Page 58 of Endless Love

I watch the store entrance as I run through possible scenarios, thinking of what we’ll do tomorrow, and the day after, until we get to Vegas. I’m constantly scanning the parking lot, looking for Bradley’s car, for the ominous shape of my brother’s muscled bulk, for any sign of trouble at all. Every minute feels like an hour, although when I look down at my watch, I can see that only about fifteen minutes has passed.

When the doors open and I see her walk out, I feel a wave of relief, letting out a breath that I hadn’t even realized I was holding. She’s changed clothes, wearing a simple grey t-shirt and jeans now, a thin black hoodie tossed over it. She hastwo bulging plastic bags in her hands, and I can see that she’s walking a little more steadily—pain medication, maybe. That feeling of relief only grows, but I can’t fully relax until she slides back into the passenger’s seat of the car, setting the bags down on the floorboard as she shuts the door firmly behind her.

I immediately lock them, not taking my eyes off her for even a second. “It went okay?”

Charlotte nods. “It’s so late that there weren’t many employees. I got a couple of weird looks, but only one of them asked if I was okay. And I just told them I took a spill on my bike and needed to clean up, that I didn’t want to freak out my family when I got home. They bought it easily enough.” She reaches down, opening up the bags for me to see inside. “I grabbed some clothes, a first aid kit, and some more food and bottled water. And these.” She pulls out two prepaid phones. “I figured you needed new burners.”

I can feel my eyes widen. I’m more than a little impressed by her foresight in that—she’s clearly been paying attention.

“You’re a natural,” I tease her, smiling. At least—it’s meant to be teasing, but from the shadow that crosses her face, I don’t think she takes it that way. “I just mean—you did a good job, Charlotte. All of this is good.”

She gives me a small smile, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. I can see the exhaustion in every line of her face—made more evident now, actually, by the fact that the blood is washed away. There’s fear there, too, still in her eyes as she leans back against the seat tiredly and looks over at me. “What now?” she asks quietly, and I let out a heavy sigh as I put the car in gear.

“We’ll need to stop somewhere soon. We’re both exhausted, hurt, and probably in some shock. We need to sleep.” I scrub my hand through my hair, once again wincing at how it feels, matted with blood as it is. “We need a day to rest, honestly, but I don’tthink we can swing that. Weneedto get to Vegas sooner rather than later.”

“Okay, so where?” Charlotte’s frown is audible; I don’t even need to look over at her to know it’s on her face. “The last time we went to a motel, your brothers caught us. And if Ani and Niki figured it out?—”

“I think Lev figured it out,” I interrupt. “And sent them. When they dicked around for too long, he came to check up on things, and that resulted in what happened yesterday.”

“That’s just as bad.” Charlotte lets out a small, huffing breath. “So he knows what we’ve been doing. And you’ve said before major hotels are off-limits, because there are too many people. Which begs the question, what the hell are we going to do in Vegas?”

“There, we’ll get the nicest hotel available. One with security, keycards, the lot. There, we can get the kind of room where it’ll be harder for Lev to get to us, and where I can pay people to keep their mouths shut.” I glance over at her. “In a place like Vegas, where there’s plenty of criminal activity like the kind my family involves themselves in, silence has a price. But in backwoods Idaho, or any of the places we’ve driven through so far, we’d just be putting people in danger.”

Charlotte nods. “And tonight?”

“Tonight, I think we should head into one of the national forests. There are safety cabins out there, shelters for hikers and campers who need a place to crash in a storm or some other kind of emergency. I think this counts as an emergency,” I add wryly as I spread the new road atlas that Charlotte grabbed out on my lap, flicking on an overhead light. “They’re pretty off the grid. Hard to find, unless you’re looking for them specifically.”

“And you think Bradley won’t look for that specifically? Or Lev?” There’s uncertainty in Charlotte’s voice, and it makes a tangle of mixed feelings surface in my gut. On the one hand, I’mproud of her for thinking this through, for questioning it all, and for taking an active part in this. But on the other, I wish she trusted me. I wish that all of this had brought us closer, instead of seemingly pushing us further apart. Right now, I can’t help but feel that more than ever, she’s only still with me because it’s her best option.

That as soon as she has the opportunity to safely leave, she will.

I take a deep, slow breath, pushing those thoughts aside. They’re not helpful right now, for either of us. There’s nothing I can do about it at this moment, and what Charlotte needs most from me right now, I know, is for me to focus on our immediate crisis.

The need for a safe place to sleep, and shelter, so we can recover before the morning.

“It’s possible,” I admit. “It might occur to both, or either of them, that we might try to hide away somewhere like that. But we have to stop somewhere. We can’t drive through the night, not in our current state.”

“This is an automatic,” Charlotte points out. “I can drive this.”

“Yeah, you can. But you shouldn’t.” I shake my head. “You were in shock earlier, Charlotte. I only let you sleep because I couldn’t bear to wake you up, but you probably hit your head. We’re both banged up, and our bodies can only take so much. We won’t make it if we collapse before we get to Vegas.”

Charlotte is silent, and I take a deep breath. “Those cabins are scattered all over the parks. Bradley and Lev don’t know whose car we stole, or what roads we took. They won’t have had time to figure it out yet. Maybe, if that guy called the theft in, Bradley could get to us quicker, but honestly—” I shake my head. “There’s plenty of stolen cars every day. Maybe less so out here, but he’s still gotta decide which one he thinks is us. He has tofigure out which cabin we chose. Our odds are just as good as a motel, maybe better.”

She nods, her lips still pressed together, thin with worry. “Okay,” she says finally, on a long exhale. “I trust you.”

Those three small words, three of the six that I’ve never really expected to hear from her, hit me harder than I expected. I feel as if the air has been knocked out of my lungs for a moment, and I swallow hard, trying to keep my composure. I hadn’t realized just how badly Iwantedto hear that from her, until she said it. Now, I just want to hear her say it again.

I nod, feeling briefly incapable of speech as I stare at the road ahead, following it until I turn down a side road marked on the atlas, towards one of the parks. We’re both silent as I drive, the night closing in around us, deepening the further we get from civilization. The only sounds are the hum of the engine and the soft brush of the wind through the trees outside, along with the occasional rustle of Charlotte’s clothing as she shifts in the seat or brushes against the bags on the floorboard.

It takes about an hour before I see signs for a cabin. I turn onto a narrow, thin road, grateful that I stole a car with all-wheel drive as I drive us further into the forest. The trees loom over us, creating a dark canopy that sends a shiver down my spine, blocking out the night sky above us and the shimmer of the stars.

There’s something a bit spooky about it, especially this time of year. But I push the crawling feeling that creeps over my skin aside, focusing on the task at hand. The forest might be silent and dark, but there are far, far more dangerous things out there. And this, hopefully, will keep us shielded from them for the night.

As I expected, when we reach the cabin, it isn’t much. I’ve stayed in places like this once or twice before, when I’ve gone off on long hikes to get away from my family and clear my head. It’s primitive, without electricity or running water, but fromwhat I know of these kinds of places, there will be a lantern, basic bedding, some bottled water, and a fireplace with some cut wood left from the park rangers who keep these cabins stocked. Enough to get us through the night, and after the day we’ve had, it looks as good as any five-star hotel to me.

I park the Subaru around the back, where it won’t be immediately seen if Bradley, or maybe a park ranger, comes by and happens to look at the license plate. We won’t be able to keep this car long, just in case the man that I stole it from does decide to call in the theft. But right now, I’m pushing that further down the list of things to worry about.

“Let’s grab our stuff and get inside,” I murmur to Charlotte, glancing around. There’s no one to be seen, and no reason to think we’ve been followed, but I feel anxious all the same. “We shouldn’t hang out in the open, just in case.”

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