Page 48 of Together We Rot

She can’t even stand to look at me, can she?

Don’t be selfish. You’re only going to hurt her. You’ll ruin her. “No,” I whisper, and it’s so achingly untrue. “You’re right. It was a mistake.”

She nods, and her hands shove deep into her pockets. “Then let’s forget about it. We should go, Elwood. I know someone who can help. Vrees and your dad are probably looking for us now. If we stay any longer, we might ruin the rest of the motel and hurt Dad. I don’t want to get him involved in this.”

Don’t want him involved with you.

I should tell her to run away. I should tell her to forget all about me and let me deal with my fate alone. But in the end, I am so very, very selfish. Selfish enough to hold her tight as we bike away.

With the fire lulled between us, the cold reenters with a vengeance.

The bike groans as we crawl on top of it. Between the half-deflated tires and the ice-slicked streets, disaster waits with bated breath.

“We should be wearing helmets,” I say, half out of genuine concern and half to break the silence.

“Hold tight and you’ll be fine.”

The streetlights offer a small path through the empty streets, the soft glow of the lamps breaking some of the blinding silver. On the bike, things are ten times colder. The wind howls against us, searching for the best way to tear through our clothes.

The road begins to wind upward, the start of a hill. We stumble to a stop, and I drop a leg to steady us. “We’ll need to walk this. Otherwise we’ll pick up speed on the way down and go flying to our death,” she says.

“Didn’t think safety was a priority of yours,” I comment.

She rolls her eyes, but there’s a slight smile tugging at the corners of her lips. It’s the closest back to normal we can get.

We each grip onto a handlebar, lugging the bike on opposite ends. Walking down the hill proves just as hard as climbing it, if not worse. Wil stumbles with the last step, her feet sliding out from under her. I scoop her in time, and with her back pressed into my chest like this, I can hardly breathe.

“Careful,” I wheeze.

“I could have caught myself.” She shimmies a little, planting a hand on her hip. “Here, you fall next, and we’ll be even.”

“I’m going to pass on the trust fall. Pretty sure I’d break something.”

She’s about to mount the bike again, but I beat her to it. “Here, let me. It’s only fair, right?”

She grumbles something in response, but her energy is shot. I can tell. She doesn’t relent. I do my best not to hyper-focus on her arms curled across my chest and her head resting in the open space between my shoulder blades as I pedal. A perfect fit.

We can’t escape the forest as we ride. We’re perilously close to the trees. Its borders have Pine Point locked in from one end to the next. This town might have scraped out a civilization for themselves, but the woods never left.

Somewhere between the dead branches, I catch a whir of movement in the distance. My father’s face appears from the branches, his expression indignant and his nostrils flaring in the dark.

There’s no outrunning him, is there? He’s tracked me here, and I have the distinct feeling that I could run to the end of the earth and still find him standing there behind me.

“Elwood,” he says, my name a command. The bike lurches to a stop, my mind and body freezing over. He takes a step forward, and I know Wil is hitting my back, begging for me to move, but I can’t. “Come willingly and I’ll make this easy.”

Nothing about this is easy. Not even remotely. But there’s a siren call in his voice, a desire to relinquish control and stop fighting. To do what I’ve always done in the face of my father: give up.

“Elwood! Don’t listen to him!”

Wil’s voice breaks me from my trance, her horror catapulting me into action. My reflexes are faster than either of us bargained for. The bike goes skidding down the street. I catch a subtle whiff of burning rubber as I kick it into overdrive.

“Sharp left,” Wil barks in my ear, her breath spilling out hot against my skin. “Now!”

I speed in the opposite direction, barreling forward at her command. My father’s shouting after us, but I’m faster than him. I ride harder than I ran in the forest. My muscles are long spent, but I push myself to keep going.

The snowdrifts pick up, crashing into us like frozen waves hitting the shore.

I’m not sure how long we ride, but it feels like half a lifetime. She directs me through winding streets, screaming directions above the howling wind. Straight at the stoplights (“Are you seriously stopping? Do you see any cars on the road, Elwood?”), right at the tree that’s got a lady’s face carved into it, so on and so forth. We ride until I think I might collapse right there in the snow.

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