Page 136 of Lost in the Dark
CAMPING TRIP
CASSIE ALEXANDER
Aten hour drive after I left my asshole ex’s place in Miami, I was all out of adrenaline, and my phone was out of juice. I should’ve been more surprised that Eric had never kept a charger for my phone in his car, but really it was indicative of the whole situation: a lot of him saying he cared over the years, with very little in the way of actual proof.
The final straw had been him going on a “business” trip and me getting a text to look at a certain influencer’s Instagram by a friend of a friend.
The dick hadn’t evenleft town. He was merely out, partying without me, and shacking up at some hotel withher.
That was when I’d taken the keys to his custom Maserati and driven north without a plan—without even all that much luggage. When it’d felt right to turn I did, heading west, racing the low-slung car after the setting sun. I knew it was a bad idea to keep going once it was dark, but I hadn’t seen a sign for a hotel in ages, and I was too scared to pull over and sleep by the road in a several-hundred-thousand-dollar car—and eventually I’d drifted off.
The Maserati rattling off the road and onto a gravel shoulder woke me up enough to hit the brakes, but not before I hit a mile marker and something sharp that definitely wrecked the undercarriage. I tried to back up afterwards, but my tires spun to nowhere, kicking up clouds of dust in the headlights. The Mas was impaled on something...and unless I was secretly the Hulk, I wasn’t going to be able to get it off of it.
I got out of my vehicle and into the quiet night. I should’ve been panicked. I’d just done more damage to a car than my entire yearly salary. Eric was probably going to report it stolen on Monday, and me missing, as an afterthought.
But I must’ve burned away all my fear in the waves of anger that had fueled me this far, because right now? I didn’t feel a thing. Not in a bad, or armored way. I was just...calm. Crickets and cicada song thrummed in soft waves all around me, and I could see more stars overhead than I’d ever seen before. The night was warm, but not unpleasant, and something about being here—wherever the fuckherewas—felt right.
Then I heard a car coming down the road at me—I could see its headlights—and I snapped back to reality.
I, Lizzy Brown, had not actually left the goddamned planet Earth. I was in the middle of fucking nowhere, with an exceedingly expensive broken down car. And while I may not have seen this particular horror movie before, I knew plenty just like it.
I quickly moved to be in the shadow of the Mas, and waited for the car—no, truck—to pass me. Air rushed across my face as it drove on, and I thought I was safe, until three hundred feet up the road I saw break lights, and watched it turn.
What now?
Get into the Mas and lock the doors?
My hands curled into fists in frustration. Couldn’t I have had just one perfect night alone? Why did I have to have a boyfriend who pretended to care, but who secretly dumped me at the first sign of trouble—right after the first doctor’s visit almost? Why couldn’t things go easy for me just once? I looked down at my body, pieces of which were betraying me right now, cells growing where they shouldn’t—I was old enough to know that life wasn’t fair, but why did fate have to keep hammering that point home?
The truck parked twenty feet away, and the passengers left the headlights on as they got out of the cab, one to each side. Right after that, I heard a man’s voice saying, “Holy shit, she’s real.”
I wasn’t sure if he was talking about the car or me, until he addressed me directly. “Boy did you pick the wrong place to crash a Maserati.”
His friend hit his shoulder, walking up, both of them still cast in shadows by the headlights. “Are you okay?”
I opened my mouth and didn’t know how to answer. I’d found out I had cancer a week ago, and my boyfriend had cheated on me, sono.“Depends on your definition.”
“You have a nice voice,” said the man who’d been impressed by my car. My voice was the one thing in my life I’d been reliably told was sexy, but most people waited until after the first date to tell me so. “You probably have a nice everything,” he went on.
Oddly, it didn’t feel threatening when he said it. Just...matter-of-fact.
“Reeve, shut it, you’re scaring her.”
“I don’t think so,” whoever-the-fuck Reeve was said, pulling out his phone to flash it my direction. “You’re sure you’re okay, miss?”
The light illuminated the both of them. Reeve was big, not in the muscled-gym way of Miami, but like a farm-hand. Solid. Dense. His face was a little implacable, like he didn’t let emotions hit it often, but his brown eyes were bright and smart. He had slightly shaggy dark hair, and a five-o’clock shadow the same color.
“I’m Josiah, and this is Reeve, and we’ve forgotten our manners because it’s 3 a.m. and we weren’t expecting to find someone with a crashed Maserati out near our camping field,” Josiah said, tapping his own chest.
“I wasn’t really expecting to be here either,” I said, tucking my hands into the pockets of my jeans. Josiah’s skin was the ruddy, wind-chapped tan of someone used to sun, and he had a mouth that seemed used to smiling. He was leaner than Reeve, but they were both roughly the same height—much taller than I was. Both of them were wearing dark blue jeans and T-shirts that were appropriate given the warm summer night.
Josiah flicked his own phone’s flashlight on and moved to take stock of the car behind me. “I hate to disparage any of the local mechanics, but...”
“You’re going to have to tow it pretty far to get it fixed,” Reeve finished for him.
“Yeah. Makes sense.” I brought my hands up to rub my face. What the fuck had I been thinking, leaving Miami in a huff? If I’d stayed home, I could’ve booby-trapped the apartment I shared with Eric or something to punish him. Some kind of Home Alone-type situation, only for asshole losers who were cheating dicks.
“Miss?” Reeve asked, flicking his light up and down me, before focusing it on my chest. Half his mouth rocked up in amusement. “What’s your name? Lamb?”