In My Head (26 page)

“What’s going on? Why are you in trouble?” I keep a cautious hand on the bar to hold myself just in case he turns fast.

Looking over at him from the passenger seat, I see him constantly glancing up to the rear view mirror to see if anyone is following us. His hair is sticking out in every direction and when he does make eye contact with me his eyes look crazed. Like he’s gone off his rocker.

“Bronson, you need to talk to me.” I keep trying to get him to talk to me. But, he doesn’t give me anything. He just keeps driving, taking us out of town. “Seriously, you need to talk to me.”

He scoffs and gives me a look. A look that makes it seem like he’s upset with me, but I’m not sure what I could have done to upset him. I haven’t even seen him in a while. “I
need
to talk to you? What about you? We never really got personal, me or you. So why start now? I just wanted to have a good last day here and spend some time with you. But your incessant questioning is irritating.”

I jerk my head back like I’ve been slapped. My incessant questioning. Facing forward I grind my teeth together. I’m seriously pissed he would have the balls to say that to me. “I’m not sure what the fuck is going on. But if you don’t want me any part of it why the fuck would you call me and drag me out here just for you to be an asshole to me?”

He growls before slamming the accelerator down harder. Flying down the highway at an alarming speed is starting to scare me. It’s one thing to be cruising at a higher speed, but he’s driving recklessly. I need to try a different tactic.

“Baby, will you please slow down? I don’t want you to get in an accident. You will ruin your car and then you’ll have to start over on it.” I say this all with a soothing voice. Trying to play the role of peace keeper, when that is not me at all.

He looks into the mirror one more time before finally easing up on the gas. Heaving a sigh of relief, I rack my brain as to what I can do to get him to open up. I know it isn’t going to be easy, but damn he needs to give me something here. Or I’m seriously done. I can’t keep playing this game with him anymore.

I reach my hand across the center of the car, and try to grab onto his arm. I try to gently pull his hand away from the steering wheel, so I can hold his hand and try to ease his tension right now. If I don’t get him calmed down I don’t know what’s going to happen.

“Tell me what happened.” I try to keep my voice neutral and calm, but a hint of authority comes out too.

He takes his eyes away from the road for just a split second before he glances up at the mirror again. Satisfied that we’re not being followed he keeps driving, but does slow down.

“Can you at least tell me where we’re going?” I’ll get him talking about something else, maybe if I try that I can sneak in some other questions in a little bit. That is if he even tells me anything.

“I’m just driving out of town. I don’t really know what is up this way, but I know that the people that are after me won’t come up here.”

There it is again. He said he was in trouble but I just don’t understand what kind of trouble he could be in.

“Are the cops after you?” If the cops are after him I need out of here right now, I’m not getting involved with that. That’s a surefire way of people finding out about us.

He laughs. But it isn’t his laugh. It’s a laugh that sounds so maniacal and evil. This Bronson sitting beside me is a complete one-hundred and eighty degrees different than the one I know.

“No, Lyla. I wish it were the cops after me. Then this mess I got myself in wouldn’t be that bad.” His eyes don’t leave the road when he speaks that time. He has shrugged off my attempt at holding his hand a couple times now, so I let my hand fall back into my lap.

“What kind of people are after you?” I don’t know that I want to know the answer to this question, but maybe if I can figure this out we can come up with a game plan.

“The people after me are a ‘take no prisoners’ kind of group. If they don’t get what they want, they come after you full force. They give you three strikes, then you’re done.” He finally looks at me when he says the word “done.”

His face is contorted in pain. But then smooths out to a kind of manic, serene calm. The kind of calm that makes the person on the receiving end of that face completely lose their shit.

“What do you mean, Bronson?” Then it fucking dawns on me. “You do drugs don’t you? And you owe people a lot of money? Are they coming after you to teach you a lesson or are they just done with you?” I rush all of that out, and by the end of it I’m shrieking at him. My voice has taken on a higher tone, making me sound shrill.

“You finally put it together did you?” Bronson completely transforms in that instant. “You think this good old boy act I had going on was who I actually am? When I’m using, and keeping up with it, I’m such a great liar. I love using people, love getting what I want from them. And, from you my dear, all I wanted was a great piece of ass.”

He turns his head to look at me and his foot presses down on the gas again, causing the car to jerk forward again. He’s getting more agitated and I feel powerless to stop him. “You came into the woods that first day and you looked so fucking lost. You looked just like me. We’re kindred souls, you see. I saw in you, what I felt on a daily fucking basis.”

“Oh my god!” I’m having a hard time absorbing everything that he just told me! I can’t believe I fell for his epic line of bullshit! I’m smarter than this, I know I am. But he was just so fucking convincing.

“Yeah, changing your mind about how you feel about me now, sweetheart? That’s the thing about users, we’ll tell you whatever you want to hear and we’re just so fucking good at it.”

My eyes start darting around the car, trying to figure out what the fuck I can do to get out of this car. I can’t be here. I can’t process and deal with this while I’m still in this car.

“You need to take me back to my car. Right now! I don’t know what your point is that you had to drag me out here with you. But you need to let me go!” I’m definitely shrill now. My hands are shaking, I tucked my phone into my bra hopefully to hide it from his view so he doesn’t try to take it from me. But with my hands shaking so damn bad, I dropped it a couple times.

“You aren’t going anywhere, sweetheart. Not until I’m done with you.” He looks in his mirror again, and I’m thrown into the door of the car when he suddenly turns onto a side road. My head explodes in pain, feeling like a thousand tiny shards of glass just burst in my head. I drop my head into my hands and hold the side of it. Trying to rub the pain away. It dazed me for just a minute. But I seriously need to keep my wits about me.

If I try to call the cops, he could do something really stupid before they could find me.

He mutters under his breath. I glance over at him, and his face his flitting from facing the road to both mirrors. Looking behind him. I turn in my seat and try to look behind me, but his hand shoots out and grabs my face and pushes hard. Shoving me down into the seat further.

“Don’t fucking look behind you, you’re going to draw attention to me not being alone in here. God, you are stupider than I thought!”

I pause from holding my head to look at him. To really look at him. The same messy hair looks like it hasn’t been washed in days, the pallor of his skin is a sickly white, and he’s sweating profusely. God, was I so blinded by what he was making me feel that I totally missed all of this?

I want to try to reason with him again, but I know it would be a futile attempt. I know enough that if you try to reason with someone when they’re like this, it will only make things worse.

If I knew where he was taking me, I could at least try to come up with a plan. But I’m so lost here. I’m so out of control that I have no idea what’s going to happen. I think of my family, if I’ll ever see them again. I choke back a sob, trying to keep myself from feeling like I’ve given up. But what choice do I have? I don’t have any idea what to do to stop this. To make him let me go.

“Fuck. Fuck! FUCK!” The car lurches forward as he picks up speed driving down this back road. The road we’re on is one of those roads that has loose gravel on it and I’m afraid if he makes one sudden move we’re going to lose control of the car.

“Can you please, please, please slow down? I’m begging you!” I do let out that sob I was holding back. I have tears running furiously down my cheeks, I’m powerless to stop at them at this point.

“Can you just fucking shut up! God you stupid bitch!” Spittle flies out of his mouth as Bronson screams at me. As soon as he’s done talking we’re both thrown forward. I scream and the car is rear ended again. I throw my arms out and hold onto the door and put the other on the dash in front of me. Trying to brace myself if we’re hit again.

“God! They fucking followed me! Are you fucking happy? If I didn’t want to fuck your tight cunt one more time, I would have been out of this fucking county before they could have caught up to me!” He goes to hit the gas again, and at the same time the truck behind us hits us again.

The back end slides out, and Bronson starts turning the steering wheel trying to get the back end to catch traction again. I can’t even scream. I’m so fucking frozen right now. I’m scared but I can’t even move. I can’t force my mouth to make a sound.

The car skids again to the side. Bronson turns his head slowly and looks at me. Dropping his hands from the steering wheel, his mouth starts to move. “I’m sorry, Lyla.” And the car is hit again. I close my eyes and pray. For the first time in my life I pray to God. A God that I hope really does exist and can somehow get me out of this alive.

“LYLA!” I CAN HEAR MY
name being called but it sounds like it’s miles away. I try to open my eyes but they feel like they weigh ten thousand pounds. “That’s it, Lyla. I can see you’re trying to open your eyes. I need you to open them for me.”

I’m able to crack my eye lids open a tiny bit, but the bright light shines through and causes a pain that was just a dull ache in my head explode like I was just hit with a hammer. “Someone turn the lights off!” I hear an unfamiliar voice shout out orders.

“Okay, Lyla. The lights are off, can you try to open your eyes again?” I try again and it takes me a few minutes to blink them open completely.

“Don’t try to move, we have you strapped down so you don’t hurt yourself. You have an intubation tube down your throat, we’ll get that out in just a minute. But I need you to keep those eyes open for me, okay?”

The stranger talking to me is an unrecognizable blur in front of me. I try to nod, but stop immediately when the pain from my head starts to travel down my neck. Someone comes up next to me and starts taking tape off of my face.

God, what the fuck happened?

“Try to breathe through this, I’m going to pull the tube out of your mouth now.” Comes a gentle voice.

I start to gag on the tube as she slowly removes it. “We have to leave your arms restrained. You have a broken collar bone and a broken arm. So I need you to really try to stay still.

I cough, attempting to clear my throat so I can speak. Blinking my eyes, I try to bring everything into focus. So I can see who I’m talking to.

“Once I check you over, your husband wants to come in to see you. I’m Dr. Miller, I saw you when you first came into the ER. We didn’t have to do any surgery, thankfully.”

I clear my throat again and lick my lips. The voice was coming from my left side, so I very carefully turn my head to look at him. My eyes are focusing a little more, I can make out the outline of his dark blue scrubs.

“B—” I have to stop and cough before I can try to say it again. “Baby?” It comes out like a croak, and almost inaudible. But he hears me.

“The obstetrician on call came in and checked you out, and everything is fine with the baby. You suffered no injury to your abdominal area, thankfully.”

Instant relief courses through my veins. Then I instantly stop breathing. My head snaps to look at the doctor, before he can leave the room though, I call out to him a weak voice. “What about . . . the guy in . . . the car . . . with me.” I have to stop and wheeze throughout the sentence.

“Lyla, there was no one in the car with you.” My eyes choose that moment to focus. The guy standing in front of me looks eerily familiar. “Are you sure someone was in the car with you? No one else was brought in. From your injuries and how they tell me the car is totaled, there is no way someone would have walked away from this with no injuries.”

I close my eyes. What the hell is going on? Bronson was in that car with me. “What happened?”

“You wrecked your car. You hit a tree, that’s what was on the sheet when you came in. Your husband said you were driving out to your parent’s house to get your kids.”

“No, no, no. That’s not right! I was with someone in their car. Not mine!” I glance around the room and take in the faces of all the people standing in here. I take in their pitying looks. “What the hell is going on?” A mix of panic and disbelief is filling my voice.

“Lyla, you need to calm down. Tell me who is in the car with you?” His face looks like he’s only placating me right now. But I’m not stupid I know what happened! I know I was with Bronson!