Shards of Us (13 page)

Two feet.

They're right there now. So close that I can taste the end. Every muscle in my body screams in protest, and I look at Sebastian one last time, look at the determination in his eyes, the hardness in his jaw, and I know how much I'm going to miss him, how much I love him despite everything.

"Goodbye,
Sebastian," I whisper, just as their truck connects with ours. There's a squeal of tires, a scream, and then our car is jerked off the road, tumbling across someone's front lawn.

And then, there is nothing at all.

Chapter
Thirteen

My eyes feel like lead as I force them open. My ears are ringing and every muscle in my body aches as I roll over. Blinding white light fills the air, forcing me to squeeze my eyes right back shut. I try to stand, but my legs refuse to hold my weight, so I continue to lie there, against a cool piece of metal, hurting all over. The blood in my head pounds and pounds, and I try to remember what happened, how much time has passed, or how the hell I even got here in the first place.

Smoke billows everywhere, causing me to cough and cough, burning at my
face. I try to open my eyes again, and this time they adjust better, even if they still kind of hurt.

I look around wildly to figure
out where I am. Scraps of metal are everywhere, tires smoking all around me. It looks like several cars were broken, like…

Then I remember what happened.

Sebastian.

Marco
's men.

The truck.

The gunshots.

The scream.

Automatically, my body crumples up at the memory, and whether it's from thinking Sebastian's face before our car was uprooted or from the acrid smoke in my eyes, my eyes start burning with tears.

I force myself to stand, shaking off the pain.

It's sunny here, grassy too, and if it weren't for the smoke filling my lungs and nostrils, it would actually be a nice day. I stumble out of the wreckage, coughing repeatedly, trying to get my bearings, trying to find Sebastian. There are bodies strewn across the scraps of car metal, too, tons of them, all men with guns and angry looks in their eyes. I look around wildly, but none of them are Sebastian.

My heart aches. Where is he? Where is
Sebastian? I stumble onto the empty street, trying to cry for help, but my coughing drowns it out. The cool air whips by me, and it would feel insanely good against my skin if I weren't so wound up. Desperately, I move in the direction of what appears to be a house, knowing based off of my growing headache, shirt covered in dried blood, and the way my vision keeps zooming in and out that I need food and water, and I need it badly. My throat is totally parched, and all of this feels so surreal, like I'm dreaming or something. I
wish
I were dreaming.

In fact, e
very part of me wants to rewind back to a few hours earlier, when Sebastian was touching me, when we were making love and everything was okay. I choke in another breath, and this time more tears are mixed with it. I sniff, continuing to stumble toward the house, not knowing what else to do.

The desperation has just about set in when I hear
a sound from within the little shack I've been heading toward: a muffled grunt.

I freeze. My heart might literally stop.

Because I know that sound.

I know that voice.

It's Sebastian's.

Curiosity getting the best of me, I move in closer, more slowly this time, trying to keep from coughing. Why is
Sebastian grunting? What if something is wrong?

My legs ache in protest as I draw near the little shack, but I ignore it, moving toward the door. I need
Sebastian. I need to make sure he's okay. I need to--

My hand is at the doorknob when I hear
a second voice. And I stop, because it's not a friendly voice, either. The sound is deep and guttural, filled with hatred. "Well, well," it's saying. "Is getting punched not enough for you? Because the boss will be here any minute now, and I hear he's bringing his knife with him,
just for you
." The man laughs, a vicious, sadistic kind of laugh that makes my blood chill.

"Go ahead, then," another voice snarls. My
stomach seizes as soon as I recognize that it's Sebastian's, and based off of the fear gripping his voice, it could only mean one thing is going on: he's being tortured for information of some sort. And Marco must be coming soon to finish the job.

My stomach twists. I
swear I'm going to be sick now. I look around wildly, suppressing another cough, trying to figure out what to do. I need to save Sebastian. But I already know I can't overpower this man myself, and my gun was probably destroyed in the crash. A sinking feeling hits me. How am I ever going to save him? Do I just make a break at the man and hope for the best?

I decide to see if there's a window in the room and figure out what's going on from there. Keeping as silent as possible, I slip alongside the shack. I find
it on the other side of the building. It's a small window, covered in dirt, but if I squint hard enough, I can just make out what's going on inside the shack. My heart pounds and I hold my breath as I watch with baited breath.

The floorboard creaks within the room as the man, who looks to be about
Sebastian's height and who has a deep tan and a bulky body, steps toward something. That's when I realize it's Sebastian, facing me, tied to a wooden chair and gagged. I have to cover my hands with my mouth to keep from gasping. Seeing Sebastian like this, this vulnerable, makes my heart physically hurt.

"Where are they?" the
man is saying, taking a step toward Sebastian. "Where are they hiding? Tell me or you and the girl both die."

"Don't bring her into this,"
Sebastian hisses. I see his eyes then, as the other man shifts out of the way. They're filled with pure hatred. I've never seen him like this before.

The man laughs. "Sorry, I forgot how sensitive you get when you fall in love."

Sebastian narrows his eyes and spits on the man, who just laughs some more and punches Sebastian across the face like it's nothing. Sebastian grunts again and blood trickles out of his nose, and I have to clamp my mouth shut with my hand to keep from screaming. I know I have to do something, anything, but I don't know what.

"You aren't getting anything out of me,"
Sebastian hisses, spitting blood at the man. "You might as well give up now."

He laughs, his dark boots crunching against the wood floor as he walks slowly back and forth in front of
Sebastian, dragging this whole interrogation out with some sort of sadistic pleasure. "You're right, I might as well. I would love to, actually. Nothing would please me more than to kill you right now. You are a fucking traitor. You left me, your own friend, in the dust when you didn't kill those people. You betrayed all of us. You deserve the worst of deaths. But the boss made me promise to keep you alive until he gets here. And hey," he says, grabbing Sebastian's collar and breathing into his face. "Orders are orders."

Then he throws
Sebastian back against the chair and laughs. "I'll happily wait, Sebastian. Anything to see you die."

My
heart is pounding furiously now. Just the thought of Sebastian dying makes my whole body ache. I'm just about ready to burst through the door and randomly attack this man torturing Sebastian,
my
Sebastian, when something insane happens. Sebastian looks up, up to the window, and his eyes lock with mine. My toes curl at the intensity in his stare even through the glass. He looks into my eyes, and then, just like that, he nods. It's slight and almost nonexistent, but I catch it immediately, and I translate it to:
distract him
.

So I do just that.

Slowly, I reach down and pull a rock from the ground. I roll it around in my hand for a second, feeling the coolness of it, the heaviness, and then I take a step back and aim it at the window. The man is back to talking to Sebastian now, saying something I can't make out, but I don't let him finish. Squeezing my eyes shut, I reach out and hurl the rock at the window. It shatters almost instantly, glass going flying everywhere, and I sprint at the front door while he's distracted.

"What the hell?" the man says, coming toward the window, I think. Then I hear a crack, a grunt, and the man shouts something. There's a crunch of wood as he's thrown to the ground, and the next thing I know,
Sebastian is bursting out of the shack, his hands untied but his gag still on.

Relief washes through me as soon as I see his face, and I want nothing more than to kiss him then, just hold him and hug him and cry, because we've survived, at least for now.
Sebastian rips the gag off of his mouth as he bursts outside. "We have to move, angel," he says immediately, getting right down to business. "Marco will be coming here any second now."

I nod and follow him down the road. "And the man in the shack?" I call after him.

Sebastian
pauses. "Unconscious. Won't bother us again."

I open my mouth to ask another question, but he's already taking off down the road, off past the shack and the car wreckage, past the calling of birds in the maples trees beside us, down the totally empty dirt road until we reach civilization. My legs burn as I run, and my muscles feel so sore from the crash, but I just keep pushing, following
Sebastian. We run for several minutes until we make our way back onto the main road, periodically checking to make sure we aren't being followed--we weren't.  My lungs are heaving and I gasp for air by the time we slow at an abandoned car on the side of the road. Sebastian punches open the window and reaches in and unlocks the car in one fluid motion, and I watch him, wide-eyed. His suit is beat-up and covered in dried blood, but he still looks great in it, and I find myself wanting to touch him some more, to put a pause to all of this and go back to those Wednesday nights when it was just me and Sebastian, and nothing else mattered.

Sebastian
motions me inside. I snap out of my thoughts and follow his lead, climbing into the passenger door as he settles into the driver seat. We both shut our car doors at the same time. Sebastian reaches beneath the car's steering wheel and expertly presses the wires together, brushing them against one another until the hum of an engine sounds.

I smile despite myself. Here we go.

"Not going to cuff me this time?" I joke as soon as Sebastian starts pulling the car off of the side of the road, then speeds down the street, but the bitterness in my voice is obvious.

Sebastian
cringes. "I'm sorry. I was just trying to save you. I can get… overbearing at times."

I laugh, annoyed. "No kidding," I mutter as we gun down the maze of roads, heading to who-knows-where.

We don't speak for another hour or so.

As
Sebastian drives, looking almost as focused and determined as he was when we were being chased, I find myself relaxing. My muscles ache and the exhaustion seeps in. I drink some water from a water bottle left in the side door, and I offer some to Sebastian but he refuses to drink any. We head in silence all the way there, and I close my eyes, letting sleep take me away. But before I slip into unconsciousness, I find myself thinking about what the man had asked Sebastian.
"Where are they?"
he'd asked.
"Where are they hiding?"

Distantly, I find myself wondering who this
'they' the man is talking about is, and if I am soon to become one of them.

***

When I wake up, the car is parked. I take in a deep breath and look around. It hits me how I was, once again, so close to dying just hours earlier. It's twilight now, and the air is dark and thick and hazy, sending shivers throughout my body. Cool wind slips by me through the open window, and I hear the sounds of crickets chirping, then the slam of a door beside me as Sebastian steps outside.

"Where are we?" I ask him groggily as he comes around and opens
my door for me. I step out, barely able to stand, but I force myself to nonetheless.

"The one place we
have left to go," he says under his breath, more to himself than me.

I don't have a chance to ask what he means.

The house this time looks much more lived-in than the others. We walk up a long, swirly driveway until we reach a large house atop a hill, so that one can see any intruders from all sides. Giant maple trees surround the house, enclosing it in a protective shield. As we draw closer, I notice that the grass looks freshly cut, that the blue paint isn't fading and no windows are shattered. It's like someone has been here, and recently. I wonder if this someone is Sebastian. I wonder if this is his home.

I follow him around the backyard and through a stone path to the front steps. The front porch lights turn on because of our presence, illuminating the darkness.
Sebastian fishes into his pocket and pulls out a key when we reach the front door. There's a click, and he pushes the door in, revealing the interior of the mansion.

The lights turn on automatically, filling the room with a bright yellowish color. The house is large and grand, with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and silky rugs spread across the floor. The walls are painted a perfect white, and the floor is marble, cool at the touch. Heat pours in from the house, warming my skin, and as I step inside, I feel instantly at home. I have no idea why or how, but something about this place feels familiar
, almost like I've been here before.

Sebastian
follows me inside, closing the door behind me.

A large dining room table is positioned at my right, complete with a bowl of fake fruits and freshly lacquered wood. The scent of cinnamon fills the air, and as I look in front of me, I notice a winding
marble staircase stretching to a floor above. The whole room is full of color, with old paintings hanging from the walls and a brown leather couch and flatscreen TV positioned off to the right.