“No,” I agree. “We don’t push. We make it safe. We let her choose.”
Kai’s mouth twists. “And if somebody made her believe she had to disappear… they’re going to regret it.”
I don’t argue. I just keep driving because my instincts have already decided one thing.
June isn’t just a girl we met at a fair. She’s ours.
We drive in silence, the road empty and dark around us. I should be paying attention to where we’re going, but my mind keeps circling back to June. The fear underneath her smiles. Theloneliness she tries so hard to mask. The way she stared at us like she wanted to believe in something but couldn’t quite let herself.
“You know what doesn’t make sense?” Kai says suddenly.
“What?”
“The pull I feel toward her.” He gestures vaguely. “It should be fading. We left her. We’re driving away. My brain should be settling down, moving on to other shit.”
“But it’s not.”
“It’s getting worse. Like the farther we get from her, the more I want to turn this truck around and go back. Find her. Make sure she’s fucking safe and ensure no one else gets close to her.”
I know exactly what he means. My foot keeps twitching toward the brake. Some primal part of me is howling that we’re going the wrong direction. That we should be with her. That she belongs with us.
Belongs with us.
That thought should scare me. We’ve known her for barely two days. But it feels like something that’s been building for years, just waiting for the right moment to explode.
“Why does this road feel wrong?” I frown into the dark ahead. The landscape doesn’t match what my muscle memory expects.
Kai leans forward, squinting through the windshield. “Because you’re driving like a man who’s been hypnotized. And you missed the turn by a mile, Romeo.”
I shoot him a look. “Fuck off, it’s not a mile.”
Kai digs his phone out and taps the screen a few times, then his mouth twists. “Okay, it’s… more than a mile.” He lifts the phone toward the windshield like better signal might magically appear. “And there’s spotty reception out here. Montana really said, ‘Good luck, idiots.’?”
I slow the truck. The road is narrow, dirt edged, flanked by black fields and fencing that disappears into the night. No lights anywhere. Just stars and the sound of my tires on gravel.
Kai exhales, annoyed. “If GPS is catching up, it shows us way the hell off. We missed the turnoff, like, way back.”
I grip the wheel tighter. “How did we miss our turn?”
Kai points at me without looking up. “Because neither of us was thinking about the road. We were talking about June.” He snorts, shaking his head. “We’re gonna end up on the local news. ‘Two grown men disappear into the wilderness. Authorities confirm the last thing they talked about was a girl and her smile.’?” He glances over, smug. “Cause of death: terminal lovesick stupidity.”
“I’m turning around.”
“Please do,” he says, voice suddenly serious.
I ease the truck down the narrow road, looking for a spot wide enough to turn around without ending up in a ditch. The fields are dead quiet.
And then the headlights catch something.
Big.
Still.
Too solid to be a shadow.
Kai goes silent in a way I don’t like. “Uh.”
“What?”
