Her Terrifying Love

Part 6

"I didn't even see him." Jack swallowed his words. "He just... Oh, Jesus."

Lyla squinted into Jack's car. "Where's Carissa?" she asked.

"I left her at the party. When I saw that dude freaking out and going after you again, I knew something really bad was gonna happen." His eyes went to the body sprawled on the pavement. 

"Well, you saved me." She offered a gentle smile and looked into his deep, brown eyes. "He would have killed me or beaten me so badly I'd wished I was dead." 

Lyla filled her lungs with the cool forest air and exhaled slowly. This gorgeous guy that she had often fantasized about had come to her rescue. Her heart raced.

He produced his phone and held it in his trembling hand. "Damn! No signal."

"No, wait. Wait. Don't call. Just think about this for a minute."

"Think about what?! We need to report this." 

Lyla placed her hand over his phone and stepped closer. "Look, you've been drinking." 

He nodded. 

"Didn't you get tagged for a DUI last summer?" 

"Who told you that?"

"People talk."

Jack took a quick glance at the body, then hung his head.

"You can forget about a scholarship. And football," said Lyla. "With the DUI and then something like this on your record, there's no coming back from that one."

"Well, then you call the police."

"And tell them what? How do I leave you out of the story?"

"Don't do it for me."

"I'm also doing it for me. You know why Keenan was so f'ed up? His mother. She's seriously deranged. I'm more scared of her than I ever was of him. She actually went to prison for stabbing some woman."

"No way."

"Totally true. His whole family is a bunch of psychos. If they find out I had something to do with this, they'll kill me. And they'll come after you, too."

"So, what are you saying? We just leave him here on the side of the road?"

"Maybe we dump him and his car out here somewhere." 

Jack's jaw dropped. "That's insane. We need to call the cops and tell them what happened. It was an accident. There was nothing I could do. You saw it."

"And then what? You think everything goes back to normal? No way. This changes everything. Everything."

She experienced a moment of clarity, the effects of the drug abating.

"Look around, Jack. We're in the middle of nowhere. Nobody is ever gonna find him out here."

"We can't. We just can't."

"Yeah, we can. We need to."

He looked deep into her eyes and considered her words carefully. They jumped when they heard a scuffing sound from the shoulder of the road. Jack advanced toward the body.

"Wasn't he facing the other way?!" He eyed the corpse, his heart beating faster.

"No. No," she insisted. "He was just like that. He was."

They stared at the body for a full minute, watching for the slightest indication of movement.

"Maybe I'm a terrible person for saying this, but if anybody deserved to die..." She directed her eyes from Jack toward Keenan's body sprawled on the roadside.

"Oh, my God." Jack wrapped his arms around Lyla and rested his head on her shoulder.