***
I slept. I hadn’t meant to sleep but when I opened my eyes, Dani in the driver’s seat and Felix drooling on the center console, I was relieved.
“Good morning,” Dani said. “Well, not technically.”
I glanced out the window, the road still dark.
“Where are we?”
“Just passed Lubbock.”
“Where?”
“Exactly. Don’t worry you haven’t missed much. Well, except for Felix getting chased out of the women’s bathroom at the last rest stop. Biker chick too. I thought he was going to get his ass kicked.”
Felix sprang up. “Yeah, thanks for just sitting in the car and watching.”
“What did you want me to do? If you couldn’t take her I sure as hell couldn’t.”
“I don’t know. Create a distraction. Run her bike over with the car. Scream bloody murder while I snuck out of her line of sight. I’m sure you could have thought of something.”
“What does it matter now? Faking that asthma attack obviously worked.”
“I was faking.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Is this what you two have been doing while I’ve been asleep?”
“Mostly,” Dani said.
“And listening to the shitty music on Dani’s IPod,” Felix added.
“I’m the one driving,” she said, “therefore I get to control the radio. Those are official road trip rules.”
“This isn’t a road trip.” Felix pointed South. “The beach is that way. We’re headed to God knows where to wake some total stranger out of a coma.”
“Could you be any more insensitive?” Dani hissed.
“Insensitive? Who offered to split gas with you and help drive?”
“Like you’re not doing it just because you’re in love with me.”
“And you better be careful before I change my mind.”
“Jesus, Felix,” I cut in. “You should have done that a long time ago.”
Dani glanced over her shoulder. “What’s your problem?”
I let out a groan, burying my face in my knees.
“Hello?” Felix looked back, shook me. “Bryn? Oh shit, did she fall asleep?”
“No,” I mumbled.
“Oh good.”
“Look, Bryn,” Dani said, “if this is too much, you know, stress, I can turn—”
“It’s not this. It’s you. Both of you.”
“Us?”
“Yes. You two drive me crazy! This bickering and pretending to hate each other, it’s fucking annoying. And it’s getting old. You two just don’t get it. I have no idea what I’m going to find when we get to New Mexico. If he’ll wake up. If he’ll remember me. I know you probably think I’m crazy, that I’ve fucking lost it, but at least I’m trying. At least I try.” I buried my face again, speaking against my knees. “You guys don’t know how lucky you are.”
They were quiet for the first time.
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Felix said. “Maybe a little strange, maybe even a little—”
I kicked the back of his seat.
“Unique. I was going to say unique.”
“I didn’t mean to snap like that,” I said. “I was just, I don’t know, having a moment.”
“No worries,” Felix said. “You’re right though. I know it doesn’t seem like I take things seriously but I do.” He looked at Dani. “I take things seriously.”
“Just so you know…” I leaned into the empty space between them, “being overly-sentimental is equally as annoying.”
“She’s right,” Dani said. “But it’s also incredibly sexy.”
In the corner of my eye I saw Felix reach for her hand.
I slumped back in the seat. “Okay now you guys are grossing me out.”
“You’ll make out with a guy in a coma but a little hand holding grosses you out?” Felix said.
“And here we go again with the insensitivity,” Dani sighed.
“He’s not…well, he is but it’s—”
“Exactly.”
Felix let go of Dani’s hand, switching out their iPods when she wasn’t looking.
“So do you even know which part of the hospital he’s in?” Dani asked. “The room number maybe?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?”
“Okay, not at all but I know his full name. I’ll just ask a nurse or something.”
“And if someone asks how you know him? What happens if you run into someone he knows?”
“I’ll say we’re friends.”
“You might want to come up with some kind of a backstory,” Felix said. “Just in case.”
“Okay, we met at school?”
“And if one of his classmates is there dropping off flowers and doesn’t recognize you?”
“Okay, we met at a concert or something.”
“Good,” Felix said. “But what if they ask to see an ID? They’ll see it’s a Texas license and—”
“My ID? Why would they ask to see that?”
“If it was my son in a coma,” Felix said, “I would make sure that everyone who came in to gawk at him was properly vetted.”
“I’m not going to gawk.”
“Oh really? So you’re going to go in there and do what exactly?”
I hadn’t really thought about that. I’d been too busy avoiding the image of Roman in a hospital gown, tubes splicing into his arm, up through his nose. Of his skin, paled and sallow like the day he’d washed up on the beach.
“I’ll talk to him. Maybe he can hear me. Maybe…”
“Yeah,” Dani said. “Maybe.”
Maybe.
No. It would work. It had to. Because I promised him. Because it wasn’t a coincidence. It had to work.
“Shit!” Felix leaned over the console, jerking the wheel.
I slammed into the back of his seat, ears ringing. Felix flew back against the headrest and I tumbled into the floorboard, the car still bucking. We finally skirted to a stop and Dani’s face was pale.
“What the fuck?” she huffed.
“Shit just ran across the road out of nowhere,” Felix said.
I sat up. “What was it?”
I glanced back at the road, something moving through the settling dust. I leaned forward, my arms still shaking from the impact and in the dark I spotted the white tails of a small herd of deer. They skirted into the glow of the taillights. Three of them.
When they cocked their heads I wondered if they saw me too, if they remembered. But then the small one twitched up his nose and I saw something else.
I gripped the headrest until my knuckles burned. The fawn’s ears perked up, its muscles tensed, and then it slid to the ground in one silent beat.
Lifeless.
The shadow just hung there and in that moment I knew that it wasn’t an accident, the car swerving just in time for the deer to steal my fate. But it was a promise. And by the way my veins were already frozen, I knew it was a promise that it would keep.
Chapter 34
Roman
The Girl In Between (The Girl In Between Series Book 1) Page 48
