Page 17 of Unrest
That wasn’t so bad. We could make that. I felt a fraction lighter, able to take a deep cleansing breath and let it out slowly.
I took stealthy peeks at Rylen in my peripheral vision as he drove. He seemed lost in thought, but not happy thoughts. His jaw was set, and his forearms flexed as his hands gripped the steering wheel. I probably stared too long at those forearms and his rugged, strong hands, but I couldn’t help it. I still couldn’t believe those hands had never touched his wife, Livia. As jealous as I’d been, I now felt sad for them. I guess it was easy to feel that way in retrospect, now that she was gone. But gone or not, he still felt off-limits. I wondered how long it would take before I was allowed to think he was sexy without feeling guilty.
I straightened my eyes to peer forward through the windshield. After a while I looked back and saw Tater’s head leaned back, his eyes closed. The sight of him and Remy both sleeping made me relax a little. They’d both tossed and turned last night in the tent. I glanced at Rylen’s lost expression.
“I asked the other guys about their families,” I said carefully. “How about you? With your mom?”
His jaw rocked from side to side. He reached up and tugged his earlobe. “After Thanksgiving, I drove out with Liv to check on her and introduce them.” His mom was an alcoholic who’d moved in with her sister two towns over when Ry’s dad kicked her out. “She kept going on and on about how the welfare office was closed and she couldn’t get her check. She hardly heard me when I introduced Liv. And . . .” He made a nervous sound and tapped the steering wheel. “She thought Liv was you. She kept calling her ‘the neighbor girl.’ We didn’t stay long.”
My gut churned. “She wasn’t happy when she thought you married me, was she?”
He huffed. “Doesn’t matter. She doesn’t know what she was saying. I left her some food I’d brought, and some money. I never saw her after that.”
I swallowed down the sick feeling.
We drove the next two hours in silence. My brother had woken after an hour, but Remy slept on. Before, we would have blasted music, and God knows Tater would have run his mouth the entire time. But not anymore. Every time I looked back at him, his face was a hard mask of remembrance.
Remy woke sweating, which told me her fever had broken for now. Tater felt her head and frowned at me.
“I feel better,” Remy said. She smoothed back her hair, which was damp around her face and frizzy in the back.
I forced a smile and faced forward again. In two more hours the fever would be back. And it would keep coming back between doses, worse and worse.
Rylen eyed me from the side. “Don’t suppose we can GPS the nearest pharmacy,” he said without humor.
I crossed my arms and bit the pad of my thumb. Then I made the mistake of looking at the gas gauge. We were down to just under a quarter tank. I turned my face to the window and exhaled loudly. No food. No gas. No antibiotics. The direness of our situation crashed down on me and a tremor of panic shot down my spine.
“Hey,” Rylen whispered. His warm hand landed on my arm, and the heat of his touch covered my cold anxiety for a moment. “We’ll work something out. We’ll get there.” I put my hand over his, and our fingers reached, twining, holding. He didn’t let go. He drove with one hand on the wheel, the other holding mine. It didn’t mean anything—I knew it didn’t—but it felt so intimate and non-brotherly. I would never hold hands with Tater like this. What did it mean? I was too nervous to look over at Rylen.
We kept driving until the gas light came on and Rylen abruptly let go to flick the headlights at Devon. This shook me from my romantic stupor. There weren’t any turnoffs in sight, so we slowly made our way across a sea of dirt toward Route 15, the main road where we could find exits. Tense silence filled the car.
“Last chance for gas,” Rylen said. “If we can find some here, we’ll be there by tonight. If we can’t . . . we’re walking.”
“Oh, no,” Remy whispered. She sat up, and Tater pulled away from her, putting distance between them. It was like now that she was awake and alert he didn’t feel like he could touch her.
“No worries.” Rylen said.
“How far is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe thirty miles?”
Tater gave a forced nonchalant shrug. “Like a marathon. People do it all the time.”
I met Remy’s eyes and felt our matching doubt. We were not marathoners. Especially not in a Utah winter with one of us suffering from an infection.
We bounced our way onto Route 15 and took the next dusty exit, which had a sign for one off-brand gas station. My nerves were shot by the time we pulled up and surveyed the area. The shop was tiny, not an actual shop at all, but a booth where you could walk up to pay. It didn’t look like it’d been broken into, which was hopeful. Two old-time pumps sat in front of the booth.
“Stay here,” Tater told us as we came to a stop and he jumped out. Cold air rushed in, and I crossed my arms. Rylen opened his door a crack so we could listen, but he stayed behind the wheel.
“Dude,” I heard Texas Harry say. “We just barely rolled in. I thought we were gonna have to push the van.”
“Us too,” Ry said.
“Please,” Remy whispered. I turned to see her pressing her clasped hands to her forehead, eyes closed. “Let this work.”
Devon broke the glass to the booth. He and Texas Harry pushed their way inside while Tater and Matt looked around the outside. Devon broke into a cheer of laughter. His hand came up holding packets of something.
“Peanuts, baby! Boo-yah!” he sang in his booming voice. “And Gatorade!” But he said it like GA-TO-RADE, each syllable accented with joy.
