The truck had been stopped for seconds, still running, when the tailgate lowered and fell the last few inches with a thunk. Cool air rushed into the bed of the truck, and Austin drank in the freshness after the stale, metallic taste of the last two hours.
“How is he?” Lee whispered.
“Are we past Toledo?” Austin drew his legs under him to crawl forward, his hair grazing the low cap.
“Austin.”
“He might be asleep. He hasn’t said anything in a while.”
Brenner had spoken five words since they left, four of them “no” when shifts in his breathing prompted Austin to ask if he should get Lee to stop driving. He’d also once said “yeah” when Austin asked if he was sure about the “no.”
Lee leaned in, shadowing her face from the glow of the taillights. “Marcus?”
A cough answered her first, then a quiet rasp. “I’m okay.”
“We’re at a rest stop about forty miles south of Toledo. It’s almost four o’clock. We should be safe here for several hours.”
“Nothing suspicious so far?” Austin said.
“No.” Lee shimmied over the tailgate and into the bed. Austin pulled his knees to his chest to give her room. Her hand ran along the edge of the mattress with a soft sound. “Marcus, I need to take your pulse.”
Her breath caught quietly a moment later.
“What?” Austin said.
“His fever is spiking.”
She rummaged in the dark, and then an LED light clicked on, bright enough to illuminate every corner of the tight space and make all of them squint. Lee pulled a leather laptop case into her lap and drew out stethoscope and thermometer. Brenner shivered when she unzipped his hoodie. He wasn’t wearing anything under it. Austin’s breath snagged at the sight of the bruises, at Brenner’s ribs visible through the discolored skin.
No belief system could possibly be worth this.
Lee listened to him breathe, took his temperature, and repacked the items into the bag.
“Is he okay?” Like she’ll tell you.
“One-oh-two-point-six.”
When she was a toddler, Olivia once had a fever of 105-point-something, so that couldn’t be too bad. Or he had no idea what he was talking about, because Lee’s frown might be … fear.
“Join Violet in the cab,” she said.
Austin nodded, and his mouth dried.
“When she protests, tell her I apologize.”
Lee knew everything. “If you want to sleep back here for a while, I could keep driving.”
“No.”
She didn’t even trust him to take them to their destination.
“Not because it’s you offering.” He must have scowled more fiercely than he thought. Lee glanced at Brenner and lowered her voice. “He needs a rest from the constant motion.”
Of course he did, and if they could freeze time, they could give him a week to heal up. In the real world, even an hour was too long. They’d barely crossed the state line. But arguing would be fruitless, maybe detrimental. This woman had blinders where Brenner was concerned, and Austin still had a long way to go in earning her trust. He scooted out of the bed and dropped his feet to the blacktop.
Lee had parked under a floodlight. Not the smartest place. Maybe she considered it hiding in plain sight, but this was a rest stop. No one would find it abnormal for travelers to sleep in deliberate shadow. About a hundred yards away, at the north end of the parking lot, a brown brick Visitor’s Center squatted alongside an even lower building with an arrow pointing inside: Public Restrooms. Austin poked his head into the truck and turned off the ignition.
Violet stared at him from across the cab, and he hoped he only imagined the way she seemed to shrink against the passenger door.
She tugged on the door handle. “Uh, we’re not sleeping in here at the same time.”
“Lee said his fever’s up. She wants to watch him. And she’s sorry you have to put up with me in the meantime.”
Violet’s hand fell into her lap. She rubbed her thumb over her wrist, and something was missing. Her charm bracelet. She’d obsessed over that thing before.
Austin climbed into the cab and shut the door, and there they were, he and Violet, breathing the same air, nothing between them but an arm’s length and the gear shift. The cab smelled like strawberries, but manufactured—a plug-in scent hidden under the seat or somewhere.
Violet leaned back into the headrest and shut her eyes. “Fine, I’ll sleep in here. But we’re not going to talk.”
He should respect that, and he did. Would. In a minute. “I have one thing to say, and then—”
“It doesn’t matter, whatever it is.”
“When I—when I hit you.”
Violet’s eyes shot open. “Seriously, that’s your topic?”
He willed his voice to be steady, in control. “You need to understand.”
“It’s the cop thing, right? You can’t take no for an answer, not even from a girl who wants to keep her clothes on.”
He ducked his head, but she could probably see the heat flushing up the back of his neck before reaching his face. This is how she sees me.
“The whole thing was so stupid.” Violet turned toward the window, and it fogged with her breath. “I was so stupid. ‘Come on, Austin, please have sex with me,’ and you all, ‘Not yet,’ and I really don’t understand that part, actually. If you’ll hit a girl for saying no, why—?”
“I didn’t.”
“Um, I had a fat lip for a day.”
He ground the heel of his hand against the steering wheel. He forced himself to meet her gaze. “I didn’t hit you for saying no.”
Her eyes widened, and her eyebrows arched, and she might as well have spoken aloud: Right, sure you didn’t.
“Violet, I …” His hands needed his guitar. Without it, they fidgeted in his lap until he rubbed his gritty eyes.
Violet crossed her arms and leaned on an angle, into the corner of the door and the seat. “Fine, whatever, say it.”
“I wasn’t hitting you. In my head, I mean. I’d never hit you.” Good, his voice was strengthening, and he didn’t have to force it now, because this was truth Violet needed to hear. “I would never hit you. You’re—you’re—”
Kind. Sweet. Beautiful. Strong. And you glow, Violet. With, I don’t know, life or something.
He breathed in and let it out. “You don’t deserve to be hit, by any guy at any time for any reason.”
Violet drew up her knees, heels of her shoes propped on the edge of the seat, and encircled them with her arms.
“That’s all,” Austin said.
“Okay.”
Silence stole in. A long sigh poured out, one he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He’d said it, and she’d listened, and she seemed to believe him. He tried to tilt his head back, the headrest supporting his neck, but … ow. That wasn’t going to be comfortable in three minutes, much less three hours or however long they were here. If they were going to sit motionless, he might as well sleep.
“Who was it, then?” Violet said.
“What?”
“Whoever you were punching. In your mind, I mean.”
A rock fell onto his chest. “I wasn’t … it wasn’t anyone.”
She stretched out her legs under the dashboard and closed her eyes.
“Violet?”
“Like I said, we’re not talking.”
“I—”
“There’s no point, Austin. You can’t stop lying.”
His right fingers twitched for guitar strings, for the reassuring universality of the chords. He stared out the driver’s window. A semitruck pulled into the rest stop and parked on the other side of the lot. The tall gray-bearded driver climbed down and beelined for the restroom. Austin closed his eyes and pulled on the green coat of calm, of safety. Breathe in, out. Now, talk about it.
“My dad,” Austin said.
Violet’s eyes popped open. She sat forward, legs pulling closer to the seat. “I reminded you of your dad? I’m five-foot-five and, uh, a girl.”
“Sometimes my reactions don’t make sense. I’ve done a little Internet research on the topic, and I seem to be pretty typical.”
“The topic?”
Maybe this would all be easy, if he’d ever spoken about it before. “Um … abuse. Child abuse.”
Violet’s lips parted, her eyes widened, and then she sat there like that, open to his stupid revelation, waiting for … what, details? What Dad used to do? How it felt? Like he’d tell her any of that crap. He’d look weak, and she might start to pity him, and … no.
“Austin, your dad didn’t … didn’t do things to you, did he?”
Things? … Oh. “Nah, nothing like that.”
“So he hit you? But I didn’t hit you. What did I do that made you think—?”
“Really, it’s not important. It was a long time ago, and I’m fine now.” His voice didn’t wobble, although his heart felt like it was going to pound out of his chest.
“Still, I should know what I did, so I don’t do it again.”
So you don’t have reason to give me a fat lip again, she was thinking. He hid his face in his hands, and it was too hot, flushed. Or maybe his hands were cold.
“Austin.”
Violet’s voice was soft, and he wanted to brush against that softness, let it hold him for a minute. Let her hold him, and hold her back. But he’d lost the right to do that, and besides, at the moment he couldn’t lift his head.
“Austin, listen. I’m not saying I’m scared of you. I just don’t want to do something that would … I don’t know, hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me,” he said into his hands. I’m not breakable, dang it.
“Okay. Well, if you don’t want me to know, then I get that. It’s personal stuff, and I’m not really—we’re not really—anything, anymore.”
He lowered his hands and rested his forehead on the steering wheel. Another deep breath, then one more, and then he sat up and met her eyes. At least she wasn’t crying. And her face wasn’t all pinched with sorrow for his tragic childhood, or any of that melodrama. Maybe it would be all right for her to know. Not everything, of course, but a little more.
“You pushed me. I get, um, too defensive sometimes, when people are physically aggressive. But I could still see you and deal with it. Then I lost my footing, do you remember?”
She nodded.
“And I bumped my head on the wall?”
“Yeah, but not very hard.”
“No, but it was …” He sighed. “Um … my … my dad …”
Violet inched closer to him on the seat. Her hand didn’t take his, but she rested it on the gear shift. Closer. Close enough.
“One of his things was, he’d pick me up and throw me. Not far, not like—you know, a football pass or something—just a few feet. Usually into a wall.”
“How old were you?” she whispered.
“When it started? Six. The year my sister was born. I mean, he’d slap me and all before that, but when she came it got …” His throat closed up. Violet waited for him. “Anyway, bumping my head into walls is apparently something to avoid in the future.”
The silence wasn’t cold anymore, and Austin let his heart rate slow back to normal over the next few minutes. Violet withdrew her hand back into her lap and rubbed her thumb over her wrist, slowly at first the way he’d seen her do it before, then faster.
“Like I said before, I’m fine now.” He ventured half a smile.
She didn’t return it. “You probably don’t want me to say I’m sorry, do you.”
“It’s not really necessary.”
“Then, I guess, thanks for telling me. Even though you didn’t want to.”
He nodded. They huddled against their respective doors, and Austin imagined his body sinking down on a mattress, swathed in sheets and blankets, with a pillow under his head. He probably wouldn’t sleep a minute….
Tap-tap-tap.
He jolted up from his slump against the driver’s door and swiveled to face the window. Lee stood there, tense lines drawn between her eyebrows, probably a headache. Across the cab, Violet slept on.
Austin cracked open the door. “Yeah?”
“We have to find a hotel.”
“Lee.” No words could encapsulate the danger of what she’d just said.
“I understand, but Marcus is—” She stepped backward from the open door and stood with her hands behind her back, a soldier at ease. Her voice evened. “I can’t control his fever.”
“And you’ll be able to in a hotel room?”
“I’ll be able to bathe him. And he needs to be indoors, in a regulated temperature.”
“We should get farther south first.”
“Austin, we can’t.”
He tipped his shoulders back against the seat and pressed as hard as he could and took a deep breath. No reason to be angry with her. “Give me the keys. I’ll find a hotel.”