by Leah Atwood
Eli nodded in answer. “I took another look. We’re off the road, but with the snow everywhere and this fog descending, the driver might not have noticed our tiny little car sitting there. I’ll bet he’d have seen the Zeon.”
Avery rolled her eyes then winced again. “You’re never going to let it go, are you?”
“Not on your life.” The boy answered as though nothing was wrong.
Gavin peeked at Eli, wondering why the boy wasn’t asking how his mom was doing. That’s when he saw it. Eli was white as a sheet, and his hands were trembling. He was masking it in his voice, but the kid was worried sick about his mom.
“Eli, stay here with your mom. She got a bump on the head, but she’s fine. I’m going to take a look at the car.” Then he gently pushed Avery back down into a sitting position and got close enough that he could whisper in her ear. “He needs to know you’re okay.”
Stepping away, he went to the car and circled around it a couple times. He let out a low whistle. “We should report this to the highway patrol, but since none of us have working phones…”
“Is it drivable?” Avery asked. “We can’t stay out here on the side of the road through the night.”
Eli was as optimistic as ever. “Maybe if we lit a bunch of those roadside flares, someone would stop to help us.”
Gavin tried to open the driver’s side door, but it wouldn’t budge. He climbed in through the passenger side and settled into the driver’s seat, worried that the car might not start. When the engine engaged without a problem, he left it idling and climbed back out.
“The car’s pretty scraped up on the driver’s side, and that door won’t even open. The engine sounds a little rough, too, but it’s running, so I say let’s pile back into it and get as far away from here as we can.
Eli and Avery stood, with the teen putting his arm around his mom’s shoulders to help guide her to the car. “I’m not an invalid, you know. It’s nothing but a bump on the head.”
The teen didn’t let her go. “Humor me.”
Once they were all settled into the car and belted in place, Gavin checked his mirrors and pulled out onto the road. “I can’t believe I never saw it coming. I’m still not even sure what kind of car it was. There’s no way I’ll be able to identity it when we’re able to file a report.”
“It was blue.” Eli’s voice was certain.
“No.” Avery countered her son. “Green. Definitely green.”
Gavin thought it had been black but couldn’t stop himself from having a little fun. “I was going to say pink.”
They’d made it less than half a mile down the road before Avery could no longer hold the words in. Did he realize how slow he was going? “You should get up to the speed limit so no one comes up too fast on our rear bumper.”
“We don’t have a rear bumper, so no problem there!” Eli’s voice was far too cheerful.
What kind of fool idea had it been to raise this boy to find the humor in troubled times?
Gavin frowned as he studied the gauges on the dashboard. “I think the sideswipe did more damage than I’d realized.” As he accelerated, the car began to vibrate more and more.
“Did you check the tires? Maybe we have a flat.” Eli’s voice was hopeful.
Gavin shook his head. “No such luck. The tires are all fine. I think we’ve lost a cylinder.”
“How do you lose a cylinder?” Skeptical didn’t even begin to describe how Avery felt. “Should we go back for it?”
“Not literally lost.” Gavin rubbed his forehead. “I think one of the cylinders is damaged. Something happened so it’s not working properly.”
“And you know this how?” Avery’s lack of faith in his mechanical abilities stung just the tiniest bit.
“It happened to a car my mom had once.”
“Did her car get hit, too?” Eli never minded stepping into the silence. “Or sideswiped on a snow-covered road?”
Gavin shook his head at the teen’s cheery voice. “No. Something inside the engine got loose and damaged it. I’m not sure if the sideswipe could have done this or if this is a problem that might have already been building up, and the sideswipe just knocked something around to finalize the problem.”
“Does it even matter what caused it at this point?” Avery stretched her vowels out, a sure sign that she was getting tired again.
“Probably not.” Gavin sighed and brought the car back down to a slower, less-vibratey speed. Thirty-five miles per hour was going to make the last two hours of the drive stretch out into more than four. “What do you think? Should I add this to my mental list of grievances against the car? It doesn’t seem fair at this point to have a problem we can’t blame on the car.”
Avery shook her head. “This might go down in the record books as the worst Christmas trip ever.”
“It’s all about perspective.” Eli’s words stopped them both from complaining further. “I’m kind of having fun wondering what’s going to go wrong next. Although I could have done without the last one.”
Gavin studied Avery for a moment. “Are you doing okay?”
She nodded gingerly. “I’m fine. I’m pretty certain there’s no concussion. I don’t have any blurred vision or muddled thinking. At least not that I can tell.” She gave a small smirk of a smile. “A good-sized headache for sure, but that’s all.”
Thinking he might have to force the issue when they got somewhere with an urgent care center or emergency room, Gavin let it go.
“On the bright side…” Better to change the subject for now since they were too far from medical care to do anything. “The car that hit us must have done some good, too. The headlights are now a lot brighter.”
Avery chuckled softly. “Now we can better see how we’re in the middle of nowhere. Yay.”
“Nah.” Eli’s voice again reached out to them from the backseat. “We’re not in the middle yet. We haven’t even reached the city limits. This must be the outskirts of Nowhere.”
Chapter Fifteen
Hobart, OK
December 24, 9:30 p.m.
By the time they passed through Hobart, everyone in town appeared to be fast asleep. Avery imagined all the little kids tucked into their beds and waiting for Christmas morning. “This is a quaint little town.”
“And then it was gone.” Gavin spoke truth. The town of Hobart passed them by — or they passed it by — before he’d even finished his sentence. “The sign when we entered said the population was less than four thousand.”
“But did you see that main street? It reminded me of a small town my grandma used to live in when she was alive.”
He offered a mock groan. “You’re going to want to take this trip again someday, aren’t you?”
Avery beamed. “On a weekend. In my own car. During the summer.”
Gavin shook his head. “You’re a glutton, that’s for sure.”
“I can’t help it. I’m naturally curious.”
“Let me guess. You want to know if the events of this trip can be duplicated.”
She reached forward toward the dashboard and stretched. Her shoulders were starting to tighten up, no doubt from the fall she’d taken at their last stop. “Admit it,” she eventually said. “If we take another trip on this road, and it ends up as dismal as this one has been, I’ll be able to write a whole series of articles on the worst road ever traveled.”
“Even if the circumstances never duplicate, I think you’ve still got enough material for at least a couple articles about travel disasters. You could spin them so they’re about travel preparedness, the things people should plan for ahead of time.”
“Like we did?” Right. As if they’d been remotely prepared for this trip.
Gavin glanced over, humor lighting his coffee brown eyes from deep within. Her breath caught in her chest as she drank in what she saw there. His gaze returned to the road far too quickly. She savored the memory of that look and how it made her feel. It had been a long time since she’d let someone get c
lose enough to look at her in that way… and for it to have an effect on her.
She turned to face the dark road ahead and reached over to turn on the radio. Surfing through the channels, she searched for one playing a familiar song. Once she settled on a station, she snuggled into the passenger seat and pulled her jacket in around her. Avery needed some time to think.
The last time she’d had such a strong reaction to a guy, she’d ended up pregnant. Gavin wasn’t so much a guy as he was a man, a far cry from… And she wasn’t a girl anymore, either. This was different.
In the years since college, Avery hadn’t dated anyone seriously. In fact, she’d hardly dated at all. Her role as Mom had taken precedence over everything else. With a child to provide for, she’d worked hard. Between Eli and her job, all her time had been consumed. Her energy, too.
Letting someone get close enough to hurt her – or her son – had been the farthest thing from her mind. At first it was because of the way she’d been stung by Eli’s father. Then it became a matter of survival. Single parenthood had been hard, and she’d poured everything she’d had into making sure her son had felt the lack of father as little as possible.
Gavin had been spot-on. Eli was good kid. Her job wasn’t over, not by a long shot. Maybe, though, she’d finally reached a place where she could take a step back. Was she ready to let someone into her life? Into their lives?
Having been raised by a single mom, Gavin would understand the risks better than most. He would know the balance she wanted, the kind that would allow both her son and the man in her life to share the limelight. She wouldn’t be willing to make Eli less important so the person she was dating could feel more important.
“I’m hungry.” Eli’s voice intruded into her thoughts.
Avery smiled to herself. She had to face it. Eli would never allow himself to be made less important. No point worrying over the things that would never happen.
“You’ve got the snack bag. Surely there’s something good to eat in there. After all, you’re the one who packed it.”
Eli rummaged around in the back seat for a while. “Yeah, about that…”
Any other day, Avery would have been put on the alert by Eli’s voice. She would have felt the hair on the back of her neck rise as she waited for the other shoe of Eli’s conversation to drop. Too many things, however, had gone wrong in the last day-and-a-half. There wasn’t much Eli could say at present that would bother her.
“I might have forgotten the bag with snacks back at the hotel.”
Avery swiveled in her seat to take a look at her son. “You might have?”
He blushed. “I sort of totally forgot it.”
She threw her head back and laughed, which ended up hurting more than she’d expected it to. Eli gawked at her as if she’d told him to dissect a live rodent that had gone swimming in toxic guano. She could see Gavin smirking as he continued driving at a snail’s pace.
“Oh, Eli. I wish this trip had gone so smoothly that a misplaced bag of food could bother me. Alas, that isn’t even annoying enough to be a blip on the disaster radar.”
Eli grumbled.
“What was that?” Avery’s inquiry was filled with sweetness, the artificial kind.
“You might not think it’s a disaster.” Her son pouted. “But I’m still hungry.”
She laughed some more. “Maybe we’ll find an open gas station in the next town.”
“Not likely.” Gavin pointed to a lone gas station as they passed it. “It seems that every small town in Oklahoma shuts down at eight o’clock sharp on Christmas Eve.”
“Okay.” Eli’s angst-filled sigh gave his words a dramatic flair. “I was on the fence before, but this is now officially the worst Christmas Eve ever.”
Good to know. Clearly everything else they’d been through paled in comparison to the loss of food.
“I respect your priorities, Eli.” Gavin wasn’t helping, either. “In fact…”
The words had barely left Gavin’s mouth when his phone started chiming. He reached for it and took a quick look. “I must have a signal. A bunch of texts from Mitchell showed up, and all the ones that were in my outbox are now gone.” He tossed the phone in Avery’s direction. “See if you can call him.”
She caught the phone and pulled Mitchell’s name up from the contact list and pressed call. It rang one, twice… and then she got disconnected. She tried again. This time she got one ring before it disconnected. After shaking the phone, Avery again pressed the call button. No luck.
“We lost the signal.” She resisted the urge to throw the phone. It would only hit the windshield and bounce back, probably knocking out her front teeth in the process.
“Either you have the worst cell service ever, or a whole boatload of cell towers are down.” Eli, still foodless, lacked his usual charm.
Gavin sighed. “I think the car emits a field of energy preventing communication. Think about it. The only times we’ve been able to call for help are when we’ve been out of the car.”
Eli shook his head. “Everything seems to be going a lot more smoothly since the car got hit. Maybe the guy who sideswiped it did us a favor.”
“All I have to do to change that…” Gavin threw the teen a wink in the rearview mirror. “…is press on the gas and bring this baby up higher than thirty miles per hour. Then your teeth will rattle right on out of your head.”
“Okay, okay.” Eli started rummaging around on the floor again, probably looking to see if he dropped a pretzel earlier in the day. “You have to admit, though, aside from that, we’ve made it through, like, two whole towns, and without any problems. That’s practically a record.”
Avery’s chin dropped to her chest as she shook her head. “Please tell me you did not just say that out loud.”
Before anybody could utter a word, the car came to a jarring stop.
Chapter Sixteen
Carnegie, OK
December 24, 10:50 p.m.
Gavin sat there. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white and his hands began to ache. Dread swept away that cobwebs that their slow speed had allowed to gather. Dread with a touch of anger. He gritted his teeth to keep his voice even. “Is everyone okay?”
“What happened?” Avery pushed at the airbag that had come flying out at her from the dashboard.
“I’m never saying things are going good again, I promise.” Eli’s voice was smaller than usual.
“Everyone’s okay?” Gavin’s jaw muscles began to relax.
“Yeah, we’re fine.” Avery watched him, eyebrows drawn together and questions lurking in those beautiful green eyes.
“I think the axel broke.” His movements were abrupt as he batted away the deployed air bag. Resting at a drunken angle with the front driver side sunken low, the hatchback felt precariously balanced. Gavin scanned the area outside his window to make sure they were still on the road and not hanging over some heretofore unseen precipice. The way this trip had been going, finding a gaping ravine under his door seemed more likely than finding asphalt. As he searched with his eyes, he saw faded roadway dusted with remnants of the snowstorm.
He turned to Avery. “I need to get out and see what’s wrong.”
She gazed at him blankly for a minute before her eyes widened, and she shook her head. “Sorry. I forgot your door’s not working. Hold on.” She opened her door and exited so he could climb across the gearshift and follow suit.
By the time Gavin had his feet on the ground, Eli was out, too. “I’m not sure I want to stay in there alone anymore. Somehow it doesn’t seem safe.”
“Here’s the problem.” Avery called from the other side of the car.
Gavin sauntered around to where she stood near the front end on the driver’s side. There was a hole in the road, easily two feet across, and he’d driven the front of the car into it.
Gavin pulled the stocking cap from his head. “I swear it wasn’t there a minute ago. I was watching the road. I would have noticed somet
hing as big as that.”
Eli and his mother both squatted down to examine the hole.
“It’s a puddle.” The teen scratched his head.
Avery fingered the jagged shards of ice at the edge of the hole. “I think it was frozen over. As dark as it is, and with snow blown across the frozen top, it’s no wonder you didn’t see it.”
Gavin ran his fingers through his crisp black hair. “I’m at the end of my rope here. I’m half-tempted to kick the other tires, but I’m afraid if I do, they’ll fall off, or worse, instantaneously combust.”
Avery stood back up. “I think the axel’s okay. The car’s small. If we work together, we might be able to lift it out of the hole.”
Eli pointed to the ground around them. “Once we do, we should light some flares to mark the area around it so nobody else falls in.”
“I’m sorry, guys.” Puddle or asphalt, it didn’t matter. Failure gnawed at Gavin.
Head angled to the side, Avery watched him. Sympathy lurked in the lines created by her furrowed brow. “It’s okay. We’re fine. We can fix this.”
“This entire trip has been nothing but one disaster after another.” Gavin wasn’t willing to let it go.
“It’s not such a big deal.” Eli shrugged as he burrowed his hands into his jacket’s pockets. “We’re living in a B-rated movie, but a lot more original. I’m not going to have to go to the theater for months after we get back to Albuquerque because nothing those scriptwriters can come up with is going to be able to compare to real life.”
They were trying to make him feel better, and he appreciated it. Still… “It’s my job to make sure you guys get there safely, and I’m not doing a very good job of that.”
Avery frowned and tugged on her scarf. “It was never your job to keep us safe.”
Gavin shook his head. “See, I know that. It doesn’t change the fact that I feel responsible for you both. But what happens? You almost got hit the last time we stopped!” With a booming voice, he yelled to the cast-over sky, “This is getting ridiculous!”
