Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
I glanced at the GPS. I knew the way to Julian’s place by heart, but I put his address in anyway to see what traffic was doing. It wasn’t terrible. Not great, but I’d be there in thirty-five minutes. Then maybe I’d go straight to bed. I called my mom, figuring that hearing about her next adventure would help keep me alert, but she didn’t answer. Julian would already be home, making dinner, so I turned the radio on instead.
I don’t know where the car came from. Traffic had thinned, and one minute there was no one in the lane beside me. The next, there was a truck bearing down on me. I screamed and my hands instinctively yanked the wheel to the left. There was a screeching of horns coming from all sides. I hit something–metal crunched, wheels squealed. The car spun sickeningly, my head cracking against the window. Suddenly, it came to a stop, but that was no better. It was too bright, headlights boring in through the passenger side window. Not normal. Not right. Not good.
Those words ran through my mind quickly, running together and over one another. And then there was nothing.
I wasn’t unconscious for long. I heard the ambulance coming. I was aware of my car door being opened, the hinges screaming and the sound of tearing metal accompanying it. Someone undoing my seatbelt, pulling me out. But it was like I was underwater. It wasn’t until I was in the ambulance that I fully came to and was able to open my eyes.
From there, my memory fragmented. I was in the ambulance, and then I was in the hospital, and then my mom was there, holding my hand, the sky dark behind her. She was humming a song I vaguely recognized from my childhood. A Linda Ronstadt song. No lullabies for my mom.
“Hi,” I said, my voice scratching my throat. I untangled my fingers from hers and reached up to feel the side of my head. I had a bandage wrapped around it. “What happened?”
“You were in a car accident.” My mom picked up a large thermos filled with water and held the straw to my lips. “You hit your head.”
I sipped weakly, then leaned back against the pillows. My head throbbed dully. I was hungry, but the undertow of sleep was tugging at me again. My eyelids were pulling themselves closed, the room dimming out and then going black.
“Where’s Julian?” I murmured, my bruised brain forgetting that my mom didn’t know who Julian was. Well, she knew who Julian Lewis was, but she wouldn’t know why I was asking about him. I’d kept him a secret even from her.
“Don’t worry about work right now, honey.”
The next thing I knew, it was morning. My mom had moved to the small, narrow bench and was reading a book. She looked over and smiled, beautiful as ever. No one would ever think she’d spent a sleepless night at a hospital bedside. Then she said something that shocked me.
“I called Fletcher.”
“What? He isn’t coming here, is he?” I struggled up. My head still hurt, but it didn’t throb like before. It had relegated itself to a dull ache on the left side.
“I don’t know. I left a message.”
Thank God I hadn’t called Julian last night like I wanted to before sleep reclaimed me. The thought of him and Fletcher meeting over my bedside made me feel faint with horror. “Call him back and tell him not to come,” I begged.
A frown tugged at my mom’s lips. “I thought you two were getting closer.”
I thought about the bomb I’d planted in his plans. Earlier in the week, he’d called to tell me that the pitch deck was on its way to Callum. I was expecting the explosion any day now. “We’ll never be close, Mom.”
I could tell she didn’t know how to feel about that. On one hand, she’d told me from the beginning that I could have as much time with him as I wanted, or none at all. On the other, she knew how much it had hurt when he was the one who wanted none at all. Without knowing the dark underpinnings of our deal, she’d been happy when I told her he’d helped me get a job. Hoped it meant we were in a new phase.
And we were, but not the kind of phase she thought.
I had to get out of here.
My mom went down to grab a snack and call Fletcher back. I sat with my phone in my hands–it came through the accident completely unscathed–trying to decide what to tell Julian. I couldn’t tell him where I was and risk him running into Fletcher, but I didn’t want to lie to him either. He’d sent increasingly tense messages.
Miller keeping you late?
Hey, everything okay?