“That’s barbaric.” Amari scrunches her nose. “Deer were here long before us. We’re intheirterritory.”
Levi drapes one hand over her chair, grazing the tips of his fingers down her shoulder, his narrowed eyes meeting mine.
“Unless the car was an import, there’s no way you were driving.” He leans across, pushing my necklace aside beforetouching a yellowy-green bruise running diagonally from my right shoulder, across my chest, and disappearing under my summer dress. “This is from the seatbelt. If you were behind the wheel, it’d be on the other side.”
I swallow hard, ghosting my fingers along the bruise. Levi’s right... it’s on the wrong side. Everyone’s staring at me, waiting with bated breath, but I can feel someone else’s eyes burning a hole in the back of my skull.
Ignoring it, I jab at the black hole in my head, throwing questions at it.
If I wasn’t driving, then who was?
Why didn’t Dad tell me there was someone else in the car?
Why did helie?
Disappointment burns my stomach like acid. He never lies...
Never.
Until, apparently, now.
I swallow the lump in my throat, wondering who was behind the wheel and what happened to them.
Question marks multiply like bacteria in a petri dish. My pulse quickens, a relentless drumbeat thumping in my ears. The silence and accumulated stares are making my skin crawl.
I hate being the center of attention when I’m not prepared. And today, with my imperfections on display, I am definitelynotprepared for scrutiny.
My mind races, searching for an explanation. The harder I try to come up with something plausible, the more erratic my breathing. Another panic attack looms nearby, threatening to shit all over my progress.
I haven’t made much but staying calm for a week wasn’t easy.
I dig my nails into the palms of my hands, eyes closed. I can’t panic. Not again. Not twice in one day. I’ll make things worse and risk further damaging my brain.
“Hey.” Chloe rests her small hand on my back, rubbing up and down. “You’re pale, Hailey. Are you feeling okay?”
“Um... I just...” I suck in a sharp breath. “I just... I... I need a second.” I snatch my half-empty coffee cup from the table, rushing across the cafeteria for a refill.
Anything to pull my mind away from the suffocating anxiety. There must be a rational explanation why Dad didn’t mention that I wasn’t driving.
Maybe he didn’t know?
Maybe he’s protecting me because whoever was is dead and Dad didn’t want me to have another meltdown.
Or maybe there’s something bigger going on.
I gulp the rest of the coffee, shoving my cup under the nozzle and poke the touch screen where it saysdouble espressolike the machine has personally offended me and deserves pain.
A loud hiss makes me shudder, but the bittersweet aroma and the sound of coffee dripping into the cup grounds me. It wraps itself around me, soothing my frayed nerves enough that the huge cafeteria stops closing in on me.
Cup in hand, and mind still raging, I turn swiftly, take a purposeful step and collide with a wall.
A startled gasp—mine—rings in the air as the cup slips from my grasp in slow motion, drenching me and what I mistook for a wall.
In a way it is a wall... a wall of muscles hard enough to deflect bullets.
Then, with time seeming to stretch out even further, I tumble, connecting butt-first with the cold floor and jolting my injured shoulder hard enough for tears to sting my eyes.
God, it hurts like a bitch and the hot coffee splattering the front of my dress doesn’t help.
