I couldn’t believe a view of his strapping back through a smudged glass door was the last image I’d keep of him.
That was, until the horn from my Uber blared behind me and scared me up at least a foot in the air.
And woke James up from his exhaustion induced coma.
His shoulders jumped and he snapped around. My lungs seized a gasp.
Now those molten gold eyes were on me as we stood several feet and a glass door apart, and they were hotter than the sun could ever hope to be.
“Oh shit.”
My feet fell over one another, eyes rounding in my head as I stumbled back on the pavement towards my Uber.
James left his coffee and broke out into a full fucking sprint across the store, the vision of him coming at me full speed pushing my legs to eat up the short distance between me and the clunky Chevy waiting for me.
My fingers slapped the passenger side door handle at the same time the chime of the gas station door zinged at the sharpest pitch.
“Scarlett!”
My breathing came in choppy waves as he roared my name at the beastliest decibel, fumbling with the door handle until I finally got it open.
“Go, go!” I threw myself inside the car, deserting every lesson of stranger-danger, and locked myself in.
“Um, what the shit is—”
“Just drive!” I yelled, huffing and pressing back against my seat as I shifted around to face the window. Both my driver and I yelped as what sounded like two fists hit the glass on my side.
“Scarlett.” The lock on my door handle jamming frantically, back and forth and back and forth. He was going to break it off, I was sure of it. Sure of it. “Scarlett, get out of the car. Now!”
“Drive.”
But the car didn’t move, and James kept calling for me.
“Scarlett, I—” His anger softened in my name, cradling it like something that was about to break. His base-deep voice muffled through the thick glass window. “Just get out of the car. We don’t have to go see your father. I’ll take you as far away from him as I can if that’s what you want. Just get out of the car. “
Through pinched and watering eyes, I forced out, “It’s not that simple and you know it.”
There was a significant pause, and in that pause, I was dumb enough to look at him.
James was right there, one of his huge hands flattened against the window. Every single golden ray flowering around his pupils said something different to me. They were so loud, his eyes. So unapologetically honest even when he didn’t know it.
They switched between mine, begging with more words than the gutted ones that came off his lips.
“Don’t do this. Please don’t do this.”
A terrible ache burdened my whole chest, bleeding out into every part of me that felt.
If only James knew that look in his eyes was why I had to do this.
Tucking my bottom lip between my teeth, I placed my hand over his on the window. James’ sharp stare moved from me, to our mirrored hands, back to me and the saltwater burning my eyes.
My thumb swept over his on the glass, whispering with a sad smile.
“Bye, Hades.”
Desperation lit like wildfire around his irises, his fingers pressing harder to the glass over mine.
“No.”