Page 115 of Run Away With Me

When I came back outside, she was sitting in the passenger seat. I raised an eyebrow at her.

‘You drive,’ she said. ‘I’m too anxious.’

‘Okay. I can do that.’

We hit traffic soon enough, but sitting and waiting for lights to change gave us plenty of time to plan out our next move. In a way, Atlanta was a great place to hide. Big cities had plenty of neighborhoods we could move between, and we blended in with the population, just two more teenage girls in a city full of them. I headed for the downtown area, then looped around the block when Brooke spotted a hotel that advertised its underground parking lot on the sign outside.

She winced as I navigated the turn down a long concrete ramp.

‘Don’t scrape the car, Jessie.’

She was clearly wound tight. Well, so was I.

‘You wanna drive it in?’ I snapped back.

Brooke leaned over, grabbed my chin to turn my head, and kissed me hard. ‘No. Just don’t scrape the paintwork, that’s all.’

‘You are literally the most difficult woman in the entire world,’ I muttered as the barrier rose for us.

‘I’m hungry,’ she said, craning her neck to look around the lot. The fluorescent lights were harsh down here. ‘Where are we going to eat tonight?’

‘You’re asking me that now?’ I demanded. ‘While I’m trying to concentrate on getting your precious car into this damn garage?’

Brooke snorted with laughter and ejected the cassette from the stereo to put it back in the case. I tried not to noticethat she’d brought the bullet cassette right to the front, so it was easily accessible.

I found a space on the first level underground, which was good because I didn’t have to navigate the tight ramps going down, and it also meant we could make a quick escape if we needed to. We put the top back up on the car, grabbed our bags from the trunk, and as we rode the elevator up to the lobby, Brooke put her arm around my waist.

‘Take your sunglasses off – you’re not a Kardashian,’ I murmured.

‘Absolutely not.’

She looked hot, so I couldn’t argue with her.

The lobby was swarming with people, and we had to wait twenty minutes to check in, which was only annoying because Brooke was fidgety. I could tell she wanted something to eat – she got cranky when she was hungry.

Brooke let me check in this time, and I spun the same story we used at every stop about wallets being stolen and needing to pay in cash. No one working these check-in desks ever seemed to care, other than trying to sign us up to their mailing list or loyalty rewards scheme or whatever. I rattled off a fake email address and smiled through the conversation.

We dumped our bags in the hotel room, and I took a second to brush my hair since it had gotten windswept on the journey down here. When I got out of the bathroom, Brooke was checking over the gun. She noticed me leaning against the doorframe, watching her, and tightened herjaw defiantly before putting it in her backpack to bring with her.

‘I’m not arguing with you,’ I said lightly.

‘Good,’ she said.

We headed out to find something for Brooke to eat before her blood sugar dipped any lower. A few blocks from the hotel, Brooke stopped in front of a Five Guys.

‘This’ll work,’ she said.

We spent an hour hanging out, and for just a moment, I felt normal. It was a Thursday afternoon, after school, and I guessed we weren’t too far from a high school since everyone here seemed to be around the same age as us. That meant we blended in, and I didn’t feel the need to check over my shoulder every few minutes, wondering if someone was following us.

When Brooke wanted a milkshake, I made a point of going to buy one for her. I wasn’t sure if this was a date – I’d never been on a date – but I wanted to do it anyway, even though I paid for it from the stack of cash we were sharing. I thought it meant something if I bought it, and the way she smiled at me when I carried it back to our booth made me think it meant something to her, too.

As soon as we walked back outside, a police car raced past us, its lights flashing and siren blaring, and I immediately went back on high alert. I almost wanted to berate myself for relaxing, but we needed to eat, damn it – we couldn’t constantly be on the run.

Brooke seemed to sense my nerves and ran her hand down my arm in a sweetly reassuring gesture.

‘How are you doing?’ I asked as we walked back to the hotel.

Brooke shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I feel like I’m questioning everything, you know?’

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