Crashed(book three)(122)

And I realize it doesn’t really f*cking matter. The whys, the what fors. Any of it.

Because I have Ry now.

Holy shit. I’m so wrapped up in my head and what I just did, that I forgot the whole reason I did it.

Rylee.

I get in the car as I fumble with the phone in my hand, and it takes me a second to bring her up from my recent calls list. The phone rings but I’m f*cking impatient. “C’mon, Ry!” I pound the steering wheel with my fist as the ringing filters through the speakers of the car.

“Hey!” She laughs.

The sound. My f*cking God, that carefree sound in her voice grabs a hold of my f*cking heart and just squeezes it so tight I feel like I can’t breathe. It’s like all of a sudden all of the bullshit is gone with Tawny and the crash, and even though I can’t take a breath, I feel like I can breathe for the first time in a long ass time. Is this what it’s supposed to feel like? Fucking clarity and shit?

I start to speak and I can’t. What the f*ck? It’s like I want to say everything to her at once and yet I can’t think of how to start. I start laughing, like batshit crazy laughing, because I’m the middle of some shitty strip mall and it hits me now?

“You okay?” she asks in that sexy tone of hers.

“Yeah,” I choke out through my laughter. “I just—”

The giggle comes through the speaker loud and clear and I just stop talking. It’s Zander’s and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard it. The sound cuts me f*cking open like a filet knife. I swear to God I couldn’t be any more of a chick right now with my emotions all over the f*cking place.

“Go get your glove in the backyard and we’ll get going, okay?” I hear him agree through the line. “Sorry, you were going to tell me what was so funny.”

And I start to talk, begin to tell her about the test results when I hear a sound that is so horrifying it reaches into my chest and tears into my hardened heart. “What the f*ck is that?” I can’t say it quickly enough because despite the high-pitched scream that sounds like a wounded animal fighting for his life, I can still hear Rylee moving through the phone line.

My stomach churns at the f*cking sound and her goddamn silence. “Ry? Tell me what’s going on. Ry?”

“No, no, no, no!” she says and there’s something in her voice—fear, disbelief, and shock mixed with defiance—that has shivers dancing up my spine and has me immediately starting the car and throwing it into gear.

“Goddammit, Ry! Talk to me. What the f*ck is wrong?” I yell into the phone, panic overtaking me, but all I hear is her heavy breathing. And then whimpering. “Rylee!”

“You can’t have him!” she says in an eerily calm voice, which sounds far away and has me cutting off some poor f*cker in the lane next to me.

“Who’s there, Ry? Tell me, baby, please,” I plead, fear like I’ve only ever known in my youth tasting like bile in my mouth. Fear in my every f*cking nerve. I struggle with deciding whether to hang up and call 9-1-1, but that would mean I’d have to hang up on her—not hear her, not know she’s okay.

“You f*cking bitch!” is all I hear before she cries out in pain and the phone goes dead.

“No!” I scream and smash my hand into the steering wheel. My eyes blur as I try to push the numbers on my phone, but my fingers are shaking so f*cking bad that I can’t even manage 9-1-1 until after the third try.

“9-1-1. What’s your emergency?” The disembodied voice answers.

“Please help them. They’re screaming and … they’re screaming!” I plead with her.