She stirred just a little, squinting, before she smiled that soft smile. “Hey, you’re home.”
Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.
I swallowed around it. “Come on, baby, need to get you out of here.”
Confused, she shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
“Come on. Please…just…trust me.”
Trust me.
I bit back the cynical laughter, and instead focused on helping her out of bed, her belly so swollen it was amazing she could stand. She only had four weeks left and I wasn’t sure how her tiny body could get any bigger. She wobbled, and I steadied her, trying to keep my cool, that frantic edge that nipped at my nerves as I helped her slip on a shoe.
“Tell me what’s happening.” She whispered her growing fear into the darkness. I could feel it. The tremble that rolled through her as she clung to my shoulders while I slipped on the second shoe.
I didn’t respond, just grabbed her hand and started to haul her out of the house.
“Is Mia hurt?” She asked it as if the thought drew torment, this girl always thinking of someone else.
I wanted to say something. To come up with an excuse or another lie that would make this okay, but I was pulling her out into the deepest night, that quiet hour when the air held still in anticipation of the breaking day.
We started down the concrete exterior steps.
“Lyrik, please,” she begged, but stumbled a step when she saw Baz climbing out the front passenger and moving into the back seat.
A surprised breath left her, and she was shaking her head and tugging against me as I towed her toward the car.
“Why’s Sebastian here?” Her voice was quiet but tinged with accusation.
Didn’t answer. Just jerked open the front passenger door and got her in, buckled her as fast as I could, tossed her bag on the floorboards at her feet.
I rounded the front of the car and climbed into the driver’s seat. Engine still idling, I threw it in reverse. I was just short of peeling out of the parking lot as we flew out onto the road.
A bottled silence suffocated the air, like a carbonated toxin, shaken and shaken and shaken. Ready to explode.
Kenzie stared at me from the side, twisted with her back pressed to the door as if she could read me, her breaths sharp and barely controlled. “Lyrik, look at me.”
Knuckles white, I gripped the steering wheel tighter, keeping my attention trained ahead.
“I said look at me,” she demanded harder.
For a second, I resisted, head shaking several times, before I cut my gaze over to her.
Teeth clenched.
Jaw rigid.
Pain rushed up her throat. Strangled and hurt. “You’re high?”
She wheezed it as tears filled her eyes. “Oh my God. You’re high. You promised…you promised.”
She started struggling in her seat, fighting to get to the seatbelt latch. “Stop the car, let me out.”
“No. Taking you to your parents’.”
“I said stop the car and let me out,” she wailed.
“Kenzie, cool it,” I yelled. Didn’t mean for it to come out the way it did, like I was lashing out, but she was freaking the fuck out, yanking at the door handle like she was going to bolt.
“Let me out!” she screamed.
Maybe it was the screech of her voice that let me know I’d shattered our thinly set mold. Broken this good thing we could have had.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
At least my fucked-up mind thought it was her, physically rending our bond, my stupid mistakes cutting us in two. Until the blacked-out car sped around us on the left, Adrian leaning out and firing from the passenger-side window.
The windshield shattered.
I sucked in a shocked breath, yanking the wheel all the way to the right as I slammed on the brakes.
Sebastian was totally wrong.
Adrian wasn’t a *.
He was crazy.
Out for revenge.
Because of pride and money.
Money.
That’s what’d gotten me here in the first place.
Or maybe it was just my pride.
Base and vile.
Needing one more taste of everything I shouldn’t have.
The car skidded and careened, the wheel jerking as I fought and pulled against it.
A street lamp pole came up fast. Streaks of light glinted in the splintered windshield. Head on, we slammed into it. The car came to a grinding halt.
Only sound was the ringing in my ears.
Stunned, I sat there still gripping the wheel as my mind raced to catch up with what’d just gone down.
Slow realization filtered in. We hadn’t hit all that hard. The airbags hadn’t even deployed.
I breathed out relief, shaking my head to orient myself, to clear the muddled hum deafening my left ear.
I blinked through that high-pitched trill, tried to focus on Kenzie who stared back at me with those wide brown eyes.
Wild and frozen.
Shocked.
Completely shocked.
“Kenz, baby, are you okay?” I finally whispered through the clogging fear. I was fumbling for my seatbelt when everything went completely numb.
Kenzie lifted her hand that been pressed to her side.
She was shaking so badly as she held it up in front of her. Confused. The color was so bright, almost shimmery as it glistened in the street lamp glaring from above.