Page 121 of 72 Hours of You

A jolt of panic shoots through my chest. “No!” I say. “No hospitals.” I can’t go to the hospital. Those places … they’re a sea of pink. My hands shake. I can’t fucking go there.

“Sydney, I have to take you to the hospital.” His voice is solid. Firm. “Your head is cracked open. That’s generally not a good thing.”

My heart starts to race. “I’m fine.” There’s no way. No way in hell. I’d rather bleed out on this curb than walk into the clock shitshow that is a hospital.

“Sydney …” he starts again.

I grab his arm. “Please.”

He startles, his eyes flicking to my hand gripping his (surprisingly toned) arm. I let go and clear my throat. “Hospitals just creep me out, okay? I’m not going.”

Peter squints at me. “Who’s the president of the United States?”

“Your mom.”

A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Fine. You don’t have to go. But I’m taking you home.”

“That’s not necessary,” I say. I stand up to prove how unnecessary it is and then the world starts spinning again.

He grabs my elbow. “Yeah, okay. So my car is right down there.” He points to an old black Jetta. “I’m going to drive you home.”

“Whatever,” I say. But I let him keep his hand on my elbow.

He opens the door, tosses a stack of books into the back, and eases me down into the seat like I’m some fragile grandma. He leans down over me. His face inches from mine. “What the fuck are you doing?”

His eyebrows go up and the tiniest bit of pink flashes on his cheeks. “I’m buckling you in.” He holds up the end of the seatbelt like it’s evidence.

“I’ve got it, good Christ, I’m not a toddler.” I take the seatbelt and to my absolute mortification it takes me three tries to get it to latch.

Peter bites his bottom lip like he’s holding in a laugh. I get this psychotic little-kid impulse to yank on his hair.

“The seatbelt’s fucked up,” I say, crossing my arms.

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to get that totally normal latch fixed.”

A flame of annoyance burns in my stomach. “Can we go now?”

He nods, shuts the door on me, and literally jogs around to the driver’s seat. It’s so over the top. It’s like the boy’s never seen a gushing head wound before.

He pushes the engine on and starts messing with my AC vents. “Are you hot?” He glances over at me and angles his vents toward my face too. “You don’t need to pass out from heatstroke on top of the concussion.”

“I don’t have a concussion,” I say.

“Sure. All that … ‘honey boy’ stuff was totally you.”

I suck in my cheeks. “Okay, I was obviously disoriented. But I’m fine now.”

He hands me his phone. “Here. You can put your address in.”

I hand it back to him. “Can you unlock it?”

“I don’t keep it locked.” He says this casually as if that is not the most sociopathic behavior I’ve ever heard of.

My mouth drops. “You’re joking.”

He shrugs. “I don’t have anything to hide.”

Jesus, this guy is next-level. “Are you a Mormon or something?”