Page 71 of Your Fault

He looked at me, fuming, and just then, with only a few feet to go until we reached Lion and his brother, the needle on the speedometer dropped from 140 to 75.

“What are you doing?” I shrieked, incredulous, turning to him and watching with horror as Lion put distance between us.

“I’m teaching you a lesson,” he responded, gunning it again, but it didn’t matter—Lion had just crossed the finish line.

Indignant, I took a deep breath. “I can’t believe it… We could have won!”

“That money’s for Lion. We just needed to take first and second. The order didn’t matter,” he said as we crossed in turn.

He screeched to a halt, and I prepared myself for whatever he had to say to me, but then flashing lights caught his attention, and he turned to look out the back windshield just as the sirens started echoing. His expression transformed completely.

“No fucking way!” he said, hitting the gas again, speeding up quickly, breaking every traffic law known to man before pulling onto the next exit. Honking horns and shouting pedestrians made it impossible to hear. Only then did I start to realize what was happening.

Nick’s phone rang.

“Pick it up,” he ordered me, his eyes on the road. “It’s in my left front pocket.”

I bent over and reached inside, pulling it out.

“Put it on hands-free.” He grunted.

I did, and an unknown voice resounded inside the car.

“Dude, the cops are here. They’ve got us. This is bad!”

“What the fuck, Clark? You told me this was all taken care of!”

“I know, I don’t know what happened. Somebody must have snitched! You need to get off the road ASAP!”

“Where’s my bike?”

There was nothing but racket on the other line. Apparently the cops had shown up at the empty lot where the race started. We were in a better spot than the rest of them, but I was so scared, I couldn’t think straight. All I saw was danger, and I told myself Nicholas was stupid for going there. He should have listened to me; we should have left—both of us.

“Toni took it to the spot. You know what to do. If you hurry, I don’t think they’ll catch you.”

Nicholas grabbed the phone, which was lying on my leg, hung up, and smashed it against the dash.

“Nicholas…” I said, terrified. “They can’t catch us.” If they did, the consequences would be terrible. I might get kicked out of school, and he already had a record—things could be even worse for him. Maybe even his father would struggle to get him out of it if they wound up arresting him this time.

“They’re not going to catch us,” he said softly. He stepped on the gas and pulled onto a road I’d never been down. He seemed to know where he was going, and I just sat there praying for a way out. The patrol cars were onto us, I knew that because I could hear the sirens, but they were too far away to catch the license plate.

We kept going. Then Nick turned down a side street, and soon we reached a long line of warehouses and garages. Then, finally, we found ourselves on a muddy driveway that led to a building with the number 120 on the outside. A rolling door automatically went up, and he pulled inside, next to the motorcycle I’d seen in our garage.

“Get out,” he said, and I was too scared to disobey.

I saw a bunch of crates and old furniture inside. It must have been a storage space of the Leisters’ that Nick used on occasions like this.

He quickly grabbed a canvas sheet off a table and covered the car, lifting a cloud of dust that nearly blinded me and made me cough as I walked away. I felt him behind me. He grabbed my waist, turned me around, and pushed me into the car.

“Now you better do everything I say, Noah. I’m dead serious,” he said, rage oozing from his every pore. “If it weren’t for your bullshit trauma, I’d leave you here so you’d finally learn to keep out of my goddamned business.”

I blinked several times, surprised by his harsh words, wanting to cry. Even if he was right, he was the one who’d gotten us intothis situation. He had been the one who’d decided to go back to that world. I swallowed my pride and nodded because I knew the most important thing just then was that we not get caught.

He pulled me over to his motorcycle. There was only one helmet. He pushed it down onto my head. As I briefly met eyes with him, I had no idea how to interpret what was going on in his mind. He got onto the bike, and I climbed on behind him, bending over and wrapping my arms around him before we took off into the cool night.

With every minute we spent on the road, my anger grew. I couldn’t believe I was sitting on a motorcycle, running from the police, putting up with his tantrums when he had been the one who’d done all this. I felt my hands tense on his firm stomach, and his body answered back, maybe in spite of him. He took one hand off the handlebars and grabbed mine.

What is this supposed to mean?

---