My panic is bubbling over now, my skin hot and tight, my vision too bright. I feel everything. Every bump. Every jolt. The way the seatbelt cuts into my chest with each bounce. I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my own skin.
I reach for the glove compartment and yank it open, desperate for something. Anything.
Inside: a warped registration, some faded napkins, a few broken pens. I toss them all into the floorboard. Then my hand hits something solid. I pull it out. It’s a small canister of pepper spray. “Holy shit,” I whisper, holding it up.
Neve glances down, her expression grim. “Steak knives and pepper spray. We are totally going to win this gunfight.”
I nod, gripping it tight like it might suddenly morph into a weapon worthy of a warzone. We hit a dip in the dirt and the car jerks violently. My shoulder slams against the door. Still, Neve doesn’t slow.
I tuck the pepper spray into my front pocket and try to focus on breathing. On the road. On getting there.
But I can’t stop imagining we get there and find Damian’s dead. His body, twisted and still. His eyes open but empty. My throat clenches so tight I feel like I’m being strangled. I need to think about something else. Anything else. I turn to Neve, blurting the first thing that might cut through the images clawing their way through my head. “What were you and Bridger doing in his room?” My voice is raw, too loud in the car. “Did you… talk about anything?”
Neve’s grip tightens on the wheel. Her jaw ticks.
She lets out a scoffing laugh—sharp, humorless. “Yeah. We talked.” The road curves and she takes it too fast, bumping over gravel. I wait, needing the distraction. Needing her voice to drown out the horror in my brain.
“He said I was young,” she finally spits. “Too young. That I shouldn’t be focused on making poor decisions with hot strangers in Turks and Caicos.”
I blink. “What?”
Neve exhales hard through her nose, shaking her head like she’s trying to rattle something loose. “He said I was too young to be planning hook-ups with island bartenders or tattooed scuba instructors or whoever the hell I want while we’re hiding out in paradise. Like I needed his permission or something.”
She takes the next turn sharper than necessary. The tires skid a little, jarring me against the door.
“I mean, what the fuck does that even mean?” she asks. “Is he jealous? Is he judging me? Or is it just another way to remind me I’m not on his level? That I’m just some stupid kid he got stuck babysitting?” Her voice cracks at the edges—just for a second. Then it hardens again.
I glance over, heart still pounding, but something in her face makes mine ache too. She’s not just mad. She’s hurt.
“He doesn’t see me,” she mutters. “Not the way I see him.”
The silence that falls between us is brutal. It’s too full of all the things we’re afraid of losing. People. Love. Hope.
I look back out at the road ahead, my hand clenched around the pepper spray in my pocket. “I don’t know, Neve. That sounds a lot like he doesn’t want you to fuck anyone else. He sees you in his head with other men and he doesn’t like it.”
“Well, if wedoever get there today,” she mutters, hands clenched on the wheel, “he’s going to see it out of his head too—and we’ll see howhereacts to that.”
I don’t say what I’m really thinking. That sounds like a game only someone young would play. Someone who still believes anger is the best way to get noticed. She’s too worked up now, too raw and emotional. I’ll set her straight later. When Damian and Bridger are okay. When we’re all on a plane heading southand breathing air that doesn’t taste like blood. “Take the next exit,” I say, my voice barely more than a whisper.
Neve flips on the blinker even though there’s no one behind us now, and veers off the highway onto a narrow, cracked road. It stretches ahead like something forgotten—broken pavement swallowed up by nature, surrounded by tall, wild grass that brushes the edges of the car like it wants to pull us in and never let us go.
We drive for about a mile. Every bump and rattle under the tires makes my body jerk, my pulse spike. I can barely see through the blur of dread swimming behind my eyes.
The old schoolhouse looms ahead, half-swallowed by weeds and time. Gray stone mottled with years of grime and decay. Windows broken, like jagged teeth. I haven’t been inside it since high school—the place everyone swore was haunted, where kids dared each other to sneak in at night with cheap liquor and flashlights. And now I’m back, not drunk, not giggling, but bracing to face something real. Something deadly.
Bridger’s car is parked near the front. Damian’s SUV sits next to it.
My heart skips. “Don’t pull up to it,” I say quickly. “Stop—pull over before we get too close.”
Neve does. She eases the car onto the shoulder, the tires crunching over gravel and thick grass. The vegetation here is wild—overgrown and tangled, taller than the car. Ragweed, maybe, or something like it.
I push open the car door and am nearly swallowed by overgrowth. The weeds reach past my head—hay-colored and brittle, hissing and crackling as we move through them. Every step is a whisper too loud, like the land is warning us back. Dry stalks snap underfoot. Seed heads brush against my arms and tangle in my clothes. It smells like sun-baked earth, mildew, and something sour.
Neve walks close behind me, her breath shaky, her hand gripping mine. We pass the first car—Bridger’s. Doors shut. Dust coating the windshield. Then Damian’s SUV. Driver’s side door wide open. My stomach clenches.
In front of it is another car. Smaller. Parked at a crooked angle like it veered off the gravel and never corrected. The door is open. Just beyond it, a figure slumped against the ground. The body twisted unnaturally. Still. A pool of blood spreads out beneath it.
“Oh my God,” I whisper-yell. “That’s Reese.” He’s dead.Dead!The guy who was supposed to keep me safe is dead. I freeze. So does Neve. A pulse of cold shoots down my spine.
