Page 28 of Glass
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Poppy is silent as we load the kids into the SUV. Luckily, her siblings don’t seem to notice because they’re too busy being excited about what Shelby has deemed their first road trip. It doesn’t matter that they took a much longer trip years ago with Doc in order to get to Acadia. As far as they’re concerned, this is the only trip that counts.
I climb into the front seat and glance back to find Lane staring strangely ahead at Poppy in the passenger’s seat. His brows knit together and his fist is pressed against his mouth as if he might be sick.
“You okay?” I ask. The last thing we need is to be trapped on the highway with a sick kid.
He shakes his head, and my stomach drops for a moment. “Poppy?” he asks, the smallest hint of trepidation in his tone.
Poppy turns to face her siblings and melts for Lane, her posture relaxing against the seat as she looks at him with far more warmth than she’s offered me. “Yeah, honey?”
“Sit by me,” he says in his usual small voice.
She barely hesitates before unbuckling her seat belt. She doesn’t even bother to get out of the SUV, climbing over the center console instead and collapsing in the middle seat of the middle row between Lane and Corey. Shelby, Jacob, and Hannah sit together in the very back.
I open my mouth to protest that there’s no reason for her to squish back there with a perfectly good front seat open. I’m silenced by a vicious look from Poppy. Technically, one of the older kids could move up, but the kids pointedly all stare out the windows when I try to make eye contact.
For the first time since I came to The Lost, I’m the low man on the hierarchy.
“Better get used to it,” I mutter to myself as I start up the borrowed SUV that Joss Lyle hand-delivered to us. Joss is a questionable man—he sought asylum with The Lost after being cast out from his pack for breaking shifter laws that I’ve never bothered to ask about. As far as I’m concerned, if it wasn’t bad enough to bring about his death then it’s something I can live with. And like others that find a place among us, he’s loyal.
There’s no reason for me to keep a car of my own. I only visit the Brooklyn apartment as needed since it’s quite a trek to get there. And usually more of the pack travels with me.
I can’t help but marvel that this is the first trip I’ve taken as part of a family.
I’m not paying a lot of attention as we leave Bar Harbour—where we picked the SUV up—behind us. I might not make the trip often, but I could still practically do the drive in my sleep.
The sense that something isn’t right doesn’t hit me until our tires touch the empty Trenton Bridge. It’s not a huge bridge, but I’ve never seen it empty during tourist season. My intuition tells me something is wrong.
“Does everyone have their seat belts on?” I ask casually.
I watch in the rear view mirror as Poppy looks around to check with her own eyes that everyone’s seat belt is on. “Yep,” she confirms. It’s a small comfort as my gut churns.
Halfway across.
Two new cars appear. Both heading the direction we came from. Still, I don’t feel right, even though we’ll be off the bridge within sixty seconds.
Almost across.
My fingers flex around the steering wheel. The other cars slow as if they too can sense impending trouble. I pry one hand from the wheel to smash the window-down buttons all at once. I’m operating on nothing more than gut feelings.
“What are you doing?” Poppy asks. “The air is on.”
The cars pass us, never changing speed, and I release the breath I was holding. “Sorry, I hit the buttons on accident,” I lie. I’m sure she doesn’t believe me, but she doesn’t say anything and I don’t dare meet her eyes in the rear view mirror.
I try to swallow my paranoia as we safely leave the bridge. I chalk it up to being anxious about leaving the pack behind because I’ve never in my life worried about being pushed over the bridge into the water before. If this is the kind of anxiety that comes with having a mate to protect, someone really should have warned me better.
I circle my shoulders in an attempt to release the tension as we coast along through Trenton. Shelby and Hannah strike up an argument in the backseat about what snacks to get the first time we stop at a gas station.
“Popcorn!” Hannah announces as her attempt to compromise between chip choices.
I check my mirror and the empty road behind me, and I catch Poppy frowning at her sister’s words. “Everything okay?” I ask her. If she’s starting to get a bad feeling too, I will turn this SUV around and go the fuck back to Acadia in an instant.
“Actually…” She trails off momentarily as we listen to someone start up an engine somewhere off the main roadway. It’s abnormally loud for us to be able to hear it in the car with the windows up, so I’m surprised it’s not close enough to tell where it’s coming from. “I don’t know, it was probably nothing, but something weird did happen before I made it to Acadia.”
“What was it?” I chance another glance back at her since the road is still empty around us.
She doesn’t get the chance to answer.
Poppy’s eyes move past me and then widen in horror. I jolt around barely in time to see a black SUV come barreling straight toward us. I don’t have time to react before the sickening crunch of metal on metal serenades us as we’re shoved off the road.