I eye him. “They think you’re dead, Noah. I don’t think we have to ditch my car. It’s not likeI’mthe criminal.”
“You should be,” he snaps, and I wince. “Sorry,” he quickly spits out. “I just mean that it’s probably better if we ditch this thing. Right now, we’re blindly trusting that my contact isn’t going to snitch.”
“Netty Morales.”
“Yeah.”
“He hated me.”
“That’s why you stayed in the car,” Noah snorts, shaking his head. “And it was a Matthew problem, not ayouproblem. The guy was a piece of shit.”
“Yeah,” I zone out on the road, a wave of anxiety rolling through my body. “Glad we readdressed that.”
Noah doesn’t say anything more, reaching for one of the bottles of water. He cracks it open and then shuffles through the bag, pulling out a pill bottle. He pops one of whatever is inside.
“Antibiotics,” he says to me, as soon as he catches me watching. “That lake is disgusting.”
I watch his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows, my core tightening. His color appears to be returning as dawn illuminates the inside of the car. His dark hair is disheveled, and there’s stubble along his jaw, giving him this rugged, dangerous look.
And I want him to do dangerous things to me.
But the man hasn’t even fucking touched me since he came out of the lake.And my thought slips through my lips.
“How did you make it?”
“What?” Noah relaxes back in the seat, eyeing me.
“How did you make it out of the lake?” I rephrase, just as I reach an intersection of highways. I take a hard left and head west, just as Noah instructed. I want to ask where we’re headed, but one thing at a time.
“I went into the water, got stuck under the dock, and waited it out.”
I shake my head. “That makes no sense. They would’ve found you.” I glance over to him, where he shrugs.
“I don’t know. I don’t really know what happened. It’s a blur. I just know I went into the water, and then I waited for what feltlike for-fucking-ever. When the voices and the dogs stopped, and the storm started, I made a break for the woods.”
“You should’ve died.”
“Yeah, it’s a damn shame I didn’t,” he laughs dryly. “But I guess I figure since I made it out alive… I'd better make this second chance count.”
I try to smile, but the emotions welling up in my chest are suffocating. I’m barely twenty-four hours removed from thinking Noah was gone forever, and now I’m driving us out of this mess.
Side by side.Together.
Except all his walls are ten feet tall right now.
But he’s still here.And I have to be thankful for that.
I glance back to where Bullet is curled up in a little ball. I’m sure my mom hasn’t even noticed that he’s gone yet. She probably doesn’t even care.
Still, I frown. I don’t have my phone. I’ll never know.
A pang of anxiety comes with that, but then quickly fades. The tires hum against the pavement, steady and unrelenting, like the world isn’t on the verge of falling apart around us.
Like this is just…normal.
I adjust my grip on the wheel, flexing my fingers one at a time, trying to get the feeling back into them. “Are we just driving west to get some distance? Is there some destination?”
Noah doesn’t answer.
