Page 92 of Forever Mine
“Where is fate taking us tonight?” Elijah asks.
“You tell me.”
“If I tell you, it’s not fate.” He brandishes a quarter from his pocket and flicks it. It flips over in the air before landing heads up. “Right.”
I indicate with my blinker before slowing down and turning right.
In high school, we would go for long drives. Windows rolled down, the wind in our hair, and music blaring. The destination wasn’t important. Sometimes, we’d flip a coin to guide us which direction to go. Heads for right turns, tails for left. We discovered some cool places doing that, like The Rage Room. It’s this bizarre but really cool place where you pay money to spendan hour destroying stuff. They had staged rooms filled with things you could smash and break ’til your heart was content. They even had cars. It was wild and surprisingly fun.
“Right,” he says after another coin toss.
The only problem with this game is that you can wind up almost right back where you started if the coin keeps coming up the same.
“Left.”
The almost full moon reflects off the still surface of a lake that parallels the road to the right, its waters breaching the low bank, swollen from last night’s torrential thunderstorms that rumbled through.
“I’m sorry.”
The seat belt fully extends when Elijah leans over the console and rests his head on my shoulder. “Me, too.”
All the shit from minutes before is forgiven. It’s that simple.
“Fall break is coming up next month. I won’t have soccer practice, and you don’t have to work. Want to go somewhere, just the two of us?”
We need a break. Some peace and quiet. Time alone together without all the chaos or drama.
“I’d love that. Where were you thinking?”
With one hand on the wheel, my free hand reaches for his. “I was thinking of going camping.”
Elijah’s head lifts from my shoulder, and from my peripheral vision, I can see the stunned look on his face.
“You serious?”
“I am.”
Mr. Barnes would take Elijah camping every summer. He loved that time with his dad. They didn’t get to go this summer. I don’t like camping. Being bitten by mosquitoes and kept up all night by weird noises isn’t appealing. But I’ll do it for him.
“It’ll be like Hawaii but with sunrises over the Blue Ridge Mountains instead of the Pacific Ocean.”
“Hawaii was?—”
The nightmarish sound of crunching metal fills my ears. Glass peppers my face in a sudden explosion. The airbags deploy, and the seat belt catches my body when it violently flies sideways. Everything goes topsy-turvy as the car spins a three-sixty and tumbles down a small embankment before smashing into water.
Screams fill the car. From me, from Elijah. I can’t tell.
Elijah. Save Elijah.
But I can’t because the darkness dragging me under won’t let me go.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I love you. My Angel.
Chapter Twenty-Six
ELIJAH
The world revolves violentlyin a blur of shattered glass and screams as we careen out of control. Caught in a spinning pinwheel of madness, I shout Julien’s name, but my voice is drowned out by the mayhem of airbags exploding around us.
