There’s not enough fucking asphalt in this parking lot right now to help me abate the fucking fury in my veins, because the more I think about it—about what she was trying to do to me—the stronger my rage grows.
Goddamn right she’s quiet, I tell myself, when she doesn’t respond to a single thing I’ve said. All I hear are whimpering cries on the other end of the line.
“To think I used to care about you. Fucking unbelievable, T.” I shake my head and swallow a huge gulp of air. “Is this how you treat the people you claim to love? Use a kid to manipulate? To fucking deceive to get love?”
“You got back the results.” It’s not a question, just a soft statement that’s eerily calm.
And she knows.
“Yeah, I got them back.” The quiet steel in my voice should have her running for fucking cover.
“You fucked with me once, Tawn. I dealt with it as gently as possible since our families are connected.” I lean my back against the Rover and just keep shaking my head, my pulse racing, and breath panting out in shallow breaths. “But you obviously don’t care about that because you just majorly fucked with me again. Tried to ruin me with the one thing you know would fuck me up more than anything else. So I suggest you listen closely because I’m only going to say this once. I’m fucking done with you. Don’t contact me. You sure as fuck better not contact Ry. And family functions?” I laugh and it sure as fuck isn’t because I’m feeling happy. “I suggest you have the stomach flu or some other reason not to attend. Got it? You were my friend and now you’re just … nothing.”
“Please listen,” she pleads and her voice—the voice that used to mean something—does fucking nothing to me. At all. “Don’t be so cold—”
“Cold?” I shout at her, my body vibrating with anger. “Cold? Cold? Get ready for the polar fucking ice cap because we’re done. You’re dead to me, Tawny. Nothing else left to say.” And I hang up the phone despite the sob I hear coming through the other end. I turn and brace my hands on the side of my car as I process everything. As I try to comprehend how a childhood friend could do that to me.
And I realize it doesn’t really fucking matter. The whys, the what fors. Any of it.
Because I have Ry now.
Holy shit. I’m so wrapped up in my head and what I just did, that I forgot the whole reason I did it.
Rylee.
I get in the car as I fumble with the phone in my hand, and it takes me a second to bring her up from my recent calls list. The phone rings but I’m fucking impatient. “C’mon, Ry!” I pound the steering wheel with my fist as the ringing filters through the speakers of the car.
“Hey!” She laughs.
The sound. My fucking God, that carefree sound in her voice grabs a hold of my fucking heart and just squeezes it so tight I feel like I can’t breathe. It’s like all of a sudden all of the bullshit is gone with Tawny and the crash, and even though I can’t take a breath, I feel like I can breathe for the first time in a long ass time. Is this what it’s supposed to feel like? Fucking clarity and shit?
I start to speak and I can’t. What the fuck? It’s like I want to say everything to her at once and yet I can’t think of how to start. I start laughing, like batshit crazy laughing, because I’m the middle of some shitty strip mall and it hits me now?
“You okay?” she asks in that sexy tone of hers.
“Yeah,” I choke out through my laughter. “I just—”
The giggle comes through the speaker loud and clear and I just stop talking. It’s Zander’s and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard it. The sound cuts me fucking open like a filet knife. I swear to God I couldn’t be any more of a chick right now with my emotions all over the fucking place.
“Go get your glove in the backyard and we’ll get going, okay?” I hear him agree through the line. “Sorry, you were going to tell me what was so funny.”
And I start to talk, begin to tell her about the test results when I hear a sound that is so horrifying it reaches into my chest and tears into my hardened heart. “What the fuck is that?” I can’t say it quickly enough because despite the high-pitched scream that sounds like a wounded animal fighting for his life, I can still hear Rylee moving through the phone line.
My stomach churns at the fucking sound and her goddamn silence. “Ry? Tell me what’s going on. Ry?”
“No, no, no, no!” she says and there’s something in her voice—fear, disbelief, and shock mixed with defiance—that has shivers dancing up my spine and has me immediately starting the car and throwing it into gear.
“Goddammit, Ry! Talk to me. What the fuck is wrong?” I yell into the phone, panic overtaking me, but all I hear is her heavy breathing. And then whimpering. “Rylee!”
“You can’t have him!” she says in an eerily calm voice, which sounds far away and has me cutting off some poor fucker in the lane next to me.
“Who’s there, Ry? Tell me, baby, please,” I plead, fear like I’ve only ever known in my youth tasting like bile in my mouth. Fear in my every fucking nerve. I struggle with deciding whether to hang up and call 9-1-1, but that would mean I’d have to hang up on her—not hear her, not know she’s okay.
“You fucking bitch!” is all I hear before she cries out in pain and the phone goes dead.
“No!” I scream and smash my hand into the steering wheel. My eyes blur as I try to push the numbers on my phone, but my fingers are shaking so fucking bad that I can’t even manage 9-1-1 until after the third try.