A Twisted Love Story(94)

“I always do.” He doesn’t quite say the words; he breathes them. “Even if the cops are after me.”

“What about wild horses? Could they drag you away?”

He smiles. She knows without seeing his face. “Never,” he says.

Ivy feels her body relax for the first time since he disappeared. He is okay. They are okay.

Heath was wrong. So was she. Wes didn’t betray her, and Ivy should’ve known that. Should’ve known better than to think it.

When they finally separate, she sees the blood.

It’s all over the side of his shirt. There’s so much she can’t tell where it’s coming from. Ivy reaches out to find the wound.

He nods to his arm, the one that isn’t around her. A towel is tied around his bicep, the blood seeping through it. “I got shot.”

“Shot?”

Wes nods. Grimaces a little as he sits down. Her first aid kit is on the coffee table along with a bottle of Advil. “It’s not that bad.”

“We have to go to the hospital,” she says. “Now. Let me help you up.”

“I’m fine. It looks worse than it is.”

“You need a doctor.”

“I’m not going,” he says. “They’ll put me back in jail, and I’ll never get out.”

“But—”

“But nothing. I’m not going back.”

She slumps on the couch next to him, her mind in overdrive. She doesn’t know anything about gunshot wounds, but this amount of blood can’t be good.

Ivy removes the towel from his arm and pushes up his sleeve. It looks bad, but not as bad as she feared. The bullet ripped open the skin a couple inches below his shoulder, but there’s no hole. No bullet inside him. She grabs the bottle of antiseptic and starts to clean it.

“Did the police shoot you?” she says.

“Abigail.”

She shakes her head, like she’s trying to make the pieces fit. “I don’t understand.”

“Abigail is the witness. She said she heard us argue about the accident.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Long story.”

Now it clicks. Abigail really was the voice on his phone. Not that it matters right now.

“How did you get here?” she asks.

“I took her car.”

Ivy covers the wound in antibiotic cream, places a pad on it, and wraps the whole thing with gauze. As she finishes, his phone pings.

“They’re going to come soon,” he says, using his left hand to open the screen. “Only a matter of time before they find her. Someone must’ve heard the shot.”

“Find her? What did you—”

“I think she’s alive, but I don’t know. I hit her with a bat.”

“Jesus Christ.”

Wes furrows his brow, staring at the phone screen. He turns it toward her. A tweet from the Fair Valley Police Department.

Breaking: Hit-and-run on Nightingale Lane. Police are searching for a dark blue or black two-door coupe. Partial license plate 157.

“Those numbers are on your license plate,” he says.

She nods. “I had a little trouble tonight myself.”

“You thought we needed another hit-and-run?”

“It was an accident. I didn’t mean for it to happen.” And she hadn’t. Everything had unfolded so fast it was like she couldn’t keep up. “I went to Heath’s, but he was talking crazy, and then I just left. I have his car.”

“Heath talking crazy? You don’t say.”

Wes doesn’t know the half of it, but now is not the time. “The police are looking for you,” she says. “For both of us. They could be watching right now.”

“I know. We have to go.”

“But—”

“If we both go to prison for what we did tonight, we’ll never see each other again,” he says. “Never.”

He’s right. They would be like her parents, in prison and unable to contact each other.

Even when Wes wasn’t there, he was there; she always had the option of seeing him. But now she thinks about not having that. For years. Maybe forever.

The idea makes her heart hurt in a way she didn’t know was possible. For once, Ivy does not feel the urge to argue with him.

“Okay,” she says.

“Pack light. No phone, no electronics,” he says. “Bring your bank card.”

Ivy goes to her bedroom and stands in front of her closet, frozen. She doesn’t know where to start. For the first time ever, she wishes she had listened to the doomsday preppers and made a bug-out bag.

No time for regret. No time for anything. Ivy grabs her backpack and shoves some clothes in it. Underwear, T-shirts, leggings. A sweater and a down vest, because she has no idea where they’ll end up. For toiletries, the barest of essentials. Only the things she truly can’t live without.

It takes her less than five minutes to gather it all up. The rest will have to stay, including things that are sentimental. Framed photos, notes, and gifts that Wes has given her over the years. She can’t fit any of it.

“Come on,” Wes says.

She walks out of the bedroom, leaving it all behind. Wes is waiting for her, wearing a baseball cap, a fresh shirt, and a backpack slung over his good arm. He still hasn’t shaved. Wes barely resembles the photograph they keep showing on the news.