To the Stars

by Molly McAdams

  “Let me go!” I yelled, and thrashed against him.

  Cars had stopped on the freeway; people were out of their cars and watching us—some had their phones pointed at us, and some were talking on them. But Collin didn’t care, because he wasn’t Collin anymore, and he wasn’t my monster.

  “People are not allowed to touch what is mine,” he said simply, as if reminding me.

  “I am not yours,” I spat out, accentuating each word. “You left me to die!”

  He laughed, and the humorless sound sent a chill up my spine. “Well, I’d hoped, but you’re stronger than I give you credit for,” he continued on with that same nonchalant voice. “But if I hadn’t stuck around to find out, I wouldn’t have known to follow you all the way to Thatch, now would I?”

  We were nearing the smashed SUV he’d been driving, and I was putting up more and more of a fight—but I had always been weaker than Collin, and he hadn’t just been in a truck that had rolled.

  “Now, get in the—”

  “Collin!” a deep, fluid voice rang out about everything else, and it sounded so beautiful in that moment that I cried out in relief when Collin turned us around to face where Knox was standing at the back of his truck. He was swaying; but still standing. “Let her go!”

  Without hesitation, Collin raised his free arm, gun in hand, and aimed right at Knox. I screamed and lunged for it as he pulled the trigger.

  I’d knocked Collin’s arm to the side, but out of the corner of my eye still saw Knox stumble back. A sharp sob burst from my chest, and everything grew to a deafening level then. It was piercing, but I didn’t know what the sound was. I only knew that I needed to get to Knox, but Collin was aiming again.

  Gripping Collin’s hand that was holding the gun, I pulled it close to my body and placed myself between Collin and Knox, and held tight when Collin tried to throw me down with his free hand. My foot got caught between his, causing him to stumble, and soon the force from him throwing me aside had us both falling—with him above me and the gun now sandwiched between us, our fingers both on the trigger.

  In those last few seconds, a sense of peace washed over me. I saw Deacon and Graham in a dead sprint in our direction and knew they would help Knox. I knew this was how it was supposed to end, and wondered how I thought it would ever end any other way. I’d prayed for God to show me some kind of mercy and to take me from Collin, and now I was finally getting my prayers answered. And with such a public act, I knew Collin wouldn’t get away with this.

  A smile crossed my face and I let my eyes close.

  It wasn’t all for nothing, I told myself as we crashed down, and the force of our fall caused us to squeeze off one final round.

  Knox

  Present Day—Richland

  “HARLOW!” I SHOUTED as I ran with what little energy I had in my body toward where she and Collin were falling to the pavement. “Harlow!”

  The sound of the sixth gunshot tore through me, causing me to stumble until I was on my knees, unable to move. I needed to get up, I needed to get to her, to make sure she was alive—because surely she was still alive—but instead, I bent toward the pavement, and a sob was forced from my chest when countless seconds passed without movement from either of them. The bullet that was embedded in my right arm hadn’t hurt as much as the sound of that last gunshot was destroying me.

  I looked up when I felt hands on my shoulders and shoved Deacon away from me. He fell backward and came toward me again, but didn’t try to touch me. He was saying something—shouting, but I couldn’t hear anything. I forced myself up and stumbled a few times as I headed toward Collin and Harlow. Graham was already there, carefully stepping up behind where Collin was still lying on top of her.

  Deacon hurried over to them and helped Graham heave Collin’s body off of Harlow—but I couldn’t focus on them. All I could see was my world lying still on the ground as Graham ran back and hovered over her.

  I approached her slowly, like each step was trying to get through quicksand, and didn’t understand Graham’s smile or what he was trying to say to me. I glanced at Harlow once more before looking over at him again, and my legs began shaking when Graham moved away from Harlow’s bloodied body and slowly disentangled the gun from her thin hands to lay it on the ground beside them.

  “Fucking warrior,” he said; pride coated each word.

  I dropped down next to her, and cried out when I saw her chest faintly moving. “Low,” I said, and cradled her cheeks in my hands. “Babe, open your eyes,” I whispered against her lips, and kissed her softly.

  “He’s gone,” I heard Deacon say behind me, and I nodded, even though he had probably been telling Graham.

  “Low, it’s over. I need you to open your eyes.”

  I held her for a few more minutes, and didn’t care that tears were falling relentlessly down my face as I waited for anything from her. Ambulances pulled up then, and just when I was about to beg her to open her eyes again, her blue eyes shot open and she gasped.

  “YES, MR. EVANS,” I said a few hours later, and held back a sigh as he and his wife asked the same questions I’d just answered. “You all know everything I do at this point, and I promise I’ll keep you updated, but I’m going to go back in to check on her now.”

  “Well, what did the doctor say? Why won’t you tell us?” Harlow’s mom asked over the speaker.

  “I’m not sure; he wouldn’t talk with me in there. I’ll let you know if there was anything wrong, but I’m sure she was fine.” I tried to keep my tone even because I knew they were worried, but I’d already spoken with them half a dozen times since entering the hospital, and I had other things I was worrying about.

  I smiled politely at the doctor when he walked out of Harlow’s room, and said, “I have to go now; I’ll keep you updated.” As soon as I was able to hang up, I walked into the room and took my seat next to Harlow’s bed.

  My truck had flipped twice, but the impact had been mostly on my side—and the worst of my injuries had only given me problems directly after. I’d had trouble getting my legs to move but was fine for the most part now. Even still, my captain had informed me over the phone that I was looking at at least a month off because of getting shot. They’d removed the bullet and sewn me up, and had barely been able to keep me there long enough to bandage me before I’d tried to leave to find Harlow’s room.

  Deacon and Graham were fine, just a little bruised from when they’d smashed into the back of the SUV Collin had been driving. And Collin was gone. That final bullet could have gone anywhere, from the way Harlow had explained the gun had been pinned between them. But somehow it’d gone between both their bodies, through Collin’s throat, and up into his brainstem. He’d died immediately.

  Harlow was malnourished—not a surprise. She had bruises all over her body and cracked ribs—almost all of which were from Collin prior to today. The reason the doctor had been in there just then had been to talk to her about the X-ray and scans they’d done on her skull. But the doctor had refused to talk with me in the room since I wasn’t family, so I’d stepped out to give her parents another update.

  “What’d he say?” I asked gently.

  “I’ve hit my head a lot.” Harlow shrugged. “Really, he didn’t tell me anything I don’t already know. Just that I need to avoid hitting my head from now on, that I was lucky there wasn’t permanent damage, and that it was likely if I do hit my head again—if it’s hard enough—each time I will probably go unconscious for some period of time. But I’d kind of started figuring that out on my own. It’s happened every time lately.”

  I clenched my jaw, but tried to relax by repeating over and over that Collin couldn’t touch her again. “It won’t happen again,” I reminded her, and she just nodded.

  Harlow had been different since she woke up and realized there was no danger; reserved, almost. I’d mentioned it in the ambulance, and she’d shaken her head. I’d brought it up again after we’d gotten to the hospital and things had calmed down, and
she’d just looked away from me. And she hadn’t once looked at me since.

  “Your family is already trying to get tickets back here. Hayley and her family are coming, too. They’ll call me when they have something.”

  And that time, it looked like she hadn’t even heard me. Instead of pushing it, I just sat back and waited.

  When another thirty minutes went by without her saying anything or looking in my direction, I slowly stood from my chair. My chest ached, but I didn’t know what to do.

  I stared at the back wall and swallowed a few times before I trusted myself to speak. “I guess I’ll, uh, I’ll let you rest.”

  Harlow didn’t respond, but when I turned to leave, I saw the tears falling down her cheeks.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked softly, and tried to rein in my frustration when she still didn’t answer. I sat on the edge of her bed, gripped her chin gently in my fingers, and turned her head so she was looking at me. “Come back to me,” I begged, and the ache in my chest grew when her chin began quivering and a sob forced its way up her throat.

  “I killed him,” she said between muted sobs. “I killed him, Knox.”

  I gripped her hand in mine, and exhaled in relief when I felt her squeeze back. “He was going to kill you,” I reminded her. “He tried to kill you.”

  “But I don’t want to have this on me,” she cried out, and lifted her hands up, as if Collin’s blood would be there. “I don’t want to know that I took someone’s life—no matter what the reason! And I—” She broke off, and sobbed as she shook her head.

  “You what?”

  Long moments passed as she continued to cry and shake her head while murmuring, “I was ready to die.” Harlow eventually looked up at me and shrugged, like she didn’t know how to explain it. “I knew it was happening, and I knew it was how it was supposed to happen. I was okay with it. I knew you were going to be okay, and I was okay. I hate that I was okay! What does that mean for me?”

  “Nothing,” I assured her, and pulled her close.

  “You don’t understand,” she whispered, like she was ashamed. “I smiled. I smiled because I knew it was all as it should’ve been. What’s wrong with me?”

  “Nothing,” I repeated, and held her as she cried everything away. During that time she started relaxing into me and clinging to me, now that she’d finally let her worries out.

  It felt like hours had passed when she said, “I don’t know how to feel about it all. I feel wrong . . . broken.”

  I smiled and corrected her. “Cracked.” Pulling back enough so I could tilt her head up, I searched her eyes and promised, “But I’m going to fix it. I love you, Harlow.”

  She smiled shakily, and one hand lifted to frame my mouth as she leaned in to kiss me. But just before her mouth met mine, she vowed, “To the stars.”

  Chapter 23

  Harlow

  Present Day—Richland

  “WHO SAID WE were leaving?”

  “Family only? Don’t we look like family? We’re her brothers, we’re practically triplets,” Deacon said, and imitated Graham’s intimidating stance.

  “This is no longer about family; visiting hours are about to be over,” the older nurse said sternly.

  She was met with twin looks of indifference. “And?” Graham finally said.

  The nurse’s eyes bounced back and forth between the two, then over to Knox, and then to me.

  I had to fight back a smile. “I’m sorry, but the other nurse said she was getting my discharge papers?”

  “Right, because we’re leaving and taking our sister with us,” Deacon said arrogantly.

  “Deac,” Knox murmured, then shook his head once when he had Deacon’s attention.

  When she left with an exaggerated huff, Deacon turned and asked, “Where’s the nurse from earlier? The hot one,” he clarified. “She needs to come back; she didn’t question us being in here.” He snorted, then mumbled to himself, “Like we’re just gonna leave without you.”

  I shook my head as Graham studied the monitors even though I was no longer hooked up to them, and Deacon started on his definition of “family.” I looked at Knox and we both mouthed, “Mother hens.”

  There was a quick knock on the door a couple of minutes later, and Knox cursed. “If you got security called on us, I will never forgive you,” he said as Deacon went to answer the door.

  “We’re not leaving,” Deacon said as he swung the door open. “Have a nice night!”

  The door was halfway shut on my parents’ confused faces before I could yell, “Wait!”

  “Harlow!” my mom cried out, and pushed past the door. My dad and Hadley followed, and a sharp cry burst from my chest seeing my sister so much better than she’d been just the day before.

  Knox mumbled something, and he and my mother hens all stepped closer to my bed in unison—as if to protect me from my family—but I just looked at the doorway expectantly.

  “Where’s Hayley?”

  “She and the family are getting a hotel for all of us so we don’t have to worry about it when you can get out,” Mom explained as she hurried to my side. She grabbed my hand and sat on the side of the bed as her eyes roamed all over my body. “Oh, sweetie, how could you not tell us?”

  Graham scoffed, and Knox sneered, “How could you not notice?”

  “Knox,” I whispered, hoping he would get the hint.

  “I knew within seconds of—”

  “Knox,” I said harder, and held his stare for a moment. “I had a role I had to play in front of them. I couldn’t let them see what he was doing to me.”

  My mom held my hand up, and gently ran the fingers from her other hand over my arm and across my knuckles. She sobbed freely as she studied me. “You’re so thin, Harlow. So thin,” she whispered. “You look so sick,” she continued, but it sounded like the words were meant for her. Her eyes fell over my face, and her next words were so soft they were nearly inaudible. “Your cheeks . . . your collarbones. Your eyes looks so—oh, honey!”

  The need to defend my family was suddenly gone. I knew that other than the bandages on my forehead and the fact that I was lying in a hospital bed, I couldn’t look much different from when I’d seen them yesterday, or even a few months ago. But she wasn’t mentioning the bandages. My mom was mentioning things that had been noticeable for years. Physical parts of me I’d worried endlessly over every time I’d been near any member of my family, because I’d known they could give something away. Physical parts of me that I’d made myself sick over with the worry that they would see something they weren’t supposed to.

  And now . . . now a part of me was angry. Angry that they could see it all that time and had just refused to; but I knew I couldn’t think that way. Because like I’d just told Knox, I’d played a part. And like I’d known every time, if they would’ve seen, it would’ve been so bad for them.

  “You need to come back to Seattle, where we can take care of you, where we can help you get better. We’ll make sure that you recover from this the way you need to.”

  “No.”

  My mom straightened her back, and looked over to Knox for the first time at his response. The room filled with tension as everyone looked at each other, and my parents no doubt were wondering who Graham and Deacon were as the two glared at my family. I hadn’t mentioned them to my parents all those years ago, since things had always been so tense between Knox’s friends and me—that had been reserved for rants to my sisters. And as the boys looked at my family like they were ready to fight to keep me with them and Knox, I couldn’t help but be taken aback again at how things had drastically changed with them.

  “Knox, honey, it’s so very good to see you,” Mom began again. “But Harlow needs her father and me to get through this time.”

  Knox’s mouth opened, probably to tell her no again, but snapped shut. After a deep breath, his eyes slid over to me. His voice was gruff when he said, “I think it’s time Harlow gets to decide what happens in her life—no matter what th
at means.” Despite the ache in those last words, I knew he meant them.

  An uneasy minute passed without a word from anyone as all of our eyes went from one person to the next.

  Finally, I asked, “Knox, guys, can I have time with my parents?”

  Knox moved immediately, but my mother hens didn’t move until Knox uttered a low “Out.” With one last glance in my direction, Knox shut the door behind them. I released the breath I’d been holding as I looked at my family.

  “Hadley, how are you?” I asked, barely able to choke out the question.

  She shrugged and smiled weakly. “Fine; a little sore. Mostly I feel sick because I was the closest one to you, and I feel like if anyone should have seen what was happening, it should have been me.”

  “No,” I said before she’d finished speaking. “No, you shouldn’t have. You saw me the most often, so the changes weren’t as drastic to you. But, Hadley, you have no idea how glad I am that you never saw them,” I said, my voice wavering as I thought about every threat to my family—but Hadley specifically. “He threatened Hadley the most because she was the closest, physically. Hadley, if you had noticed something—if any of you would have noticed something—he would have done whatever it took to shut you up. I don’t know if Dad told you, but what happened to you yesterday was because Collin thought I tried to poison him when all I’d done was refill the salt shaker.”

  My mom gasped, but from their expressions, I knew it wasn’t the first time they’d heard this.

  I held my mom’s stare and tried to steady my quivering jaw, but failed. “As much as I hate that you can see a difference and just didn’t over the years, you know just a fraction of what he was like—so you will never know how thankful I am that you didn’t see what was happening.”

  Mom’s tears fell faster, and she covered her face as sobs tore through her body. My dad went to comfort her, but it looked like he needed the comfort just as much.

  “Couldn’t you have left him before yesterday?” Hadley asked.