Page 19 of Endless Love

That nausea rises up again, threatening to choke me, because I can’t imagine the kind of person that does this. That revels in pain and fear. But I canfeelit, the pleasure radiating off of him, the thrill of the hunt.

Lev whistles, like someone would for a dog. “Come on, girl. Come to me, and I’ll make sure you enjoy at least some of what I do to you. Drag this out, and I’ll take every one of my brother’s sins out on you.”

Fear spikes through me, cold and sharp, and I want to run. I want to break away from Ivan, and flee back into the room, oranywhere, but both exits are blocked, and Ivan made me promise to stay close. I don’t know what his plan is, but he’s the best chance I have.

Right now, he’s theonlychance.

It all happens so fast that I barely have time to register it at all. One minute, Lev is whistling, taunting from behind us, and then Ivan pulls the trigger, shooting as the sound explodes in my ears, and I fight against the urge to drop to the ground.

Bullets spray at his other two brothers’ feet. I hear one scream as a bullet strikes him in the calf, the other shrieks as one hits his shoulder. They go toppling backward, flailing on the stairs as blood spatters, and Ivan keeps shooting as he walks, firing twice more towards them as he grabs my wrist with his other hand and hauls me forward, breaking into a run.

“Ivan!”Lev roars from behind us, but Ivan keeps going, dragging me along, and I don’t know how I manage to stay upright as we tear down the stairs. My feet slip in the blood, and I almost go down, but some combination of Ivan holding onto me and my own determination keeps me upright.

“Don’t stop,” Ivan says harshly, as we bolt across the parking lot. “Get in the car, and get down.”

Behind me, I hear shots. I flinch, a high-pitched sound of fear escaping from my lips before I realize I’ve even made it, but I keep running. For once, I don’t argue. I just fling myself into the car as Ivan yanks open the door, huddling down in the seat as he leaps in next to me and hits the gas the moment the engine roars to life.

Tears are running down my face. I don’t know when I started crying, or shaking all over, but I roll into a ball as tightly as I can in the seat as Ivan careens out of the parking lot, driving like a bat out of hell as he flees the motel.

I don’t ask if they’re following us. I don’t ask if they’re behind us or what happens next. I wrap my arms around my head, burying my face in the side of the seat as the movement of the car wrenches me back and forth.

For the first time since I woke up this morning, I don’t fight it. I just let myself cry.

9

IVAN

The sound of Charlotte crying feels like it tears something out of my chest, but I can’t think about it right now. I have to get us away. Lev will be chasing us, with Ani and Niki, and he’ll run me off the road if he can catch up. He’s not going to stop. I have to get us far enough away, off the beaten path, that he won’t follow.

I had planned to cut a straight line across to Nevada. Four states lay between us and a new identity, and I was going to go there as fast as I could manage it. But I see now that the only chance we have is by zigzagging in a way that won’t make sense, and will hopefully throw Lev off long enough for us to get to Vegas well before he does.

I also have to hope he hasn’t figured out my contact yet. This man ismycontact, not one that I’ve gotten through my father’s connections, and that gives me hope. But only a small amount.

Using the map on my phone was a rookie mistake, one that I only did because I thought I’d thrown them off enough with fake leads that I could get a good distance away, and then stop using it. I turn the phone off, using one hand and my teeth to pry open the side that has the SIM card. I yank it out, dropping it on thefloorboard and grinding it under my heel. The phone is next, and I slam my foot against it as I drive, cracking the case until the phone is in pieces.

The shattered SIM card goes out the window. The phone is next, a piece at a time. All the while, Charlotte is still in a ball next to me, shaking in the passenger’s seat.

“You need to put your seatbelt on.” It’s far from the first thing I want to say to her—far from theonlything I want to say to her, but right now, it feels like the most important one. If Lev catches up to me and tries to run the car off the road, I need her to be protected.

“What?” Her voice is cracked, and I reach over, grabbing the seat belt and yanking it over her.

“Your seatbelt. Lev is coming after us. He might try to get us into a wreck.”

“This is insane,” she whispers. “This is all insane.”

“I know.” I let out a heavy sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose between my fingers.

“Why didn’t they shoot us?” Her voice is tiny, small, muffled from where she’s still curled in the seat, and I hate hearing her like this. I hate that it’s because of me.

“He doesn’t want us dead. And he wants us hurt, but not like that.” I let out another heavy breath. “My brother is cocky. Arrogant. He doesn’t think I can get away from him. He’s just as happy to keep chasing because, in his mind, the more of a pain in the ass I make this, the more I justify every terrible thing he wants to do. And the more freedom my father will give him to do those things, if I keep making this harder.”

Charlotte nods slowly. I see it out of the corner of my eye as she slowly pushes herself up, swallowing hard as she tugs on the seatbelt, adjusting it. “He’s not going to stop, is he?” she says softly, and I shake my head. “You were telling the truth about that.”

“And some other things.” I glance in the rearview mirror, speeding up. Right now, getting pulled over is the least of my worries. “As soon as I think it’s safe enough to stop for even a minute, or when we need gas next—whichever comes first—I’m going to get a road map. We’re going to go up, through Wisconsin and go north, the longer way around. It’ll be longer before we get to Vegas, so more dangerous in terms of time. But if we take a straight shot, and don’t try to confuse Lev at all, he’s just going to come after us. Same for Bradley and the feds. And we have to stop sometime. We’ll need food and sleep. We can’t run on empty, or we’ll start making mistakes.”

Charlotte is silent. It’s a heavier silence than her angry one before, because I think she’s coming to terms with some of this, like it or not.

I grit my teeth as I focus on the road. I didn’t want to be this person for her. I didn’t want to be the one to rip her rudely into the truth of a world where no one is kind and death waits around every corner. I told myself I could have her, and keep her separate from it all, and it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.

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