“That’s what you always say, and I think you’re wrong.” She sounded quiet but determined. “You’re my sister, and I love you. That’s enough of a reason for me to worry.”
I couldn’t argue with that logic because I probably would have said the same thing if our situation had been reversed. And Prue was older now. Old enough to understand—or at least try to understand—what had happened back then between me and the guys.
Fine.
Perhaps I would tell her. As long as she wanted the truth, I couldn’t see the harm in potentially having my little sister on my side.
Only it meant digging up the facts again after spending the past few years trying to forget them.
“Right before the SAT our senior year,” I began, the old bitterness slowly rising again, tying my stomach in knots, tensing my body, and leaving an unpleasant taste in my mouth. “The three of us—Cooper, Nolan, and me—skipped class and broke into this room. This office. We had no idea what was in there at the time.”
“And the test answers were in that office? That’s when y’all stole them?”
I huffed out a short breath as I shook my head. “I never stole anything. I didn’t need to cheat to get a good score on the SAT. I never even saw the two of them steal anything, either. But it was the exam proctor’s office, and they had video evidence of the three of us breaking in together. So, they must have put two and two together. Or three in our case.”
“I don’t understand.” Prue tilted her head to the side as she glanced in my direction. “If you weren’t breaking into the office to cheat on the test, why did you go in there?”
The question made me smile despite myself. Prue might have been older and finally out of high school, but she was still pretty naïve.
I opened my mouth to ask what she thought three horny teenagers might want to do all alone in that office, but before I said anything, Prue screamed, and the car started to slide into a spin as she turned the wheel.
I caught a glimpse through the rain of an enormous tree lying on its side across the entire road, right in our path, as we skidded toward it; it seemed in slow motion.
“Slow down!” I yelled. “Stop, Prue!”
“I’m trying!”
She slammed on the brakes again, and the car turned until it faced the ditch on the side of the road, but we continued to hydroplane toward the tree somehow.
Either way we went, we were going to hit something.
We both screamed again as a tidal wave hit the car, and water splashed up all around us.
And then... we stopped.
We stopped spinning. We stopped screaming. The car engine stopped, and smoke began to hiss out from the hood.
“Are we alive?” Prue whispered, still clutching the wheel with both hands as she stared straight ahead. “Did we... did we crash?”
“I don’t even know,” I said, looking around as I choked back the metallic taste of fear and adrenaline. “I... I don’t think we hit anything.”
The tree was still a few feet ahead of us—or a few feet to the side of us since our car was facing the wrong direction. But as I looked out my window, I finally started to figure out the problem.
“I think we slid into the ditch, which has practically become a lake. And it must have flooded the engine.” I nearly opened the door but thought better of it. The water was up past the bottom of my passenger door. “We might have to get out on your side.”
“Get out and go where?” She looked at me like I was crazy. “It’s still pouring down hard out there.”
I scrubbed a hand down my face and took a deep breath. “I don’t know, Prue. But we can’t stay here. What if someone loses control like we did and crashes into us? We’re screwed.”
“What are we going to do?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“We’ll get some help. We’ll call Mom and Dad. Or the police. Or... or someone.”
And in the meantime, I silently prayed that nothing horrible would happen to us or the car.
Chapter Five
Nolan Reed
My jaw ached from being permanently clenched all night, and the way Coop’s truck kept fishtailing all over the damn road didn’t help any.
I trusted my buddy to get us wherever we were going. Always. But Jesus, he drove through the storm like a man on a mission.
Which, I guess he was. We both were.
A fucking stupid mission that had started off doomed to fail and had somehow become even more hopeless over the past few hours.
Poppy obviously wouldn’t talk to us. She still hated us. She made that fact perfectly clear. So it was a wrap.
Case closed.
Over and out.
However, getting the bad news through Cooper’s thick skull without a hammer, some nails, and a map of where it all went wrong was even more hopeless than our current attempt at getting her to talk.