My.
The word lands like a physical thing in my chest.
We sit there on the shoulder of I-20, cars whipping past, the Texas sun beating down on the hood. Harper’s hands are still on my face. My heart is still racing but for different reasons now.
“I don’t want to take you there,” I finally say. The admission costs me everything. “To Z. I don’t want to watch you marry someone else. Even if it’s just paperwork. Even if it doesn’t mean anything. I?—”
I can’t finish. Can’t say the rest.
I want you to choose me. I can’t stand the terror of losing someone else I love.I haven’t been this stomach-churning, breath-stolen, scared—panicked even—since we didn’t know if Mom was going to make it.
Harper’s eyes search mine. For a long moment, neither of us moves.
Then she leans back, breaking contact, and something in my chest cracks clean through. Her touch pulls away, and it hurts. God, it hurts.
“All I know is survival, too. We should go,” she says quietly. “Z’s waiting.”
I want to argue. Want to refuse. Want to throw the car in reverse and drive us anywhere but East Texas.
But Harper needs me.
Rule #762: When people you love need you, you show up.
I didn’t even come up with that one. It’s something Silas said once while installing a new carburetor. It was his life’s greatest regret, he said, not showing up when the people he loved needed him. Because, he said,showing up is the one thing that makes a man a real man.
So instead of pulling a U-turn and tying Harper to the seat until we land back safe and sound in Dallas, I check my mirrors—even now, even breaking apart, I check the fucking mirrors—and pull back onto the highway.
The silence that follows is different than before.
Heavier.
Like we’ve both said too much and not enough all at once.
Mile marker 248.
Two and a half hours to go.
Two hours and thirty minutes.
150 minutes.
9,000 seconds.
At our current speed—65 miles per hour—that’s 162.5 miles remaining.
162.5 miles equals 857,700 feet.
857,700 feet equals 10,292,400 inches.
Or in metric: 261.36 kilometers. 261,360 meters. 26,136,000 centimeters.
My brain won’t stop calculating. Won’t stop breaking it down into smaller and smaller increments, like if I can just measure it precisely enough—count every second, every mile, every inch between here and losing her—maybe I can slow it down.
Maybe I can stop it.
But I can’t.
The countdown continues regardless of how many ways I quantify it.