If she does what Heath is telling her to do, she will destroy Wes’s life. She will destroy them. No coming back from something like this.
That fresh start doesn’t sound so good after all, because it would be without Wes.
Forever.
Bù kěnéng.
Impossible.
Which leaves her with one option: run.
She has to run the same way Wes did, because it won’t be long before someone describes her car and the police will know she’s the one who hit Karen.
Ivy rushes off—away from Heath and out of the room. She makes a last-minute decision as she goes. Instead of leaving out the front door, she grabs his car keys off the table in the foyer and heads into the garage. Behind her, Heath is yelling. Following.
“Don’t do this,” he says. “Please, Ivy. You’re just going to make things worse.”
But he doesn’t physically stop her. Doesn’t put his hands on her. Heath watches her get into his car and back it out of the garage, maneuvering around her wrecked one. It hardly takes any work. She isn’t used to such a smart vehicle.
Heath looks out from the garage, shaking his head at her. Visibly upset.
Visibly disappointed.
He doesn’t understand. Never did.
* * *
—
Ivy heads straight home. The police will be looking for her car, not this one, and she only needs a few minutes to pick up anything she can sell for cash. Jewelry, mostly. She doesn’t have a lot, but every little bit will help.
She drives behind the main building of her apartment complex, away from the main lot, and pulls up along the stucco walls separating the garden apartment patios. As she walks into the building, she notices the light in her living room is on.
It shouldn’t be.
Maybe the police are already here. She almost leaves, but first she checks her door in the hallway. Closed and locked. Perhaps she left the light on.
Still, she opens the door slowly and looks straight down the hallway, into the living room. The sliding glass door to the patio is open. The metal frame on the wall is warped. She turns around to run when she hears him.
“Ivy.”
76
Wes.
His voice stops Ivy dead. Always.
She runs to the living room and finds him standing by the couch, his hand extended out to her.
“Hey, baby,” he says.
Ivy throws her arms around his neck. He slides an arm around her waist, pressing her body against his.
“You came to me,” she says.
“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.