to my ex-best friends. They aren’t a part of my life anymore, by their choice.

It’s not fair to myself to let them live rent-free in my head.

At least, that’s what my therapist tells me every time I say something about them to her.

With a pinched, concerned look on her face, she reminds me that my last group of friends, the ones I went to college with, are a ‘closed chapter’ that won’t be reopening.

That I’m just fucking myself over by letting myself remember them instead of creating new friends and new neural pathways.

A new life.

But fuck, Ariana really isn’t like them.

And it hurts.

“Drew is a guy Tyler grew up with,” she explains, taking pity on me with that lopsided, apologetic grin.

“He used to live in Nashville too.” Out of the four of us, I’m the only one who didn’t grow up in Tennessee.

My decision to move there had been quick, spontaneous, and without a particularly positive outcome.

But that’s yet another thing my therapist says I shouldn’t be focusing on. This is my life now, her voice in my head reminds me. Stop focusing on then.

“He’s a really good friend,” Tyler assures me, though from the look on his face in the rearview mirror, and the wolfish grin on his lips, I just know there’s more to this than Drew being a ‘really good friend.’

Ariana clears her throat as if she’s suddenly feeling awkward about this whole thing.

Her fingers clench and unclench on the phone in her lap, and she glances up at Tyler with her head tilted slightly.

“He grows some really great stuff,” she adds finally.

“And always has a lot of, you know…” Rolling her shoulders in a shrug, she looks at me with a growing grin. “You know…”

Oh.

Oh.

It’s hard not to just slam my head back into the seat behind me.

Four years of business school, a year of nursing school, two cross-country moves, and disappointing my parents have somehow all led me to this moment.

I’m sitting in the back of a shitty, twenty-six-year-old sedan with rusted out rims with two men who smell like dirty teenagers and a woman who folds the moment he simpers at her with his pretty brown eyes that look more like mud than chocolate.

“We’re taking a detour…for drugs,” I state, my voice flat and unimpressed.

Shifting on the seat, I fold my arms over my chest and sit back, wishing I could also cross my legs.

But with Scotty’s long legs and sad puppy looks that barely convinced me, the passenger seat is too far back for me to do more than try not to focus on the way my knees are jammed into it.

“Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

Ariana, at least, tries to look a little embarrassed. But Tyler just continues to grin at me, like there’s nothing better we could be doing. “We share,” he assures me. “We don’t expect you to pay for anything, and we’ll get more than enough—”

“I’m good.” While I don’t mean to cut him off, I can’t lie to myself and say I feel bad about it.

“You don’t smoke? Or take edibles or whatever?”

“Nah, not really.” It’s not the truth. I have, and I’m not against it, usually. But here? With these three?

I’d rather sleep in the swamp we passed a few hours back, before the grass turned brown and the ground had got flatter to accommodate all the cattle ranches and old farms we’ve been driving past for a while.

Hell, I’d take sleeping with the cattle over getting high with these people.

“Especially lately, I’m uh, not so into it anymore.

” My words feel awkward, stilted in my mouth, and for a few moments, I’m afraid they’ll notice and say something about my sudden awkwardness. After all, I’m not subtle, and—

Tyler barks out a laugh, and Scotty gives me an apologetic smile over his shoulder. My body tenses in the seat, and I grip my arms where they’re crossed over my chest, reminded again just how uncomfortable this position is and how little space I have in this car.

I wish I never would’ve come here.

“I just think we should go straight there.” Glancing out at the sky again, I gesture toward a far-away bank of storm clouds rolling in. “Look. It’s going to storm at some point. The sooner we get to Dallas, the sooner we can—”

“It’s a few hours, Sadie-Rae.” His grin is back to that ugly sneer he thinks is charming, but really just makes him look like he’s got a stick up his ass.

“Six-hour detour, max. Why don’t you just sit back and relax, huh?

The way to his house is pretty scenic. So you can just, I don’t know”—he throws his hand up dismissively and snorts, eyes rolling—“enjoy the view, or whatever.”

Ariana throws me a quick, sympathetic glance I catch from the side of my eye, though I don’t give her my full attention.

Instead, I shake my head, my fingers deftly unplugging my headphones from the charger so I can hook them over my ears.

If my only option is to enjoy the view, then my plan is to crank up my lo-fi music that doesn’t really overpower anything and enjoy the view of storm clouds rolling across the flat ground, toward the road we’re currently on that seems to lead straight into nowhere.

This is such an awful idea, I can’t help but think to myself, eyes rolling. Somehow, I know it’s going to be more than a six-hour detour.

Hell, maybe we’ll also get rained on before the day is done, just to make everything that much more miserable.