Page 21 of Only in Your Dreams

The campsite around us is a dark wall of heavy rain, with only the bright taillights from the two cars telling us where to go.

Melody stares around, disoriented, instantly drenched. She turns her wide eyes on me. “Oh my God—”

“Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

We race for the cars. I take Melody’s arm as she slips over the muddy ground, crowd her until she makes it to Brooks’s car, rip open the door, urging her in. Summer’s car is already running, and frankly I don’t have a fucking clue how we’re supposed to be driving out of here considering you can barely make anything out a few feet ahead of you.

“Get in, Mel—hurry.”

But she freezes in the doorway and attempts to duck back under my outstretched arm. “I forgot something—”

“Leave it—we can come back for everything else. Let’s get out of here—”

“I can’t. It’ll only take a second,” she shouts over the rain. She slips past, dodging me as I try to catch her. “Go without me. I’ll jump in Summer’s car. Just tell her to wait for me—”

“Melody!” I shout after her as she disappears into the rain.

Fuck fuckfuck. This woman is hell-bent on destroying me today.

“Are you getting in?” Brooks throws over his shoulder.

“Apparently not—just get out of here. We’ll get home with Summer. Go.”

He doesn’t have to be told twice. His SUV lurches down the mud-covered path to the main road as I run almost blindly back to camp in time to see Melody disappear into her tent. I dive in after her.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I shout as she shoves something into the pocket of her shorts. “What the hell’s important enough—”

“I told you to go without me,” she shoots back, trying to move around me. “I don’t need a sitter—”

“Get your ass into a car, please—”

She brushes past me without another word, back out into the pouring rain. I have to double my steps to keep sight of her through all this fog, have to grab her hand and wheel her in the right direction, past the campfire we almost trip over, toward the trees. Searching for Summer’s taillights until I manage to make out a pair of tire tracks through the mud at the edge of the woods.

We follow them a few feet.

And then another few. Brooks’s car is gone. He left like I told him to, but—

“Where…”

I move us deeper into the woods, refusing to let Melody out of my sight. Especially now, with the panic rising up my throat, threatening to block my airway completely. With my heart beating in my ears even louder than the rain as I find a second pair of tire tracks, leading away from the campsite, too.

No.

“Zac.”

The panic in Mel’s voice tells me she’s putting the pieces together too. Coming to her own conclusion that both cars are gone.

Both of them.

They’re just fuckinggone.

I’m properly panicking now. Because this can’t fucking be happening. We can’t be stranded here.Shecan’t be stranded here in the middle of this kind of storm, without proper shelter, without anything to keep her warm—

Melody hits the brakes when I forge forward, forcing me still because I refuse to let go of her, terrified that she’ll disappear on me too.

“Zac,” she shouts over the downpour. “Why did Brooks go? We were getting into his car.”

Fuck.

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