Then he’d decided he wasn’t dead but in a coma. That none of the night’s events had happened. That Holden had beat him into unconsciousness and this was his body shutting down, pumping toxic chemicals into his brain that caused him to have these surreal experiences. It was the only thing that made sense when he thought about the events of the night, both bad and good.
Now, he’d settled into the reality that something had gone terribly, inexplicably sideways during the night—while Dimitri had buried himself inside him—and whoever was on the other end of that note was planning on blackmailing them or turning them in to the cops. It made the most—and least—amount of sense. What they’d done was surely worthy of blackmail, but neither Arlo nor Dimitri owned anything worthy of payment.
“It’s going to be okay,” Dimitri said for the hundredth time since they’d gotten back on the road.
“I know,” Arlo lied again, giving him what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
Arlo had already decided. He wouldn’t let Dimitri go down for this. He wasn’t falling on his sword again. Not for him. In the grand scheme of things, his life just wasn’t worth the same as Dimitri’s.
Dimitri had a mother who loved him, and friends who would miss him, and a shot at an actual future. Arlo only had Dimitri. Nobody would miss him, nobody would mourn him. It made sense for him to own up to what he did and just accept the consequences.
Arlo had already had the best night of his life. He’d had hours with Dimitri, hours in his arms and in his bed. He got to hold the knowledge in his heart that Dimitri had thought about nobody but him for years. That was amazing. Miraculous even. It gave Arlo something to cling to when the thoughts of jail or death gripped his insides again.
In one night, Arlo had gotten everything he’d ever wanted.
He glanced over at Dimitri, whose eyes focused on the dark ahead. “I love you.”
The car swerved as Dimitri darted his gaze towards him. “What?”
“I think I always have,” Arlo said, nodding his head as if that would somehow make Dimitri believe him.
“Why are you saying this?” Dimitri asked, frowning.
Arlo smiled softly. “Because I don’t know if I’ll have the chance to say it when we get there and I’ve wanted to say it every day since you walked back into my life, so I thought now was as good a time as ever, before we walk into the unknown. I just wanted you to know.”
Dimitri’s grip on the steering wheel tightened until he was white-knuckled. “I’m not saying it back,” he snapped.
Arlo felt like somebody had slammed his heart in the car door. “Okay,” he said, voice thick.
He wasn’t sure why he’d expected anything different. He’d hoped for one last moment to cling to, but some part of him had known Dimitri saying those words back was a bridge too far.
Dimitri suddenly swerved across three lanes of traffic, ripping a gasp from Arlo as he skidded to a halt.
Dimitri threw the car into park, turning to look at him. “Don’t do this.”
Arlo shook his head. “Do what?” he asked.
Dimitri’s nostrils flared, his jaw muscle ticking. “Don’t give me some grand finale speech like we’re about to Thelma and Louise ourselves over a cliff. I can fix this. I can. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“But if it isn’t—” Arlo started.
Dimitri’s hands gripped Arlo’s sweatshirt, pulling him close until their foreheads touched. “No. You don’t get to give me some weepy I love you. Because that sounds a lot like goodbye and I’m not letting you go.” He started kissing Arlo’s lips over and over. “I’m not letting you go,” he soothed. “I won’t.”
Tears streamed down Arlo’s cheeks as he clung to Dimitri, too. “I know you think you can fix this, but somebody knows what we did. We’re fucked. I’m fucked. I don’t want to go my whole life without telling you how I feel.”
Dimitri shook his head like he was rejecting Arlo’s words. “I’m not going anywhere. Neither of us are. If I have to kill someone tonight to make this all go away, I will. If I have to kill a dozen people to protect you, I will. I need you to understand that. I will never let another bad thing happen to you. I just won’t.”
“You can’t kill everybody,” Arlo wailed.
“I can try. That’s the beauty of somebody like me. I don’t feel regret. I don’t feel guilt or anger or remorse. If somebody tries to get between us, I will kill them and I won’t shed a single tear.” He took Arlo’s face in his hands. “I was born to protect you.”
Arlo’s heart was exploding with joy and pain. He’d wanted to hear this for so long, but he didn’t want to hear it like this, when they were both desperate and scared. “I want to protect you, too. I want to keep you safe, too. You’re the only person in my life who has ever cared if I lived or died. I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t. Please. Just don’t give up on us yet,” Dimitri begged. “Please.”
Arlo couldn’t bring himself to lie, so he just clung to him, fat tears rolling down his face to drip between them. There was no way out of this.
When Arlo’s tears dried, he released Dimitri, sniffling. “We should probably go. Whoever sent that note is waiting on us.”
Dimitri gave a single nod, shifting the car into drive before easing back onto the road. Five miles later, they exited the empty interstate to a somehow even emptier highway.
It was impossibly dark. There wasn’t a gas station or even a truck stop, just a long open stretch of pavement. They drove, using the GPS to navigate, as there were no discernible landmarks to help them differentiate one dark dirt road from another. They didn’t have street signs. Dimitri called them access roads.
Finally, the GPS led them onto a barely-there dirt road, ending at an open chain-link fence. Past that, the terrain became rough, the narrow path that led them deeper onto the property made of little more than broken chunks of asphalt. The place had a distinct smell to it. Like gasoline and burned rubber. It might have had something to do with the precariously stacked cars lining either side of the drive.
“What the hell is this place?” Arlo whispered, feeling like, if he spoke too loud, he might wake whatever monster lurked among the ruins.
“It’s a salvage yard,” Dimitri confirmed. “They buy junk cars and scrap them for parts.”
Perspiration broke out along Arlo’s hairline. Nobody would ever find them out there. Their GPS led to someplace entirely different. Could Calliope see where they really were, even if she was spoofing their GPS? Did she know they hadn’t listened to her? That they’d taken off into the night to follow instructions some pregnant stranger had scrawled on white paper with a thick black sharpie?
Dimitri turned off the car, taking a deep breath. “No matter what happens, you stay close.”
“Yeah, that won’t be a problem,” Arlo promised, staring at the entrance of what looked like a metallic maze.
Outside the car, Arlo wrapped himself around Dimitri’s arm, letting him drag him deeper into the yard. The silence was deafening. Arlo forced himself to concentrate on his own breathing just to keep his ears from ringing.