❝what's the closest you can come
to an almost total wreck...
and still walk away,
all limbs intact? ❞
☽
A BEAT OF HESITATION.
And then Drake lurches, climbs off of me, clobbers over the console clumsily.
"What?" I hear my voice hiccup. What is this? "¿Qué haces?"
His shirtless silhouette, scrambling between the seats, elbows and knees knocking into the dashboard, leaving harsh, heavy, empty sounds of a struggle.
"Ah, esos mamahuevos," he curses under his breath, plopping down in front of the steering wheel to reach across the console for the ominous, aforementioned glovebox. I sit up anxiously, pausing for a moment, before gripping the headrests and hoisting myself forward, socks first, como una princesita, to sink into the passenger seat. I'm only halfway there, awkwardly shimmying into the pocket of space between his arm and the seat, when Drake locks his elbow to pin me to the clingy material, as if a makeshift seatbelt to prevent me from cannonballing through the windshield in an inevitable collision. "I don't know if they fucked with my car, Melo."
"Like, what?" I ask warily, syllables slurring together as I try to steady my bleary vision, marred by too many shadows, shapes, edges, traced by silvery strokes. "I don't understand."
His jaw tightens in panicked frustration. "I don't know. ¿Qué pasa si es una bomba?"
What? How high is Drake?
"No, it can't be a... a bomb."
"Why the fuck not?"
My pulse spikes.
It flickers across my eyelids, frames split and spliced, inciting and instinctual fear of them—political, racist, or terrorist cults. If they're targeting Drake because... because...
Well, if it is a bomb, Drake and I need to get the fuck out of here. I'm not going down with his shitty '99 Volvo. RIP.
"Okay, vámonos, Medina," I rush out as I stretch for the handle tentatively, but Drake releases me, and I freeze, icy cold confusion anchoring my body. I can still feel the weight of his arm, a vice grip crushing my windpipe, cinching knots in my lungs, holding my heart hostage. "Drake?"
In a bout of slow, lethargic moments, unmistaken hesitation, Drake reaches for the glovebox. "Luz, quédate quieto." His approach is distrustful and uncertain, guarded, so many things I've seen a million times in him, b—
Click.
His glovebox falls open innocently, exposing a thick, sealed envelope to the darkness, its flesh, a milky white in the faint veil of moonlight, stained by bloody fingerprints. Sophany, it reads, in scrawling Sharpie, the handwriting reminiscent of a warning I'd found on a battered Metrocard. My battered Metrocard. Fuck.
His fingers tremble.
He snags it, but I lunge for him frantically. "Stop! ¡No lo abras!"
Drake pauses to peer up at me. "Why?"
Dizzily, I meet his gaze, shivering under the brunt impact of... him. I'm too drunk to see Drake Medina die tonight. "I don't— I don't know." I can't keep the hysterical flutter hidden. It bares itself as I stutter and trip, tongue-twisting, trying to keep the possibilities at bay. I don't understand this, this, this, but if anything happened to him, I'd never forgive myself. "I don't know, Drake, what if it's, like, anthrax?"
YOU ARE READING
Dark Places
Mystery / Thriller[UPDATES ON FRIDAYS] It's been three years since Luz Melo left Portland, Maine... and Drake Medina. ☽ When her "borderline" alcoholic lifestyle in NYC falls apart, leaving her girlfriend in rehab, her grades trashed, and her scholarship revoked, th...
