Page 78 of Better Run
“What are you talking about, Jo? Are you okay? Why don’t you take my car?” Kyle asks again. He looks at me like I’m crazy.
“I’m fine,” I snap. “I need a car they don’t recognize.”
“I think you need help.” Kyle pulls a phone out of his pocket.
“No!” I take a deep breath. “Fine. I’ll take mine. Just don’t call anyone. Please help me carry my things out. I’m in a hurry.”
He still looks at me like I’m insane. I don’t wait. I grab my keys and lug the bag out to my car. I realize I still don’t have shoes on. Then I go in and grab the other two. I don’t know or care what’s inside. My pulse is pounding for me to hurry.
“Where’s my wallet and my phone?” I ask Kyle.
He motions to the pink room. “I thought you had your phone with you.” I snatch up my wallet from a dresser.
“Where are you going?”
“Better that you don’t know.” I stomp outside and let the door slam. I don’t turn to take any last looks at the house. Clearly, this shit is over for me. Decided by the goddamned universe of shit herself.
I stalk to my car and slam the door. This is the life I thought about while at the cabin. Cried about. The life I fought so hard to get back to.
And now it seems so empty. I jam my keys in and let suburbia swallow me whole.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Jayden
Two Weeks Later
“You need to eat.” Cole drops a paper plate and sandwich on my computer keyboard.
“Not hungry.”
He growls. “Then I’ll force it down your goddamned throat. You’re not helping matters.”
I curl my lip at him but don’t have the energy to do much else. I stare at the google earth images of Carissa’s house. I keep thinking that if I look at it long enough, maybe they’ll update the picture with her car in the driveway.
I don’t deserve to eat. Or sleep. And I don’t want to. Jo left us. She had a miscarriage. She miscarried my—our baby. I swallow. I made it so bad for her that she ran and hasn’t looked back. The shirt she left at our cabin has stopped smelling like her.
I fling the sandwich across the hotel room.
“Fuck you, Jay.” Cole gets in my face. “You’re going to clean that shit up, then you’re going to get your head out of your ass and get to work. We aren’t going to get her back when you can’t even function enough to eat or sleep.”
I stare into his flashing eyes. He’s taken care of me and the cabin as I tore everything to shit. He jumped in the car, no questions asked and rode with me to Texas, where we’ve been hunting Jo relentlessly, with no luck. Surveillance on Carissa’s farmhouse is damn near impossible as the house is a mile back from the road with multiple ways in and out and a family full of shoot-first-ask-questions-later kinds of people.
I considered interrogating and killing every last one of them. The only thing that stopped me was knowing I’d have to look Jo in the eye and see the pain that murdering her best friend’s family would cause. Which left us with very few options. In this day and age, it’s hard to completely disappear but it’s like Jo dropped off the face of the map.
Cole’s voice is soft, “This isn’t the Jayden that got me through all those years.”
That hits me like a bat to the stomach. I jerk my gaze up to him. He looks…lost.
Fuck. Now I’m hurting my best friend too. I scrub my hands down my face. I’m a piece of shit. I’ve never felt that about myself until now.
We sit in silence for a bit. Then I ask, “Do we have any more goddamned bread?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Mary Jo
Six Months Later
