Page 70 of Wreckage

Amanda.

I exhaled sharply, rubbing my hand down my face. I had avoided thinking about her, but I couldn’t anymore, not after last night.

Not after the way Elena looked at me, the way she felt in my arms, the way her trust in me had cracked something deep inside my chest.

Amanda deserved more than a half-hearted, going-through-the-motions relationship.

She deserved someone who actually wanted her. And that wasn’t me. It hadn’t been me for a long time.

When I got home, I was going to end it. No more pretending. No more lying. For the first time in years, I felt confident about something. That was Elena and Adrian and whatever the hell was between us.

I wasn’t letting it go. I wasn’t letting them go.

The trees finally thinned,and I stepped out onto the edge of a mountain cliff.

The view was breathtaking. Mountains stretched as far as the eye could see, endless waves of green and white and shadows.

But there was nothing else.

No roads. No smoke from chimneys. No sign of life at all. Just wild, unrelenting isolation.

I clenched my jaw, my stomach twisting.

We were so far from everything that we would never be found if no one had looked in the right place.

I pulled my phone from my pocket, turning it on for the first time since the crash.

I had left it off to preserve battery, convinced it was useless, that I wouldn’t have service this far into nowhere.

But now…

Now, I needed to try.

The screen flickered to life, and I stared at it as it loaded.

And then?—

My heart stopped.

One bar.

Then two.

Then—

Messages.

So many goddamn messages.

They flooded in all at once—missed calls, texts, and voicemails piling up so fast I could barely process them.

A broken laugh escaped me, a choked, disbelieving sound.

Service.

I had service.

I ignored everything and went straight to the only number that mattered.

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