“I thought it might work, that I could come back and we could still do this together,” I chew the inside of my cheek, “but I can’t. I can’t come back here, wonder what you’ve been doing while I’ve been gone, and deal with the days when you decide I don’t exist. I won’t,” I shake my head. “The highs are so high, but the lows are…” I trail off, fighting the rising lump in my throat. “Bo, I’ve never felt with anyone the way I feel when I’m with you…and I hope I never do again.”
Bo looks away, “Well,” he gazes off into the trees, “I guess we’ll see if you still love me after tonight.” If he didn’t ice me out for what Col did, he sure as hell will for this. Bo is all or nothing, and if anyone is going to do the leaving, it’s him. “You like playing games, right?” He looks at the ground with a sniff, “You can hit hard, and you can run pretty fast…”
“What?” I don’t know what he’s getting at.
Bo reaches behind his back, pulls his shirt up, and lifts something out of the waistband of his pants. When he brings his hand back around, my breath catches. Even in the darkness cut with moonlight, I realize he’s gripping a black handgun.
“Superstar Maguire with the thick thighs and RBIs…” he taunts.
“Bo,” my heart is beating so hard, I can barely breathe, “what are you doing?”
Bo aims the gun at the ground and peers down the barrel, “It’s illegal to hunt deer right now…” after a few moments, he lifts his head again, “but not you.”
“Bo…"
He’s not listening. “I’ll give you a 20 second head start.”
“Bo…”
He cocks the gun, “Which is more than you deserve.”
“Bowen!”
“One…two…three…”
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Evie
High School
Sprinting through a forest is impossible. Even if the ground looks flat, it’s not, and thin branches reach out like invisible fingers, dragging through my flesh like razors. They slow me down, but I don’t feel them ripping at my flesh. I don’t care where I’m going, I just have to get out. I just have to concentrate on what’s ahead, keep moving, and get out.
But focusing on the path in front of me is useless if I don’t see the black figure shoot down the side of the hill in my periphery. I let out a scream when he flies out from between the trees and sweeps his arms around me, knocking my phone out of my hand. He slams into my side and grabs me around the waist, my legs still pumping, mid-run, when he lifts me off the ground.
His laugh echoes in my ear as he carries me over the dirt and leaves, holding my back tight against his chest. As quick as he snatched me, he reels back and tosses me onto the ground in front of him. I land on my shoulder with a thud, gasping as I roll over the forest floor.
“What’d I tell you, E?” Bo’s deep voice reverberates against the hillside, “You’re not going anywhere. I’m nowhere near done with you tonight.”
When I roll onto my side, I spy something bright sticking out of his side pocket. The fluorescent yellow nylon is unmistakable. He found my shorts I ditched back at the tree and tracked me like it was nothing. Because he knows these woods inside and out, and he’s used to tracking animals that do know how to hide.
Bo’s fast, but I can’t stop now. I’ll keep running even if he’s two steps behind me the entire way back to Canaan. Ignoring him, the toe of my sneaker catches a root in the dirt and I’m able to propel myself up and scramble into a run once more. But as soon as I hit my first stride, a pop echoes in my ears and I feel a shooting pain as my left knee explodes.
The impact throws me forward and I land face down in the leaves with a thud. Adrenaline pumping, I roll over and try to sit up, but the damage is too great and I let out a long, ear-splitting howl as soon as I try to bend my knee. Gasping for breath, I wail up to the treetops, my back arching at an unnatural angle before collapsing back to the earth.
After I’m finally able to suck in a breath, I push myself up to a sitting position. My face is frozen in agony and my chest heaves as I stare down at my leg. While blood pours from the gaping hole where my kneecap used to be, I can only think of one thing, above all else.
How am I going to play ball?
So naïve…
Surgery, rehab…I’ll be out for at least a year, maybe they’ll understand…I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head furiously, shut up!
Through my deep, rattling breaths, I barely hear Bo approach until his legs appear in front of me. He plants his grey and red sneakers on either side of my knees and crouches down, “First rule of stalking your prey,” he glances down, studying my mangled knee, "only move when they move.”
When I blink, everything in my field of vision drifts to the right and I’m not sure whether it’s blood loss or the overload of adrenaline. Either way, it doesn’t matter, because my arms and my right knee still work. But as soon as I draw my good leg up to push away, Bo grabs my left knee and squeezes. My muscles seize as the white-hot pain shoots through my leg and I fall back onto the ground with a shriek that descends into sobs.
Rolling my head back and forth across the dead leaves and twigs, I finally open my eyes to see the stars peeking out from behind the canopy. My lungs burn from running and then gasping for breath through the jarring pain, but I manage to scream one loud, long word through my jumble of despair.
“COLSON!”
I don’t yell for my mom, or my dad, or for God. I yell for Colson.
I know he won’t come. But maybe, by some cosmic telepathy, he’ll hear me. Maybe he knows something is wrong. He did know something was wrong, but I didn’t listen to him when he hinted at it because he would never straight up forbid me to do anything. He’s not like that. Maybe he still knows something is wrong. Maybe he’ll have a feeling and come find me.
But of all the things I could’ve said, this is the one that incenses Bo the most.
“Why the fuck are you crying for Colson?” He swings his arm out and smacks me across the cheek, throwing my head to the side, “Don’t you know who owns your ass?” He grabs my jaw and jerks my face back to him, “You know who decides if you live or die?” he snarls through clenched teeth. “Me!”
When he tosses my face away, I feel the cool, wet sensation of my own blood he leaves on my skin. Even with the torrents of pain and any hope of escape dwindling by the second, the defiance is still strong. My resentment and bitterness overflows and all the hate comes rushing out.
“Because he’s my brother,” I rasp through the agony, baring my teeth at him in a hateful grimace, “and you’ll never be as good as him!”
As intensely as my anger pours forth, Bo’s is like a dam break. I don’t feel anything after the third blow to my temple. It’s the only mercy Bo allows me—the inability to control his rage enough to make sure I remain conscious.
I drift in and out every few seconds, tasting the blood on my tongue, my shoulders scraping up and down against the dirt, like someone’s shaking me. Why is my knee all the way up at my arm? I can barely breathe. My eyes fly open with a sharp pain slamming over and over somewhere deep in my belly, but flutter closed again seconds later.
I finally come to, my head whipping from side to side as Bo smacks me across the face to revive me. And he seems kind of irritated about it. When I finally open my eyes, his face slowly comes into focus.
