His shoulders square as he moves in my direction, and I clamp my mouth shut as his gaze passes over me. I force my breathing to slow down, afraid he’ll see my chest rising and falling between the canoes. I don’t want to be found. This isn’t foreplay. If he catches me, I might say something I’ll regret. Or worse, let him finish what he started when he was holding me.
Light droplets of rain mat my hair and make his chest glow under the single overhead light at the top of the electrical pole. I’ve never run from him before. I never wanted to.
But he’s not who he used to be, and that’s who I loved. What happens tomorrow?
Looking my way, he doesn’t seem to see me, exhaling a long breath. I think he’s going to keep going, heading through the camp to keep looking, but instead, he turns. Leaving.
I open my mouth, but I stop myself at the same time he pauses in his steps.
I want him to leave. The Dodge is here somewhere. I’m on my own adventure.
Just go.
I watch him bow his head, and all I can see is the side of his face. His pinched brow is aimed at the ground as if he’s in pain. Maybe he’s wondering if he should just let me go? That way he doesn’t have to explain anything, right?
Just leave me alone.
Needles prick my throat, a picture of him getting back into his car forming in my head. Maybe, on the way home, he visits that woman Sarah whom he used to date. Perhaps he goes to bed with her tonight to forget me.
A lump rises up my throat, tears sting my eyes, and the Quinn who never wanted to be away from him wants to run to him and jump in his arms and tell him he can have me instead.
But I don’t run to him. Not this time.
He starts to leave, and I suck in a breath.
And then…
He spins back around and charges deeper into the camp, his brow stern as he pursues me, disappearing between the cabins.
“Shit,” I murmur.
He looks pissed.
Luckily, this works for me, though. The farther into the camp he goes to search, the farther he gets from the cars.
I can get back on the road.
Stepping quietly, heel to toe, I head back to Dylan’s car,fisting the hem of my dress as rain cascades down my arms and legs. The black car is out there somewhere. It’s looking for me, in any case, and my chest swells up as I traipse through the wet grass, my head filling with memories that aren’t mine.
The way the wind tickles my scalp. The pressure of every toe pressing through my shoe to the ground. The trees crowding in around me like walls, a pair of eyes—or two—peering at me from the dark forest.
It’s like I’m in her skin for a moment.
It’s her shoes walking across the soft earth. Her ears pricking at the sound of fireworks whistling in the distance. Her lungs drawing in the misty air on a night like this so many years ago, and maybe even here, long before it was a summer camp. Voices curl into my ear from somewhere, and I jerk my head, finding no one there. The flap of a bird’s wings sound like wind hitting a sail, and I shake my head.
I know it’s just the adrenaline. It makes me hear every bug buzzing and feel every hair on my arms rising from the skin. Is this what she felt?
Or what her victims felt?
Emerging from behind the main lodge, I check the vast lawn in front of me, my gaze tracing the path I ran with Dylan all those years ago, straight to the dock on the lake. Keeping my eyes peeled, I quicken my pace, coming up on the cars we ran from minutes ago.
Hunter’s ’67 Camaro sits behind Farrow’s motorcycle, and I halt, making sure I don’t see anyone through the windows. Aro talked to Hawke on the way here. He might’ve been with Hunter, both of them probably off hunting down their girlfriends.
I run to Dylan’s Mustang.They can take Dylan and Aro home.I’ll steal her car. Reaching for the handle, I yank openthe door, but the empty space behind the Mustang finally registers. Lucas’s car is gone.
I pause, checking my memory. He pulled up behind me, Farrow behind him. Lucas got out and chased me.
He didn’t double back. I would’ve seen him.
