“Where are we going?”
My voice came out smaller than I intended, thin and shaky, like it didn’t belong to me. My hands wouldn’t stay still on my lap, my thumbs worrying the hem of my sweatshirt until the threads started to fray. Every time headlights flickered across the dash, I jerked my head toward the window, terrified they were following us. Him. The bastard I’d finally managed to escape.
“Don’t ask, don’t question, just do as I say.” Linc’s voice was low and steady. The kind of voice people trusted, even when they shouldn’t.
I huffed out a laugh, though it was humorless. “Yeah, that’s worked well for you over the years.” I rolled my eyes, but the gesture was weaker than usual. Usually, I’d lace my sarcasm with bite and confidence. Tonight, it was just defense, something to keep me from unraveling.
I shouldn’t be like this. He came for me without hesitation, without asking why, without reminding me of the three years between us. He’d shown up, fists first, like some avenging cowboy out of a movie. And what was I doing? Snapping at him. Ungrateful. My stomach knotted with guilt.
“Just this once, then.” His eyes cut toward me, brief but weighted, before flicking back to the road. His knuckles were white on the wheel. I nodded, sinking into the passenger seat. Just this once.
The highway stretched endlessly and was dark ahead of us. The hum of the tires filled the silence that always existed between us, thick and heavy, full of everything we’d never said.
When he pulled onto the strip, neon lights washing the night in pink and green, I sat up straighter. My heart stuttered. We weren’t slowing down for a diner, a gas station, or a motel. We were pulling into the parking lot of a wedding chapel. One of those gaudy twenty-four-hour ones with fake palm trees, peeling stucco, and an Elvis impersonator painted on the sign out front.
“No.” The word ripped out of me before I could stop it. My hand flew to the door handle like I’d fling myself onto the sidewalk if I had to. “Linc, no. We can’t do this. You’re with someone.”
“I wasn’t with her.” His jaw flexed, his eyes locked straight ahead. “She was just a chick.”
I wanted to laugh or scream or both. “I can’t get married then.” My chest felt too tight, like my ribs were squeezing in.
“Look,” he said, throwing the truck into park and finally turning to face me, “people saw that man with you. When someone finds him, there’s going to be questions. Who was the only other person there with me?”
My throat went dry. “Me.”
“Right. You know what you don’t have to do if we’re married?”
I shook my head, confusion clawing at me. None of this made sense. My brain was still back in the trailer, still hearing fists and blood and his voice breaking when he shouted my name.
“Testify against me.” His words dropped heavy and final. “They can’t force you to do it if we’re married. So, baby, looks like your last name is changing tonight.”
“Linc.” I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him he was insane, reckless, impossible. But my voice was nothing but a whisper.
“It’s about time, don’t you think?”
He shoved his door open and circled, opening mine like this was a real date, like this was the proposal I’d dreamed about before life broke me in half.
His hand was there, palm up. Big, calloused, steady. My treacherous fingers slid into his without hesitation.
“Your proposal needs work,” I muttered, flat and shaky.
“Just wait to see the ring I got you.”
I froze. “What do you mean you got me a ring? This seemed to be a last-minute plan.”
“This plan might’ve been last-minute,” he said, eyes softening in a way that shredded me, “but I’ve had a ring for three years.”
He held out his bloody hand, and as I got a closer look at him under the lights, he had a fat lip and an eye that was quickly turning a god-awful color.
My breath caught. My name fell from my lips like a prayer. “Linc.”
There it was in his face. Honesty. Regret. Love. He’d been my protector, not just tonight but always. As much as I liked to pretend, I was alone out here for the last three years, he was always close by. Watching, waiting for me to need him.
And just like that, walking into that stupid neon chapel hand-in-hand felt less like drowning and more like breathing for the first time in years.
Inside, the chapel smelled like dust and cheap cologne. The carpet was worn thin, the velvet curtains faded from red to pink, but the lights above the altar glowed soft and golden. It shouldhave felt ridiculous, laughable even, but somehow it didn’t. Somehow, it felt like the only thing keeping me upright.
The officiant looked like he’d been awake for three days straight, his rhinestone blazer catching the light in all the wrong ways. “You two look like you’ve had a night,” he said with a grin that showed too many teeth.
