LITMIR.BIZ

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reconsidering as we speak.” She leaned toward me, and I met her halfway. “But we’ve already been spotted,” she said, lips moving softly against my jaw on the way to my mouth. I glanced up to see that she was right; a tall, shadowed form stood in the front window, staring right at my car. “I gotta go.” Genna pushed the door open and stepped out, small pink purse in hand. “Say hi to Nash for me.” Then the car door closed, and she was halfway up the walk before I’d even shifted into drive.

      Her front door opened and her dad stepped out to put one arm around her shoulders, and as they stepped inside, she turned back to smile at me once.

      And that was the last time I ever saw Genna Hansen.

      “What took you so long?” Nash asked, as he slid into the passenger seat and pulled the door closed.

      “I stopped to donate all your underwear to the homeless. You’re gonna wanna take care of those tighty whities—they’re all you’ve got left.”

      He leaned against the door, either too tired or too drunk to sit up. “And to think, most people don’t understand your sense of humor.”

      “Fools, all of them.” I flicked on my turn signal and merged with the highway traffic, typically heavy for a Friday night. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”

      “Drinking alone, while my best friend and my brother feel up their respective girlfriends, with no thought for the less fortunate.” His eyelids looked heavy, and I wondered how much he’d had. “Unfortunately, the juvenile justice system doesn’t consider Sabine’s separation from me cause for concern.”

      “Bastards.” I swerved around an SUV, then back into the right lane. “Clearly the system is flawed.”

      Nash shrugged and slouched lower. “At least you got laid.”

      I glared at him before turning back to the traffic. “No, I got a brother who redefines the concept of ‘coitus interruptus.’”

      “Sorry.” Nash frowned, his unfocused stare aimed out the windshield as I eased the car off the highway and onto the first street in a tangle of suburban neighborhoods. “But hey, since you’re not busy anymore and we’re out anyway…we could head over to Holser House.” I started to shake my head, but he kept talking. “Please, Tod. That place is going to kill her.”

      Irritated, I clenched the wheel and stared at the road. “You’re drunk, Nash.”

      “Then you can do the talking!” he snapped, sitting straighter now. “I’ll stay in the car.”

      “You should have stayed in the house!”

      “You didn’t!”

      My hands clenched around the wheel. “I came back with Genna instead of going out, so I could keep an eye on you!”

      “Great job.”

      I shook my head, fighting the urge to punch the steering wheel. “No way. You snuck out and got drunk. You’re not blaming this on me.”

      “But Mom will,” he said, and it only took me a second to realize he was right. “She doesn’t have to know.” He twisted in his seat to face me, rather than the windshield. “Let’s go get Sabine. I’ll be sober by the time we get home, and we’ll tell Mom she ran away on her own. Sabine will back us up, and Mom never has to know either of us left the house.”

      “No.” Hell no. Mom would see through that in a second, and I’d get into worse trouble than Nash for letting him go through with such an idiotic, illegal stunt.

      “Come on, Tod, I never ask you for anything!”

      “Bullshit!” I glanced at him, furious to realize he actually believed his own load of crap!

      “You ask me for gas money, and condoms, and alibis, and favors, and advice you never follow. And now you’re asking me to drive your underage, drunk ass to break your jailbird, jailbait girlfriend out of corrective custody. And I’m the one who’ll get in trouble when that brilliant piece of on-the-fly planning goes south.”

      “If something goes wrong, I’ll take the blame,” Nash insisted.

      “No you won’t, because no one will point the blame at you. Sabine will lie to protect you on her end, and Mom will let you slide because she thinks you’re some ‘sensitive soul.’ It’s always, ‘Poor Nash, he wears his heart on his sleeve, then wonders why it’s always bruised.’ Or, ‘He’s only so reckless because he lives in the moment and he feels things so deeply.'”

      “She doesn’t say that.”

      “The hell she doesn’t. But your problem isn’t the heart on your sleeve, it’s the head on your shoulders. You don’t think about things, you just do them, and it never even occurs to you that you could be screwing someone else over.”

      “You mean you?”

      “Yeah, me! I can’t turn around without tripping over whatever trouble you’re in. I spend half my life cleaning up your messes, and all you do is take up space and get in my way!”

      I couldn't see Nash. The suburban street was unlit, and I was staring at the road. But I could tell I’d gone too far because he went completely still and quiet. For nearly a minute. Then he grabbed the door handle, like he’d pull it open with the car still moving. “Let me out.”

      “What?”

      “I’d hate to take up any more space in your life,” he spat. “Stop the car.”

      I rolled my eyes, but slowed down, in case he tried to jump. “Are moronic overreactions a side effect of dating a delinquent, or is this the alcohol talking?”

      “You don’t know anything about me,” Nash snapped, tightening an already white-knuckled grip on the door handle. “And you don’t know a damn thing about Sabine. Stop the car, or I’m gonna jump and roll.”

      “No, you’re gonna go home and sleep it off in your own bed,” I insisted, as we rolled past the last house on the block, the rest of which was taken up by a large community park.

      “Stop the damn car!” I felt his Influence almost before he spoke, and his words washed over me in a rush of anger, chased by a backwash of resentment. The urge to pull onto the side of the road was overwhelming.

      I slammed on the brake and we screeched to a halt at the corner in front of the park, not because he wanted me to stop, but because I was too pissed to drive. “Don’t even try to Influence me, you little—”

      Nash’s eyes widened, staring straight ahead. I glanced up just in time to see a car gliding toward us on the wrong side of the road, sleek and black against the night, no headlights to announce its approach.

      Adrenaline surging through me, I shifted into reverse and cut the wheel to the right, but it was way too late. The car slammed into us head-on. There was a loud pop of impact and the squeal-crunch of bending metal.

      The world spun around me.

      Nash flew forward and his head smacked the windshield. My seat belt punched the air from my lungs as the entire dashboard lurched toward me. The steering wheel stopped two inches from my chest.

      Then everything went still.

      The only sound was the soft hiss of something ruptured. Every breath hurt, and my neck was so stiff I could hardly turn my head. I exhaled slowly and closed my eyes, stealing a moment in the near-silence to appreciate my pounding heart, and the fact that it continued to beat.

      Then I twisted in the dark to face my brother.

      “Nash?” He was slumped in his seat half facing me. His eyes were closed, his head steadily dripping blood from an injury I couldn’t see in the dark. My relief bled into dread as I pushed my door open and the interior lights came on. “Nash?” I said again, but he didn’t answer. He was barely breathing, and I was afraid to make things worse by shaking him awake. “Shit!”

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