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8
anti-hero – taylor swift
"it must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero"
"What the fuck, Ilott?"
"He used to drive F2, didn't he? Yeah, he was teammates with Mick Schumacher at the FDA the year Mick took the championship."
Nate was still watching the Indy, eyes glued to the screen. Callum Ilott's crash had brought out the IndyCar equivalent of a safety car, and Nate looked ready to yell. I hoped he would keep his voice down, because by all accounts, this would still be considered breaking and entering and I really didn't want a criminal record at such a young age. Or at all, really.
Playing with my fingers as I sat, I mentally counted the list of charges that I was currently at: felony drug possession of a controlled substance for the lorazepam, breaking and entering for getting into the Staedtler house, theft for the clothes on our backs.
It did not look like sunshine and rainbows, that for damn sure.
"Palou's done for, there's no way McLaren are in contention for a win now. Jesus fucking Christ." Nate threw his hands up defeat, slumping back onto the couch. "It's all on Dixon or Ericsson now, they're the only ones left with a shot that I genuinely care about."
"Dixon is like the Lewis Hamilton, right? The one with the most status, if you will?"
The blond grinned. "Six Indy titles, baby."
My stomach should not have flip flopped the way that it did when those words left his mouth. Baby. He didn't even mean it in a romantic way, so why was I even reading into it that much?
"Hey, Forrester? How are you feeling? You know, without the drugs?"
I sucked in a breath. I had almost forgotten about the little colored pills sitting in my tote bag. God, I loved that tote bag, and now it was likely that I would die before I saw it again.
"I'm coping shockingly well. I think the adrenaline has countered the withdrawal, if that makes sense. I didn't really use it heavily anyways, I think. Just a tablet or two in the mornings, it depended on how anxious I anticipated being that day. It's hell when you wake up and you feel that cloud of anxious dread settling over you, and you can just tell that for no reason at all, you're going to have an anxiety day, and that you need to do anything you can to stop that from happening, to stop yourself from snapping at the people who care, or breaking down at the smallest of things."
"I'm so sorry that you have to go through that." Nate's tone was sincere. "I'm glad that you trust me enough to tell me this, Charis."
I didn't even realise I had said it. I was about to make up some bullshit excuse about trauma and adrenaline and being in fear of my life when I realised something important.
I actually did trust Nate Macauley. And although the circumstances of this situation scared the hell out of me, being here with Nate made me feel safe and secure.
"When we get out of this mess, you and me are going to find a way to deal with your anxiety that doesn't involve bothering me for black market drugs."
"If we get out of this, you mean. There's no guarantee we're going to see sunrise. Not with a man like Iain Lords out to get us. What do you know about him outside the urban myths?"
Nate sucked in a breath as the race changed over to a commercial break. "He grew up in Reseda, moved to Bayview after he dropped out of high school and his parents threw him out. Lords was broke as hell, started small time dealing: pills, weed. The lowkey kind of stuff. And then rumor has it that he fell in with a gang, killed a few rivals that crossed him, worked his way up and then killed a few more guys. He was power hungry."
"Fuck. We're going to have to spend the rest of our lives hiding, aren't we? I'm never going to see T.J again, or my parents-"
"Charis, stop! We're getting out of here alive, okay?"
"You don't know that!"
"Yeah, you're right, I don't."
And then he kissed me.
NOTES!
just a short chapter today, because i'm trying to draw the story out and fit at least 20 chapters, so some chapters will probably be a lot shorter than others from this point onwards.
