“Can it be fixed?” Sulli asks.
I wipe sweat off my brow with my bicep. It’s cold outside, but I’m running hot. “Anything can be fixed. It just depends on the parts I need to fix it.” I crank the engine and then motion her closer to me. “Shine the light over here.” The valve spring windings are harder to see.
She presses up to my side and angles the light downward. I observe the intake and exhaust valve operation opening and closing, and I check the spring windings.
Fuck.
“It’s bad,” she realizes off my scowl.
“We can add broken springs to the list.” I glower at the pushrods. Fuck. “And a bent pushrod.” I expel a coarse breath. “It’s restricting the movement of the valve.” If I had a towel, I’d throw it right now. I reach into her and do a final carburetor assessment.
I back up, my chest collapsing in realization. “I think she needs a new carburetor.”
“So you can’t just clean it?”
I shake my head. “There’s no point wasting time trying. She already needs a new air intake boot. It can’t be fixed out here, but if we get her to a shop, they might have the parts we need.”
Akara comes back, hearing that last bit. “No service. I can’t say how far away the nearest town is.”
“Where are we?” I ask him while I lean back into the car and return the valves to their original spots.
“Minnesota.”
“Fuck,” Sulli mutters, smacking her flashlight that flickers out.
Akara points his cellphone flashlight at Booger, helping me see. My oil-stained hands move around her innerworkings. I pry off the tracker her parents placed on her car—and it’s dead. Battery must’ve died, who knows when.
“I can run down the road,” Sulli offers. “Maybe I’ll find a town or gas station, or even cell service. Then we can call a tow truck and get Booger to the nearest shop.”
My muscles are flexed, seeing holes in her plan before Akara points them out.
“We’d have to run with you, Sulli,” Akara reminds her that we’re not just two guys she’s dating—we’re her bodyguards.
“Then run with me.”
“That means leaving the Jeep on the side of the road, which we can’t do.”
Her Jeep isn’t just any old car. It belonged to Adam Sully. Fans have even created an Instagram page for the thing. It’s famous. It’s sentimental. Akara and I know what the Jeep means to Sulli—what it means to her dad—what it means to the Meadows family and the public.
Leaving it behind is like deserting another person attached to Sulli.
We can’t.
I shut the hood, and Akara tells her and me, “Three options: we all three push the car to the nearest shop, or Banks pushes while Sulli and I run ahead, or I just run ahead and you two push.”
I hate making the tough calls, and luckily, it’s not my job to choose. “What do you say?” I ask him.
“We don’t need two people to run, but you’d gain more ground having two people push the car. So Option 3: I run. You two push.” He looks to Sulli. “You okay with that?”
“I wish I could be the one to run, but I fucking get it.” She nods, knowing she can’t run alone like us, even if she’s the fastest runner. It’s the fuckin’ pitfalls of fame.
With the plan in order, we get to work.
Hour one, sweat drips off my brow. Muscles ache, but I fucking push next to Sulli. Barely any cars pass us in the middle of the night on a mostly empty, deserted road. The few vehicles that stop only cause Sulli anxiety. I always block her. I always talk to them, and when they acknowledge they can’t help, they take off.
Hour two, we worry about Akara.
“He could’ve tripped,” Sulli says between her teeth, pushing the back of the Jeep next to me, “and broken his ankle or something,”
“We’d pass him,” I grunt. “We’re going the same way.”
Hour three, my legs start cramping. My fucking back throbs. I grit down, using all my force as I shove forward. The longer we keep at it, the Jeep feels heavier, like we’re trying to move a Humvee, then a tank, but I never stop.
Sulli never stops.
I’d push through any hell if I needed to, but the question is, is all we’ve got even enough?
“How many miles…” Sulli pushes the Jeep with her back, using her quad muscles, “do you think we’ve gone?”
Five klicks. “Maybe 3 miles.”
I check the time on my watch.
Zero four hundred hours. The sun isn’t close to rising. It’s early on October 31st. An Unhappy Halloween. Because my brother is supposed to be getting married bright and early at zero nine hundred hours tomorrow.
We have only a little more than twenty-four hours to make it back to Philly, and I’m currently hundreds of miles away.
Sulli takes out her phone. “No service.”