I swallow the fear that sits in the base of my throat.
“Hear what?” Chase turns to look at me, one hand wrapped around the wheel.
I angle my eyes up, catching how his knuckles push white against his skin.
“Hear what, Laiken?” he repeats, his voice is urgent now.
I stop picking at the polish. I draw my legs to my chest and push my chin to the top of my knees.
I cradle myself as our past stirs, sickness curling in my gut.
“Laiken,” he breathes, and I feel it across all of my limbs like a plea.
I resist the urge to shiver.
My eyes rise to his. My voice is vacant. “He’s back, Chase.”
And Chase Keller knows exactlywhoI’m talking about, because I watch him pale before my very eyes.
My hand vibrates when I rip the stick into reverse and lay my arm across the back of the passenger seat.
Laiken’s watching ahead as I circle the steering wheel in my palm.
“What are you doing?” she asks, so cool I find myself shivering from the chill.
Fear sits low at the back of my throat, like a wall restraining my words.
I hammer through it.
“There’s no way in Hell I’m leaving you here.”
Laiken snorts, and I ignore it, pulling onto the road and accelerating a little too hard, leaving behind rubber on the blacktop.
Then she mumbles something under her breath, and I’m flicking my gaze from the cruiser in the front of the park to the white object behind it—beneath the sign that three years later, still reads Evil’s Peak Trailer Park, and not Devil’s—taking my eyes back to her when I spit, “You got something to say?”
Laiken turns toward me, her wavy hair flicking across her bare face. She tucks the strands behind her ears, and the billowing flames that swallow the green of her orbs remind me ofwhen we used to argue back in the day, when she used to test me in a way not even my sister could.
“Yeah, actually, I do,” she states matter-of-factly, and I shiver again, not sure I’m ready for all ofthatyet.
Once a coward, always a coward.Just like my father.
I adjust the shifter, hammering harder on the gas. There’s a silence, static and electric, circling around us and I’m about to clamp it but she says, “I said, you can’t just pick and choose when you’d like to give a shit about me.”
I feel my teeth grinding. Ripping harder on the stick, I tear my eyes from hers, speeding ahead. And my voice is low when I rasp, “I’ve always given a shit about you.”
And when she doesn’t reply, I look to my side, see her staring out the window, away from me, her shoulders raised like she’s using them as a shield against me.
“Could have fooled me.” Her voice is a whisper, more air than sound.
I shake my head, suck on my front teeth.
“Just take me to Nan’s, Chase.”
Not happening.
When we approach Nan’s street, Laiken unbuckles her seatbelt, preparing for a quick exit even though the car is still moving.
“Put your belt on,” I tell her.
