“All packed?” Iri asks, getting to his feet and towering above me with a little smirk.
“And good to go,” I reply.
It feels like the entire café is watching as we head out. For a sleepy town where everyone has their own secrets, they sure aren’t disguising their nosiness when something out of the ordinary happens.
“We’re good then?” Iri asks. “You don’t need to say your goodbyes or pack anything else up?” He eyes my meager belongings and I shake off the shame that wants to crawl up my spine.
“I have everything I need,” I tell him. I don’t explain that there’s no one here I need to tell I’m leaving, but he seems to understand.
We stop part way up the main street beside a suped up minivan, which Iri unlocks before grabbing my stuff and adding it to the pile of bags in the trunk.
I climb inside and we set off. Ready to shed my past and for a second attempt at a new life. This time I’m not going to let it go to waste.
Chapter 9
Micah
It’s a three day drive to get us from Willow Ridge to our bolthole in the woods. Three more days of hotels and rest stops buzzing with activity.
Three days. And I can breathe properly for the first time in months.
Iri’s taken charge of the driving, with Dorian riding shotgun, Cal has the entire back row to himself and Sin...
Sin’s sitting along from me, shooting glances at each of us when she thinks we’re not paying attention. She’s surprisingly calm, considering she’s traveling to an unknown destination with four strangers.
“How come you guys don’t fly everywhere?” she asks.
“Dorian doesn’t like to fly,” I reply with a little smile.
And whenever he’s panicking, I can feel it too. And then you might as well have two people on the verge of an anxiety attack. Stuck together in a metal box in the sky. Fucking nightmare.
Dorian glances over his shoulder at us. “Who wants to be trapped in a tin can in the sky that smells like two hundred people’s sweaty asscrack?”
“It’s just easier this way,” I continue, shifting my weight from one ass cheek to the other and tugging at my collar.
I can taste discomfort in the air, and it’s making me itchy. Scratching my neck, then my bare forearm before I shift my chairforward to give Cal just a little more legroom. Then, I’m hit with a moment of bone deep satisfaction from being able to stretch out. Sure, my knees are touching the chair in front of me, and I might lose feeling in my feet in a minute, but it’s worth it.
There’s no such thing as true privacy when you’ve got an empath around. That’s the cursed part. I always know how everyone is feeling, even when they’re trying to hide it. I always know when people are lying to my face too.
Which comes in handy a lot of the time. But I wish I could switch it off.
Being in this close proximity to four other people is making me want to tear my skin off, but that’s nothing new. Right now, I know that Cal’s uncomfortable. Dorian’s irritated and a little horny. Iri’s feeling determined and focused and Sin’s...
Curious and a little concerned.
Dammit. I bet that’s aimed at me. I’m twitchier than usual and she’s probably concerned I’m jonesing for my next fix.
Which I am, I guess. I need one of two things. Either total isolation, which always tanks my mood.
Or chaos. I need to be totally overwhelmed so I can’t detect any one emotion, to lose myself completely. Otherwise I’ll stay like this, feeling like mosquitoes have bitten my insides up and I can never quite scratch deep enough to ease the itch.
Just three more days to the isolation of the cabin.
That ‘just’ feels like eternity right now.
My leg twitches, and I jerk. Scratch. Feel another hit of concern on my right.
Fuck, I’m a mess.
