Page 11 of Run For Me
I shake my head and pick at the nachos in front of me. “No, I live in my grandparents’ old house, about twenty minutes from here.”
“Look at you, all fancy and shit.” Her Georgian accent really comes out when she says it.
I huff out a laugh and bite into a nacho chip that is now soggy. Still tastes good though. I’ve eaten worse, that’s for sure.
We spend the next forty-five minutes chatting and finishing our food. When we’re getting ready to leave, I realize how muchI like Amelia. Sure, there are a few things I kept from her, and we don’t like all the same things, but she’s nice and we have some stuff in common. I think she’s excited to be free and away from the prison her family seemed to make their home, and maybe once she gets used to it, that steam will run out.
“Hey, let me give you a ride,” I say, looking out the window to see the sun fully set.
“Nah, it’s like six minutes.”
“But it’s dark. You never know…”
She raises a brow as she puts her jacket on. “Okay, fine.”
I drop her off in front of her dorm a few minutes later.
“Thanks for the ride, Sailor!” she calls from outside of the car.
“No problem! I had fun. Have a good night,” I call back.
“Text me tomorrow?”
I nod. “Will do!”
She shuts the door, and I watch as she walks up the steps, only turning away when I see she’s safely inside the building. I pick up my phone to put on my GPS—I know how to get home, but I always use the GPS so my phone can learn my habits and give me the quickest way to where I’m going. You never know when there will be traffic or an accident.
When I unlock my phone, I see the notification from Surge and decide to check it quickly before I leave.
It isn’t a message from Sam like I thought it was. It’s a friend request from a new profile—I know that because their username is in bright red, which indicates a profile less than seventy-two hours old.
But that’s not what catches my attention. It’s the username.
You_Run_Ill_Chase
All the air leaves my lungs as I stare at the letters. I blink and then blink again, hoping they’ll rearrange themselves on the screen and form the words they really are. There is no way in allthe universe someone with a username like that is reaching out to me. Unless…
No. This could not be the person who has my journal. How would they have found me? There is nothing in there that says it’s me, not specifically anyway. And even if it did, how would they find my Surge profile? How would they even know I like the game? Solar Surge is not a popular game, and the fan app is even less popular. It has to be spam, or a weird coincidence. This is just my anxiety.
Still, my curiosity gets the best of me, and I hit the green accept button, which then leads to an alert of the message they sent. Surge takes precautions to protect their users, and one of those precautions is by only allowing friends to message one another. Messages pend until the request is approved.
With trembling fingers, I tap on the message icon and my inbox pops open. The new username is right on top, in bold letters, telling me it’s unopened. Sam’s sits right below. My thumb hovers over the new message, ready to tap it, when someone honks their horn behind me and I startle so badly the phone flies from my hand and hits the floor with a thud. I let out a squeak and my heart threatens to pound out of my chest.
“Jesus!” I scream, staring in the rear-view mirror. I take a deep breath and release it before putting the car in drive and moving forward. Honestly, I hadn’t realized I was blocking the whole through-way. I thought it was wide enough for another car to fit.
Instead of driving off, I pull into an empty parking spot, pick up my phone from the floor and click open the message. There is no way my anxiety will let me get home without reading this.
You_Run_Ill_Chase: Come out, come out, wherever you are, little dove.
I stare at the words for so long—minutes, hours, I don’t know—reading them over and over. When I finally pull my eyes away,I catch the clock. Twenty minutes have passed. I need to get home. I close the app, open my GPS, and head home. When I pull into the driveway, I don’t even remember the drive.
Chapter Eight
Sailor
I rush inside the house, closing and locking the door behind me. My heart is still pounding, the adrenaline making me sick. I go to the back door to make sure that one is locked too. I don’t know why the weird message has me freaked out. Once I’m sure everything is locked and there is no one in the house, I call Sam.
The phone rings and rings, but there’s no answer. It goes to voicemail, so I end it, then tap out a text.
