I can hear him at least, which is reassuring. It’s faint and tinny, but it’s something.

“I need to pee,” I say.

He looks around us, not a soul to be seen for miles. In the distance, countless headlights pass us by in rapid succession, telling me we must be close to the interstate.

“Stop yelling,” he hisses.

“I’m not yelling,” I say dumbly, standing there with no shoes on, suddenly freezing cold in the crisp fall night.

“Yes, you are,” he says, pressing his hand into the small of my back. When we reach the car, he opens the passenger door and points to the seat. “And you can’t go in there.”

“Why?” I ask, letting him push me back into my seat.

He sighs, using his free hand to reach across me and tilt the rear-view mirror so I can see myself. As my face comes into focus, I inhale sharply.

My face is covered in spattered blood. Like, a lot of it. Curse Jimmy and his goddamn ugly face exploding all over me.

“Fuck me,” I mutter, pushing the mirror away so I can’t see myself anymore. I want to be sick again, and I swallow down a nervous rush of bile.

Jase ignores my swearing and shuts my door, circling round to his side. He climbs into the driver’s seat and throws most of the paper bags into the backseat, keeping only a package of tissues and a bottle of water in his lap. I watch as he unscrews the bottle cap, breaking the seal, and takes a handful of tissues from the plastic packaging. He presses the mouth of the water bottle to the wad of tissues and stretches his arm out of his cracked window, wringing out the excess liquid.

I jerk back as he brings the cold, wet tissues to my face, his touch firm but gentle. He stills for a moment, raising the tissues just off my skin, his face questioning me.

I nod, and he continues. I watch, numb and cold, as the tissues turn red. More tissues. More water. By the time he’s done, he has a messy pile of bright red tissues sitting in his lap and the water is almost gone.

“Here,” he says, the noise of his speech struggling to make it past my ringing ears. “Drink.” I take the water bottle and tip it eagerly, drinking as much and as quickly as I can. It’s at this moment that panic grips me, and I become lucid once more.

What’s he going to do to me? I mean, he killed Jimmy, so I should trust him, right?

I trust him. I’ve always trusted him. But that trust scares the hell out of me. I’d follow him to the depths of hell if he asked me to, and I wouldn’t even ask why.

Bitter love stabs deep in my heart, so hard I almost cry out. I bring a hand to my chest, my breathing suddenly shallow and rapid as I fight to remain in control. I’ve had plenty of panic attacks, usually stuffed in Elliot’s closet whenever I heard a motorcycle or a car backfiring. I haven’t had one in a very long time.

I suppose because, up until now, I’ve been in control. A fragile control that’s now completely shattered. Dornan didn’t die. That reality slams into me like a freight train.

A gun sounds in the distance, or maybe it’s a car backfiring —I’ve never been able to tell the difference. But whatever it is, the deep boom makes its way into my chest and strangles itself around my heart, making it thud wildly.

Jase bags up the bloodied tissues and throws them in the backseat before turning to me. His face twists into concern as he watches me hyperventilate. Suddenly, I need to be out of the car, it’s so stifling. I open the door, tumbling onto the dirty asphalt that marks the edge of the gas station. I hear Jase yell something behind me, but I don’t pay attention. He’s yelling one word, three syllables over and over again, and as my feet beat against the bare pavement I realize he’s yelling my name. Juliette! Juliette!

Like a rabbit being chased, I skitter around the back of the gas station and pause briefly. There’s row upon row of dying corn stalks, a field that desperately needs water the way I need Dornan toes-up in the morgue. As in, if the field doesn’t get water, and Dornan doesn’t die, the corn and I are both completely fucked.

Jase rounds up behind me. “Why are you running?” he asks, panting hard. More banging noises. Heavy. Loud. Gunshots?

I bolt.

Why am I running? I don’t even know. As I plunge between the stalks of corn they reach out and scratch my bare arms. My feet prickle as the dead, coarse husks batter my soft flesh.

He’s still calling me, those three syllables over and over again, making me run faster, making my breaths panicked and gasping.

Ju-li-ette.

Calm down, the rational voice within me says. You’re just having a panic attack. A meltdown. Everything is going to be okay.

Bang.

And the other voice, the fifteen-year-old girl who liked to cram herself into cupboards and underneath beds when loud noises set her off. She’s terrified. She’s chanting too. Dornan didn’t die. Dornan didn’t die.

I want to listen to the rational voice. I do. But the other voice is so much louder. And then there’s Jase. He’s getting farther away, and I sink to the ground, into the dirt and the coarse, jagged strips of corn husk that dig at my flesh. I wrap my knees close to my chest and bury my face in them, so that I can’t see anything, so that I am safe. So I am hidden.

I stay like that for a long time, how long I don’t know. In the end I start to nod off, until a hand clamps onto my shoulder and I jerk awake.

It’s dark as hell huddled between these corn stalks. My scream doesn’t even penetrate their confining breadth. Then, before I can fight, a large hand covers my mouth. Strong arms lace around my torso and lift me up, so that my feet are no longer touching the ground. I kick and buck but tire quickly, my adrenaline stores depleted, my body damaged and spent.

“Calm down,” Jase says, and I can hear him pretty well this time. What the hell is going on with my hearing?

I relax my body, little by little, until I’m sagging in his arms, still airborne. Gently, he lowers me to the ground and spins me in his arms so that my face is at his chest. My face is wet and I can’t figure out why. Am I crying?

No. It’s raining. Little droplets of rain patter down onto my face, the sky crying for me, as Jase tilts my chin with his steady fingers.

“Why did you run?” he asks, his face creased with concern. “You think I’m going to hurt you?”

I shake my head and cringe as another loud bang fires in the darkness, this time closer to us. Jase’s grip tightens on me as I once again panic, and try to move away from him.

“Shots,” I manage to say. “Somebody’s shooting.”

He smiles then, and I can’t imagine what it is about being shot at that makes him so happy. He points to the sky, one arm wrapped around me, and beams.

“Fireworks, Julz,” he says softly, pulling me as close as he can into his arms. “Look.”

I tilt my head far back, so that I’m looking up directly into the inky black night. Another blast jolts me but this time I don’t look away, because suddenly, the sky is lit up with glittering shards of light that look like diamonds falling to the earth.

And just like that, I’m not scared anymore.

The fireworks finish and Jase leads me back to the car, strapping me into my seat as if I’m a child. I don’t miss the subtle way he flicks the door lock on, meaning I can’t open my door from the inside.

“For your own good,” he says, as he traps me in the car. I don’t answer, my body heavy and cold, my skin damp from the light rain sprinkling outside.

“You should sleep,” he says, his words thick and muffled.

We travel in silence. It is night, and we should be going back to the clubhouse, but instead Jase points his car toward his apartment and drives.

One hand on the wheel, the other clutching mine. I can see him stealing glances at me every few moments. My fingers are crushed in his large hand. It feels almost as if he is clinging tightly to me fearing that if he lets me go, I might float away into the night like I was nothing more than a figment of his imagination. We don’t speak. I stare straight ahead, the tears on my face sometimes glittering in my peripheral vision as we pass under a particularly bright street light.