After we’d traveled several miles, I had to break the increasingly uncomfortable silence.

“Where are we going?”

“Just riding,” he responded.

The narrow back road we were on was a winding two-lane that led to Arlisle Preserve and, beyond that, to Southmoore.

“So, what did you do last night?”  I tried to put my focus elsewhere.  I hated this road because it’s the one Izzy wrecked on.

“Went to Josh’s to work on the Mustang.”  His answer, like his attitude, was short and clipped.

I nodded.  “Is it close to being finished?”

Drew sighed loudly.  “Ridley, I don’t want to talk about a stupid car.”

“Then talk about something else.”

“Fine,” he snapped, shifting up into third to take a curve entirely too fast.

“Drew, slow down.”

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“Don’t tell me how to drive, Ridley.  You gave up that privilege.”

“Drew—”

“Don’t ‘Drew’ me,” he warned, accelerating through yet another curve.  “The only thing I want to hear from you is the truth.”

“I told you the truth, Drew.”

“No, you didn’t.  I want to hear you admit that this is about that freak, Bowman,” he spat.

“Drew, Bo has—”

“Don’t lie to me, Ridley,” he shouted, the tires squealing as he rounded a hair pin curve without even so much as tapping the brakes.

I gripped the edges of my seat tightly.  “I’m not lying, Drew.  Please slow down,” I begged.

“You’ve got a thing for the new guy and I want to hear you admit it,” Drew said, his voice booming inside the confines of the car.

As he took another corner at a dangerous speed, the back tires slipped off the road and we skidded in the gravel.  The car fishtailed alarmingly and I felt my heart flopping fearfully in my throat.

My head was plastered to the head rest as I pushed my feet into the floorboard.

“Alright, Drew.  I admit it.  I have feelings for Bo,” I confessed.

“I knew it,” Drew hissed.

“But it had nothing to do with us.  My feelings for Bo came after,” I continued.  “I swear.”

And that was true.  While I might have been intrigued by Bo, a bit taken with him, my feelings for him had been child’s play compared to what they are now.

Drew said nothing.  I looked over at him to gauge his reaction, but I couldn’t read his expression.  I was not inclined to believe that my confession had helped, however, when I saw the tight set of his lips.

“I never meant to hurt you, Drew,” I declared, putting as much truth and feeling into the statement as I possibly could.  “I—”

My words were cut off when I saw the deer from the corner of my eye.  A horrible and unwelcome sense of déjà vu swept over me.  I’d been through this before and I knew I only had a fraction of a second to react before it jumped in front of us.

“Drew!”

My cry didn’t help.  As if in slow motion, the deer leapt from the trees up onto the road.  I heard Drew’s sharp inhalation right before he jerked the steering wheel with both hands to avoid the deer.

We began to spin and I squeezed my eyes shut and held onto the seat so tightly my fingers ached.

I felt it when the two wheels on the driver’s side left the pavement.  It was as if the entire world tilted toward me for an instant before we started rolling.  I braced myself as much as I could and held my breath.

As if the sounds played in my head from a distant recording, I heard the crunch of metal and the breaking of glass right before I felt a sharp pinch in my stomach just as the car came to a halt on its side in the woods.  The reason I knew we were in the woods is that, when I opened my eyes, part of a tree branch was sticking through the windshield.

Shaken and confused, I looked around.

The car had come to rest on the passenger side.  Drew was unconscious and dangling from his seatbelt, his arms lolling lifelessly toward me.  If I unfastened his seatbelt, he would no doubt fall right on top of me.

“Drew,” I called.  No response.

“Drew,” I said, more loudly this time.  Still no response.

I tried to move, but something was holding me in my seat.  The seatbelt strap was on the left side of my chest rather than my right, so I reached down to unbuckle it.  When I did, I stared in confusion at the tree branch that was coming through the windshield.  It seemed to disappear right into my body, into my left side.

At first I didn’t understand how that was possible.  I thought maybe the branch had broken off and it was just pressed against my body, looking as if it disappeared inside me.  I thought surely if I was impaled, it would hurt.  Right?  I’d probably be unconscious, too.  Right?

When I tried to move out from around the branch, pain lanced through my back and side.  Thinking I’d move the branch instead, I pulled at it in one sharp tug.  Blood oozed out from around it.

Following the sight of that branch shifting inside my stomach, a surge of adrenaline flooded my body and burned away the fog that had settled over me.  As the haze lifted, there was a moment—a single moment of perfect clarity—when I realized that the branch was indeed deeply imbedded in my abdomen and that if I didn’t find a way to get us some help, I was in serious, serious trouble.

I fought against the hysteria that welled up inside me, knowing it was imperative that I keep my wits about me.  We could die if I didn’t.  I knew from experience.  Sort of.

I closed my eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath, deep enough to make my side start to hurt again.  I cringed in pain.  When I reopened my eyes, it was to see a pale face hovering over the hood of the car.  In it was a hauntingly familiar pair of eyes, eyes I’d seen in a similar circumstance three years ago.  Only today, I recognized them.  They were Bo’s.

A flash of relief was followed by even more confusion.  I thought to myself that it couldn’t have been Bo’s eyes I’d seen that night so long ago.  It just couldn’t have been.

“Stay still,” he cautioned.  

I nodded, fending off a surreal sense of disorientation that was threatening to swallow me up.

Bo crept carefully up to the car and looked in to assess me.  His face was a tight mask, but I thought I probably knew why.  The sight and smell of my blood was likely very hard for him to tolerate.




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