Page 2 of Good and Gone

All I can hear is the rumble.

All I can smell is the exhaust.

All I can taste is the terror.

Hot blood whooshes through my ears, mimicking the sound of the locomotive. Everything in me screams:Move. Get off the tracks.

But I don't.

I can't.

I know I am going to die, but that’s not the saddest thing. The saddest thing is I can't recall the last time I've felt so alive.

1

Hailey

Before

My eyelids feel like sandpaper, and my mouth tastes like a sock. I am barely conscious. But I hear him clear as day. “Wake up, sleepyhead,” he whispers, kissing my neck.

I roll over and groan. “What time is it?”

“Time for you to get up.”

“I don’t want to,” I say, clutching my pillow. It’s warm and welcoming, and he’s desperately trying to shimmy it out from under my head.

“Come on,” he tells me triumphantly. He playfully swats me with the pillow he’s just snatched. I hate it when he wins. Especially in the morning. “Get up.”

“Noooo,” I moan, burying my face in the sheets. Anything to avoid opening my eyes. The morning sun is shining brightly through the blinds, but it feels like I’ve just drifted off to sleep. How can it be morning already?

“Come on, love, it's almost seven,” he says. “Are you feeling okay?”

The realization hits me as I recall the email still marked unread in my inbox. The truth is I’m not feeling okay. I lost a major brand deal yesterday. The news came out of nowhere. They just didn’t feel that we were inalignmentany longer. That was the way they put it, but of course, they left out the part where I’d rejected the account manager’s sexual advances at a publicity event last month. He was drunk, and I brushed him off. Not that I would have changed anything, but I didn’t think I’d lose the account over it. Not only have Inotgotten up the nerve to tell Tyler, I’ve hardly accepted the blow myself. And itisa blow. Particularly to our bank account. I’m going to have to think of something, and quick. Worse, two days ago, I was so close to my goal of three million followers. We had all the strategies in place to hit our target. And then,wham,I go and mess it all up with a post about having help around the house. It wasn’t meant to be offensive, it was about not being able to do it all, but as it turns out, that’snotwhy people follow me. They need to believe. It took a loss of 14k overnight for me to learnthatlesson.

“Hailey?” he says. “I asked if you’re okay…”

I grunt in response, noting the concern in his voice. Still, I’m not ready to face him. One look at me and he’llknow.My mistake could bury us.

He leans over and pulls down the sheets, exposing my nakedness.

“Mmm,” he murmurs. “You’re so hot.”

I feel exhausted, almost delirious as he lowers himself onto the bed. He kisses my stomach, working his way upward, and I begin to wake up.

I reach down and grab his head, guiding him south. He works his magic, sending a jolt through my body. His mouth feels so good I almost forget how tired I am. “Oh, fuck!”

Tyler thinks I am speaking about him, not to him, but I’m not. I’ve just remembered that I'm supposed to take muffins to school for Mason. And I forgot to pick them up yesterday.

I sit up abruptly. “Fuck. I forgot the muffins.”

“Muffins?” he asks, perplexed. “That's what’s going through your mind?”

Actually, no. I’d been timing everything down to the minute, mulling over whether I'd have enough time to make coffeeandhave a shower if I let this continue on, and that's how I arrived at the realization about the muffins. “Yes,” I tell him.

He looks up at me, a mixture of confusion and heavy defeat in his eyes.

“I mean...no.”

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