Save for the music, we ride in silence. Acomfortablesilence I’ve only ever experienced with people I trust. Whoever restored this car swapped out the old eight-track for a CD player. I’d have preferred something more modern, but I’ll take what I can get.
“Everlong” by Foo Fighters seeps from the old speakers, apparently not hitting Hailey’s mood.
“Can we change the music?” she asks as we pull up at a set of traffic lights in town.
“There’s a stack of CDs in the glove box.”
With a nod, she leans over, creaking the compartment open just as I remember what else is stashed in there.
The serene atmosphere evaporates, replaced by thick, suffocating tension once the dim light from the streetlamps reaches the inside of the glove box, illuminating the CDs and... the 9mm Glock inches from Hailey’s fingers.
She loses color faster than I can shut the glove box. Her bright eyes darken, widen, and fear shadows her features.
It’s instantaneous.
A dark memory pulls her under, drowning her in its grip while another piece of the puzzle rushes to the surface.
A flashback triggered by the sight of agun.
The girl I was admiring seconds ago disappears in a flash, replaced by a fragile, haunted version. The fierceness is gone, and so is her strength.
She crumbles before me. Her delicacy and vulnerability take center stage, amplified tenfold by her pale skin and those unseeing, hazy eyes never leaving the gun.
Every instinct I have demands that I tuck her against my chest and pull her out of her own mind so she doesn’t have to relive whatever horror she went through.
But I can’t. This might be the key. It might be crucial. It’s her past. It already happened. It can’t hurt her. She’s safe with me.
The arguments hit a wall inside my head because Hailey starts shaking, her cheeks whiter than kneaded dough.
“Hailey,” I rasp, my throat tight. Fuck the key. I can’t watch this fear warping her features. “Hailey, snap out of it. Focus on me. You’re okay, it’s just a memory.”
She doesn’t react. She’s miles deep, her breaths fast and shallow, each inhale like the gasp of a drowning person.
I reach over to run my knuckles down her face, but before I touch her, the light ahead flickers to green.
“Hold on,” I say, pulling away toward a gas station. “Come back, Hailey. Snap out of it.”
My pulse thumps so hard I feel the pressure in my ears. I don’t think she can hear me. She’s in too deep and the five hundred yards to the gas station stretches into fucking miles. I floor the pedal to close the gap.
She swallows a gulp of air like she’s been under a lake for three minutes and just broke the surface. A choked-back sob follows and my head whips toward her.
She’s not alarmed. Not scared. Not anxious or nervous. She’s fuckingterrified, shaking like a kitten snatched from the litter. Her eyes meet mine and the depth of her fear will haunt me till the day I die.
I want to round the hood and yank her out, but I remember what happened last time she went under so deep, she—
Time slows to a crawl as she reaches for the door handle, still in a frenzy, still shaking, still in the past.
I don’t immediately realize what she’s about to do. It doesn’t click until my mind connects the dots and a cold chill seizes my muscles.
“Hailey, don’t!” I reach for her but it’s too late.
She yanks the door open, tucks her body and throws herself out of the moving car.
—she did justthat.
Fuck!
My world splinters apart at the sickening sound of her body hitting the road. It takes me less than a second to batter the steering wheel and hit the brake, but civilizations could have risen and fallen during that one second.
