I stand there, panting in the cold, wind howling through the empty street like it’s echoing the sound in my chest.
I close my eyes.
“Where are you, baby?” I whisper into the wind.
It doesn’t answer.
“How the hell am I supposed to get you back?”
The only reply is the sharp bite of winter and the hollow ache of I can’t be in my house another second.
Not with the broken glass.
Not with the echoes of my mother’s bullshit ringing in the walls.
Not with the heavy silence that feels like punishment.
So I get in my car and just… drive.
Cold air blasts through the cracked window. My fingers ache on the wheel. I don’t even know where I’m going until I pull into the diner’s parking lot. My body moves on autopilot—caffeine, sugar, anything to stop the shaking.
I’m halfway out of the car when I see it.
Her.
Aunt Susan’s beat-up silver sedan pulls into the traffic lane.
And in the passenger seat?—
Jade.
Her hair is short.
Her face is turned toward the window.
She looks… wrecked.
Fragile.
Gone.
The breath leaves my body.
I don’t think. I just slam back into my car and pull out, nearly clipping a minivan. My heart is pounding so hard it feels like my ribs are cracking open.
“Susan,” I mutter. “Don’t do this. Don’t do this to me.”
But she does.
She guns it.
That old sedan should NOT be able to move like that, but she takes a sharp right, then another, tearing down side streets like she’s been training for a drag race her whole damn life.
I press harder on the gas.
My sports car growls, but she’s faster than she has any right to be.
At one point, Jade turns in her seat.
