At her car, I collect her keys, buckle her into the passenger seat, and move like hell to leave the scene of her most haunting memory as quickly as possible.
15
she kept it
Rowan
Hannah gathersher wits enough to put her address in the GPS for me once we’re on the main road. Puking in the alley sobered her up some, but she’s still tipsy. Thankfully, with the parking lot in the rearview, some of the heaviness seems to have lifted.
For now.
“Oh my god!” Hannah shrieks, and I jolt from possible cardiac arrest.
“What is it?”
She leans toward the dash, eyeing the digital clock with a concerning level of contempt. “Is it really eleven-thirty?”
“Appears so.”
Slumping back, she groans. “I have to be up in six hours.”
“Maybe you should take a personal day tomorrow.”
Her lip curls in a grimace. “Ew. I don’t take personal days.”
I pull to a stop at a red light, level her with a look as serious as what I’m about to say. “Take the personal day, Hannah.”
Something haunted flickers in her dark golden eyes. I hold her gaze through it.
Her throat bobs. “I’m fine.” She turns toward thepassenger window. Conversation over. I accelerate through the intersection and grit my teeth, holding back everything else I want to say.
You’re not fine. Please talk to me…or somebody. Anybody.
“Tell me something real.” Hannah’s soft voice pierces the nervous hum of the tires over the road. I glance at her. Head lolled toward me on her headrest, she looks sleepy.
A thousand memories swoop by in high definition. Five-year-old snapshots as vivid today as they were in real time.
“Something real,” I parry, stretching the silence to find just the right response. “When I do shooting practice, I imagine GEM’s face on my target.”
My side-eye lingers long, smile fighting to contain itself. It takes a second for my words to land, but when they do, her laugh is reckless and full and everything this night shouldn’t be—light, easy, joyful. If this is the only way she’ll let me help, then I’ll make it my life’s purpose to make her smile like that.
For the next two weeks at least. Because I can’t stay. The reality sobers my mood on a dime.
Her laughter fades to a simmer as she retrieves her phone from her purse. “That reminds me, I need to call my mom.”
My head snaps toward her. “Your mom?”
Confusion sweeps her face for half a second before she sucks in a quiet breath. My favorite smile comes back. “Oh, yeah. She didn’t die.”
I shouldn’t laugh, but the giddy look on her face makes it impossible.
She hisses through her teeth. “Sorry. Apparently alcohol makes me a morbid comedian. Honestly? Mom would be proud.”
My attention battles with itself, caught between her and the road as I try to make sense of her comment while she laughs at her own joke. Last I knew, her mom’s cancer treatment wasn’t working.
Reading my mind, she clarifies. “Not long after we met the first time, her doctor got her in a new medical trial and it worked. She beat it.”
Hannah blinks slowly at her screen like she can’t interpret all the icons and numbers.