Page 11 of The Grave Between Us
“Cole makes me very happy,” Noah finally said.
“Would you have asked him to marry you, if he didn’t do it first?”
“I don’t know. Not because I don’t love him. I do. But…” He exhaled. “I don’t want to be as bad a husband to Cole as I was to Lilly. What if I’m just a shitty husband, no matter who I’m married to? What if I’m no good at being married?”
“And what if you were miserable because you’re gay and you were trying not to be? I think that would have an impact on how good or bad of a husband you were.”
“Well—”
“You love him?”
“I do. So much it scares me.”
“Then you’re going to be fine.”
“Why do you ask, anyway? What kicked this off?”
It was Jacob’s turn to sigh, long and loud. Noah thought the SUV tugged to the passenger side, blown by the force of Jacob’s breath. Noah’s gaze flicked from the dash to the road to the tractor trailer rumbling toward them on the opposite side of the muddy median. The sun was sinking, glinting off the truck’s windshield. He lowered his visor.
“I want to marry Holly, but I don’t know if she wants to marry me,” Jacob said.
“What? Are you serious? Holly is wild about you.”
“Easier to see it when it’s not you, huh?” Jacob winked behind his sunglasses. Noah saw his eye crinkle, his eyebrow dip. “Holly loves me, yeah. But does she want to be with me for the rest of her life? Am I the guy she wants to be a father to Brianna?”
“You already are a father to Brianna. You’re the man in her life.”
Jacob gnawed on his lip. “I love that. I want to watch her grow up, and I want to be with Holly and her for the rest of our lives, but… I’m not sure if they’re as in love with me as I am with them.”
“Of course they are—”
There was a tinkling of glass, like a rock had hit the windshield, and then Jacob grunted, as if he’d taken a punch to the arm. He rocked back, his head lolling against the headrest, then hit the passenger window with a solidthunkas a spiderweb of cracks crawled across the windshield, surrounding a dime-sized hole in the glass.
“Jacob—” Noah turned and saw the blood streaming down the side of Jacob’s face, saw his slack features and the white of bone peeking through his dark hair.
He jerked the wheel to the right and slammed on his brakes, ducking low and trying to hide behind the dashboard. Shooter, but where? How? The highway was empty, nothing but mud and horizon.
A horn blared, the deep bellow of a semi. Rubber burned as Noah’s tires screamed across the asphalt, long, dark streaks trailing behind their SUV. He reached across the center console for Jacob, grabbed his wrist. Squeezed and held his breath, waiting, feeling.Please, please.
Anotherplink, another spiderweb in the glass. And then another. Noah jerked the wheel again, and the SUV headed for the embankment, careening off the pavement and into the drainage ditch abutting the highway, a culvert of frozen mud, clogged with the debris of winter. Dirty snow came for him through the windshield as the SUV tipped on its side and plunged nose-first into the ditch.
He flinched, throwing one hand up and the other across Jacob’s chest, an automatic reflex, as if he could do anything against gravity and the force of three tons of crashing steel. Jacob fell into him like dead weight.
Noah slammed forward against his locking seat belt as the SUV screamed, metal tearing on frozen ground. Mud and snow soaked him, rocks and broken glass shredding his forearms and face. He reached for Jacob again, grabbing his shirt and hauling him back, getting his face out of the muck until they slid to a stop on their side, half buried.
Noah hung from his seat, falling forward against the restraint. Jacob was boneless against the passenger door and the broken window, slumped in the muck. Blood covered his face, obscuring his features, a mess of split tissue and bone against the mud. “Jacob,” Noah muttered. He fought with his seat belt, squinted against the sunlight arcing through the broken glass. The highway swam in and out, like a curling ribbon unspooling toward three different cracked horizons. “Jacob, we have to move…”
He got the seat belt undone and fell, landing on the shattered windshield. Snow burned against his cut palms. Broken glass dug into his skin. He rolled to his side and the world wobbled, spinning around itself. He breathed out, trying to hold on to his lunch. What had it been? They’d laughed about the old country music playing on the speakers. “Jacob,” he gasped again. “Jacob, I’m going to get us out of here.”
Silence.
He punched through the broken windshield, loosening it from the frame. It pushed free in a plastic-coated sheet. “Jacob…” he grunted, heaving himself through the opening and out of the warped metal, trying to look left and right. All he saw was mud, patches of filthy snow, cold asphalt, and streaks of burned rubber, rolling over and over in a kaleidoscoping circle. Was that… there, down the highway. Had the trucker stopped? Or was he driving away?
Noah tumbled down the SUV’s hood. He tried to tuck and roll, tried to duck and cover behind the front wheel well. He blinked, and the world went bloodred. Blinked again, and his eyes stung as if he’d poured salt into them. He rubbed his fingers over his eyelids. Glass clung to his skin. Blood smeared on his fingertips.
He reached for his gun, holstered on his hip. Keep Jacob safe. Call for help. Where was his phone? Damn it, why couldn’t he think?
There was a snap and then a burn, deep inside of him, as if someone had heated a poker and shoved it into his shoulder joint. Things seemed to stop in his chest, his lungs stuttering as his heart trembled. His hand went limp, and his gun tumbled into the mud. Blood ran down his arm, soaking his shirt and pooling in his limp palm.
