Second Chance Vows novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Garage

Cosima's POV

I was out of my chair before the microphone stopped ringing.

Trent was fast, and I had been lying still for three months.

I ran anyway.

He went through the service door behind the stage, and I went after him down a white corridor that smelled of bleach and fried onions.

A waiter flattened himself against the wall.

Behind me I heard Perry shout my name, and my grandfather's cane, and a dozen feet.

The corridor opened onto a concrete stairwell.

I took the stairs two at a time, in a dress I could not run in.

Trent's shoes rang below me, three flights down.

I heard a car door slam.

When I reached the bottom, the parking garage was dim and cold, and a single gray car sat with its engine running at the foot of the exit ramp.

It was the Audi.

He had not paid for it.

I could see him through the glass, in his wine-soaked shirt, with both hands on the wheel.

He saw me in the mirror, and his mouth moved.

I did not hear the words.

I walked to the middle of the ramp, directly in front of the hood, and stopped.

The headlights came on.

They were high and wide, and they were blinding, and my knees nearly went.

I knew that light.

It was the one that had come up behind me on Harbor Road, and filled the mirror, and not passed.

I did not move.

The engine roared.

Trent leaned out of the window with a face that had no charm left in it, only teeth.

"Move!" he screamed.

"No," I said.

"You were supposed to stay down!"

"I know."

"I hit you once and you stayed down! You should have stayed down!"

His voice echoed off the concrete, and it was a confession, loud and clear, and I heard feet running behind me.

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