Page 73 of Crashed (Driven 3)
Rylee.
I get in the car as I fumble with the phone in my hand, and it takes me a second to bring her up from my recent calls list. The phone rings but I’m fucking impatient. “C’mon, Ry!” I pound the steering wheel with my fist as the ringing filters through the speakers of the car.
“Hey!” She laughs.
The sound. My fucking God, that carefree sound in her voice grabs a hold of my fucking heart and just squeezes it so tight I feel like I can’t breathe. It’s like all of a sudden all of the bullshit is gone with Tawny and the crash, and even though I can’t take a breath, I feel like I can breathe for the first time in a long ass time. Is this what it’s supposed to feel like? Fucking clarity and shit?
I start to speak and I can’t. What the fuck? It’s like I want to say everything to her at once and yet I can’t think of how to start. I start laughing, like batshit crazy laughing, because I’m the middle of some shitty strip mall and it hits me now?
“You okay?” she asks in that sexy tone of hers.
“Yeah,” I choke out through my laughter. “I just—”
The giggle comes through the speaker loud and clear and I just stop talking. It’s Zander’s and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard it. The sound cuts me fucking open like a filet knife. I swear to God I couldn’t be any more of a chick right now with my emotions all over the fucking place.
“Go get your glove in the backyard and we’ll get going, okay?” I hear him agree through the line. “Sorry, you were going to tell me what was so funny.”
And I start to talk, begin to tell her about the test results when I hear a sound that is so horrifying it reaches into my chest and tears into my hardened heart. “What the fuck is that?” I can’t say it quickly enough because despite the high-pitched scream that sounds like a wounded animal fighting for his life, I can still hear Rylee moving through the phone line.
My stomach churns at the fucking sound and her goddamn silence. “Ry? Tell me what’s going on. Ry?”
“No, no, no, no!” she says and there’s something in her voice—fear, disbelief, and shock mixed with defiance—that has shivers dancing up my spine and has me immediately starting the car and throwing it into gear.
“Goddammit, Ry! Talk to me. What the fuck is wrong?” I yell into the phone, panic overtaking me, but all I hear is her heavy breathing. And then whimpering. “Rylee!”
“You can’t have him!” she says in an eerily calm voice, which sounds far away and has me cutting off some poor fucker in the lane next to me.
“Who’s there, Ry? Tell me, baby, please,” I plead, fear like I’ve only ever known in my youth tasting like bile in my mouth. Fear in my every fucking nerve. I struggle with deciding whether to hang up and call 9-1-1, but that would mean I’d have to hang up on her—not hear her, not know she’s okay.
“You fucking bitch!” is all I hear before she cries out in pain and the phone goes dead.
“No!” I scream and smash my hand into the steering wheel. My eyes blur as I try to push the numbers on my phone, but my fingers are shaking so fucking bad that I can’t even manage 9-1-1 until after the third try.
“9-1-1. What’s your emergency?” The disembodied voice answers.
“Please help them. They’re screaming and … they’re screaming!” I plead with her.
“Who’s screaming, sir?”
“Rylee and Zand…” I can’t fucking think straight; ice floods my veins and my only thought is I need to get to them so I don’t even realize I’m not making any fucking sense. “Please, someone is there and—”
“Sir, what’s your name? What’s the address?”
“Co-Colton,” I stutter out when I realize I don’t even know the fucking address. Just the street. “Switzerland Avenue.”
Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Hang on, baby. Hang on. I’m coming. It’s all I repeat in my head—over and over—as my body shakes.
“What’s the address sir?”
“I don’t fucking know!” I shout at the 9-1-1 operator. “The one with all the goddamn paparazzi out front. There’s no one else in the house but her and a little boy. Please! Quickly.”
And when I look up from ending the call, I have to slam on the brakes as I hit fucking road construction.
“Fuck!” I yell, laying in on my horn like it’s my fucking lifeline.
Rylee.
She’s my only thought.
