They Fed Me to the Dead, So I Woke Up Before the End novel · Chapter 9 of 24
Chapter 9: What He Saw
Jonas drove me home in his truck with the dirt bike roped in the bed.
His sister sat squeezed in the back seat beside two children she had pulled off the bus.
He didn't ask me anything for the first ten miles.
I leaned my head on the window and tried to stop my hands from shaking.
At a red light that no longer mattered, he reached across the cab and turned my chin toward him.
He had a clean handkerchief in his hand.
He wiped the dried blood from under my nose, slowly, and then along my jaw where it had run.
His thumb stayed there a moment too long.
I noticed that his hand was not quite steady, and I decided it was the adrenaline.
"There," he said, rough.
"Thanks."
"You scared me."
"I scared myself."
He took his hand back and put it on the wheel and drove.
His sister leaned forward between the seats.
She was twenty-four, with his dark eyes and a split lip, and she had been quiet until now.
"I'm still here," she said, "so I'm going to say thank you, and then I'm going to pretend I didn't see what you did, until my brother tells me what I'm pretending."
"That's fair," I said.
"He's bad at pretending," she said. "Just so you know."
"Noted."
Jonas looked at the road and said nothing, and the tips of his ears went red.
*
The Ridge was quiet when we pulled up.
My mother ran off the porch before the truck stopped.
She took my face in both hands and said, "Oh, thank God, oh Reese," until I nearly cried again.
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