Page 11 of Through The Woods

As Clint’s hands squeezed, the only noises that escaped my lips were little puffs of air as it was forced from my body. I clawed at his arms and face, but still the only real sound was coming from the stereo in the truck.

Clint made small grunts as he put all of his strength into his hands. “I want to rip you apart until you hurt as badly as I do. Why’d you talk to him? I trusted you!” He roared as more tears fell from his eyes.

My vision began to blur and my bladder released. I was going to die listening to Clint sobbing above me and Eddie Vedder wailing from the truck about the lost love of his life shining like a bright star in someone else’s sky.

My eyes rolled back into my head just as there was a loud metallic sound.

Heaven’s made of metal and the moon’s made of cheese.

“Neve, get up!” The voice sounded close by.

God?

Only good girls made it to heaven…

Yeah, I was definitely in Hell. God would’ve let me rest.

“Neve, wake up.” The voice was insistent, even going as far as hitting my cheek.

My eyes fluttered open to Trever’s face mere inches from mine. “Get up. You have to get up.”

I coughed until I thought a lung would come up, my eyes streaming.

He pulled me to my feet, but my limbs didn’t feel like my own. Nothing about my body seemed familiar. He shook my shoulders roughly.

“You have to run. Run, Neve! Don’t stop!”

I looked down and saw Clint sprawled out on his stomach, a shovel lying nearby. Trever hooked a finger under my chin and brought my eyes up to meet his. “He brought you here to kill you. He thinks you’re a nark. If he comes to and sees you here, he’ll finish it. Nod if you understand.”

I nodded and took a deep breath. Clint groaned from nearby and Trever shoved me toward the tree line. “Go!”

I’d thought that failing every class my first semester and losing my scholarship was the scariest thing I’d ever been through. I now realized how incredibly naïve that had been. I forced my body to move as fast as it could. Luckily, there was still enough coke and adrenaline in my system to push me along. I knew that if he caught up to me, I wouldn’t get another chance.

He was probably killing Trever at this very moment.

I didn’t want to die.

That thought propelled me forward and I jogged faster, low-lying tree branches and limbs scraping along my face and arms. Blood poured steadily from the wound in my side, but I refused to stop, even as my lungs felt ready to explode.

I had to keep going.

An object in motion tends to stay in motion…

Fine time for my brain to make a reappearance.

“Aghhh!”

An object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction, unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

My ankle caught on a tree root and I cried out in a harsh whisper before slamming to the ground. My brain urged me to get up and keep running, but my body was done. I’d twisted my ankle; with my luck, it was probably broken. I was also losing a lot of blood from where Clint reopened my stab wound. On top of all of that, the bastard had just tried to choke me to death and it felt like I’d swallowed a million razor blades. My limbs were so heavy—there was no way I could move them.

What was I even running toward anyway?

I had to be a hundred miles away from Boulder and at least twenty from the nearest town.

I was done.

Just then, I heard a loud crashing sound coming from the direction I’d just run from, so I forced myself up onto my forearms and army crawled over near a fallen log. He was going to find me, but I wasn’t going to lie still and wait for death. Dirt and forest debris clung to my side. If only it were fall; I could’ve used a pile of leaves to hide in right about now.

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