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We’d cleared one state yesterday, and almost two today. Wynnie blinks slowly, turning her head to look at me, the motion seeming to take as much effort as resurfacing from underwater.
“Don’t talk like you’re in a military operation.”
“Am I not?” I tease, a smile tugging at my lips. “Extraction mission: target secured, moving to safe house.”
She returns a faint smirk, but it flickers and dies as she slips back to the window.
“Do you actually think we’re going to make it?”
“To our destination?”
She shifts, pulling her knees tighter to her body. “All of it, really. Getting away and starting over. I mean, shit, Preston, we’re moving away from everything we’ve ever known. Can’t say I’m feeling totally confident.”
I feel it too, bone-deep wariness, afraid I can’t actually get her somewhere secure, and it churns constantly in my gut.
“I think so. We’ve made it this far; that’s the worst part. The first 48 hours are when they’re looking closest to home; we should be gone before their search expands.”
“No. The worst part is the mess we left back home.”
Mess. Such a simple word for the carnage we’d left scattered across Harris. Bodies that will be found eventually, questions that will be asked, and connections that will be made. Soon, they’ll connect Wynnie to Ellie as well, and me to Caleb, then Hudson, and eventually Blaire. Cops will realize we’re on the run together. They’ll come after us; there’s no doubt about it, but it’s my job to get us as far away as possible, as quickly as possible.
“No,” I counter. “The worst part of all this was watching you pretend you were fine for so long.”
Wynnie’s head snaps toward me, flashing with offense.
“Let’s be honest, Preston, you don’t know anything about my life. You think you do, but you don’t.”
“I know enough.”
“Like what? Enlighten me. What do you think you learned about me watching me through the damn window?”
I laugh. I tried to stop it, but it released itself. “You want the list?”
“Try me.”
“You take your coffee black at work, but you add sugar when no one is watching you. Which, by the way, black coffee is disgusting, and it doesn’t make you superior, so I don’t understand why you never just put the sugar in it. It doesn’t make sense. You talk in your sleep and have a recurring dream about drowning. You haven’t been home for a single holiday since high school because your mom—”
“Stop. Just stop.”
I can tell she’s frustrated, but she doesn’t look away as she fights the smile battling against her to work its way up. It’s not much, barely a crack, but it’s something.
The miles pass in comfortable silence. I find myself stealing looks at her profile, noting how the gray light from outside catches the curve of her cheek, the way her eyelashes cast shadows beneath her eyes. Beautiful, yes, but Wynnie is authentic in a way that cuts through all the artificial bullshit I’ve been surrounded by my entire life.
“Out of everyone in the world, why did you choose to do this to me?” She asks out of nowhere.
“Do you remember all the letters I’ve written to you? What they say?”
“Hard to forget,” she humorlessly chuckles.
“I mean every word I wrote. You’re worth all of this and so much more. I’d flip my own world around a million times for you. You want to know what I saw when I first watched you? You weren’t some perfect fantasy; you have flaws—for example, not putting the sugar in. And honestly, I thought I could save you, and maybe in small ways I did, but in some ways you saved me too.”
“It’s not when you watched me, Preston, it’s when you stalked me. You want to talk about fantasy; that’s what that is, believing you weren’t.”
“Maybe so, but I see it more as opening a door into your world. I was so drawn to you; I didn’t purposefully do all of this, I swear. It was like there was a magnet pulling me to you…”
“You could have stopped it once you realized, because I’m not here to save you from yourself and make you a better person or whatever romantic bullshit you’ve made up in your head. If anything, you’ve become worse with me in your life.”
I let the air between us settle, not wanting to venture into territory neither of us is ready for. But that ‘romantic bullshit’, it’s already happened. She’s allowed me to set foot in her life over and over again. Wynnie kissed me. She promised me that if I get her out of this, she’ll be mine forever. Those weren’t moves I made, whether she realizes it or not. And whether she continues to flip back and forth between falling for me and hating me, the romantic bullshit is happening right before her eyes.
