Our eyes meet in the side mirror.
One half-second.
One impossible, breathtaking half-second.
She freezes.
I freeze.
Then Susan yanks the wheel again, and they disappear behind a row of shops.
“What—” I choke out. “No. No, no, no?—”
I speed ahead, take the turn so hard the tires screech?—
And she’s gone.
Just… gone.
Like she evaporated into the cold New England air.
I roll to a stop in the middle of an empty intersection, gripping the wheel so tight my knuckles go white.
Then, against all logic, a small, bitter laugh slips out of me.
A humorless smirk tugs at my lip.
“I just got dusted,” I whisper, “by a fifty-five-year-old woman in a car older than me.”
Any other day, I’d admire it.
Today it feels like another knife.
I sit there for a moment, breathing hard, chest heaving, trying to figure out how I lost her again—physically this time, not just emotionally.
The anger floods back fast.
I grab my phone and call the only person who won’t feed me bullshit.
Tristan answers on the first ring.
“What’s up?”
“Meet me downtown,” I say, voice low, vibrating with fury. “Now.”
“Leo—”
“I said NOW.”
I hang up before he can talk sense into me.
Because right now, I don’t want sense.
I want answers.
I want Jade.
I want the truth.
