The road dips, and I ease my foot off the gas, trying to keep control as the tires shift beneath me, suddenly sliding to the side, sending a pulse of adrenaline through my veins.
I wrench the wheel to the left, and for a split second, I’m sure I’ve got it.
But the tires fail to find traction. The car keeps slipping. It’s too fast. I yank the wheel back to the right in a panic, causing the back end to fishtail. I’m sliding hard, the world tilting as I spin fast toward the trees.
“No. No. No.”
My heart slams into my ribs as the front end of the car drops, pulling forward as everything slides forward, the road gone.
I slam my foot on the brake, but it doesn’t matter.
Nothing matters.
The trees are right there. Too close.
A wall of them.
Everything narrows, the world collapses into the sickening certainty of what’s coming.
I don’t even have time to brace myself before?—
Chapter Seventeen
Luke
By the timeI get back in my truck and on the road, the storm has turned vicious.
No one should be out in this. No one could survive it.
The thought hits me, sending a fresh surge of adrenaline through me.
If anything happens to Lilly, I —no. I can’t let myself go there.
Snow lashes across the windshield so hard that the wipers don’t have a hope in hell of keeping up.
It’s a good thing I know these roads so well. I drive them by feel, doing my damndest to scan for the slightest trace of her tracks carved into the road.
They’re already filling in, disappearingunder the dump of fresh snow, but I can see enough.
“Come on,” I mutter, leaning forward, gripping the wheel tight as the truck shifts beneath me. Even in Four Wheel Drive, the truck struggles to find purchase in the deep snow.
Lilly doesn’t have Four Wheel Drive. It’s a miracle she’s been able to make it this far in these conditions.
The road curves and I slow, my eyes scanning, searching—There!
The outline of her tire tracks veers too close to the edge and then disappears altogether.
My stomach drops.
“No!”
In reflex, I slam on the brakes. The truck fishtails before I quickly correct it, my pulse pounding as I throw it in park before it’s even fully stopped and jump out into the weather.
The snow sinks up and over my ankles. For a second, I stand there just staring at the edge of the road and the embankment where her tracks disappear over. My mind refusing to process what I’m seeing.
I can’t lose her. I won’t.
Not after finally feeling something again.Not after pushing her away as if she meant nothing to me, when she iseverything.
