I slid into the driver’s seat and started the ignition.
Run.
The car jerked backward onto the road.
Run.
My foot hit the gas. Tires rolled forward. I didn’t know where I was going. All I knew was the voice in my head and the one word it repeated over and over.
RUN.
fifty-one
Jonah - Present
FOUND.
He’s alive.
A year of not knowing. A year of forcing that day out of my head. A whole fucking year of being without him.
Then he’d sent Harper. I didn’t understand it. Why hadn’t he come himself? Was he unable to? Was he still hurt? Where was he now, and how had they found me? With one big answer, I’d found only more questions.
It had been two days since I’d ditched Harper, once again on the run with no cash or a single possession. All of it left behind except my switchblade and the lighter in my pocket.
The sting of betrayal followed me. I’d trusted Harper. Trusted thesnake. I thought I’d made a friend. Yet more than the betrayal, there was a twisted sense of relief, because Harper might not have actually given a shit about me, but he was there, which meant that Dex still did. For some unknown reason, Dex had sent him to me. It had to mean he still wanted me.
But he wasn’t the only thing hunting me down.
There was something bigger. Something worse.
The truth.
The knowledge that he was alive, that I hadn’t killed him, was a battering ram to the shield I’d built around my mind. I told myself I was running from him. That I was afraid of him. That I needed to escape him.My love made him worse.
Lies. All of it.
The shield fractured and crumbled, and the ugly truth couldn’t hide in the darkness and the shadows any longer. It was never him I was running from. It was myself—what I’d done. I’d run from the possibility that I’d killed him. Because if I ran, I didn’t have to face it, I didn’t have to confirm it. I could live knowing there was a chance.
Of course, there was still the possibility that he hated me now. Why wouldn’t he, when I’d left him bleeding out on the ground? I hadn’t been there when he woke up. I hadn’t been there to help him recover.
He’d know about the fire by now too. He’d know I’d killed his mother.
“I’ll die before I let you go.”
He would still come for me. I just didn’t know if what found me would be the home that I’d left.
Run. The word still echoed.
Stay. A new voice joined it.Let him find you.
The memories circled. The real ghost that had been haunting me all this time.
“It’s time to stop running… It’s time to stop now. I know you’re tired of it. It’s okay to stop.”
“I don’t know how.”
I still didn’t know. But I was more tired of running now than I’d ever been.
