“You kill me after.”
Silence.
I blink once. “What?”
“There’s n-nothing left f-for me,” she says. “I just want to give you what you need, a-and then you end it. Do y-you understand me?”
Then she speeds up. Hard. Her brake lights vanish into the dark.
I slam my foot down. “You’re insane,” I hiss, eyes narrowing.
“Maybe,” she says. “But not half as insane as you.”
She’s leading me somewhere. I know it, but I don’t care. I’ll follow her straight into the flames if I have to. Just to finish what we started.
My hands start to shake on the wheel—violently. I groan, biting back the nausea rising in my throat.
“So, you want to die, huh?”
No answer.
The fire under my skin is spreading now. Crawling up my throat, blistering behind my ribs. It’s agony. My voice breaks as I growl, “Answer me.”
“Yes.”
That single word splinters something in me I didn’t even know was still intact. I don’t know what we’ve become, but it sure as hell isn’t human anymore.
“Slow your car down,” I say flatly, knuckles bruised against the leather.
A few moments pass, then her taillights dim, and the car slows.
I exhale, calm settling over me like ash.
“Close your eyes, Paris.”
I drop the phone onto the passenger seat. I don’t hear what she says next, her voice cracks through the speaker just once more, but I don’t listen.
I hit the gas.
The front of my car connects with hers at full speed. Metal screams. Tires shriek. The impact sends her spinning sideways, hurtling off the road and straight into the front of a small house on the corner of some no-name street.
My windshield shatters. My ribs slam into the wheel.
Their car hits first.
Mine follows half a second later.
The noise is unbearable. A shriek of fire and steel, a crack like the sky splitting open.
And then, there’s nothing but flames.
The front of the house folds inward, crushed by the sheer force of impact. Wood snaps. Glass explodes. A fireball bursts through what used to be a living room.
Paris’s car disappears beneath it. Mine hits last.
And still, the wheel is hot beneath my palms. Still, the seatbelt cuts against my chest.
Still, I breathe. But just barely.
