The Valley and the Flood by Rebecca Mahoney (10 best books of all time TXT) 📗

talent for understatement. When something crosses the point where you can let it go, there’s nothing “kind of” about it.

But Nick doesn’t know you as well as he thinks he does, and more importantly, he doesn’t know that he is going faster than you have ever felt a car go. He snorts. “Relax. No one here but us.”

As if to prove his point, he accelerates.

In the coming months, you will marvel at all the things that had to come together in these next few moments. The drizzle. The cold snap. The light layer of water and ice against the smooth, flat pavement, and Nick’s foot on the accelerator.

You’ll learn the word later for what the car is doing now: hydroplaning. All you can wrap your head around is the feeling of it, like the moment between when you slip on ice and when you hit the ground, except that would end in a second, and this keeps going.

You’ll learn later that the best thing Nick could do in this moment would be to ease off the accelerator. He slams on the brake. Jerks the wheel. And you’re spinning.

The car slides to the right, hard. You catch yourself against the window, and your wrist crumples under your weight, but something had to take the hit and in that moment it was your arm or the side of your head. There’s a rolling, shuddering shockwave as the wheels slide from pavement to dirt and Nick is yelling, cursing, driving his full weight into the brake.

The dirt has traction, and the traction slows you down, but the first law of motion still applies. It’s not until the back of the car tips up and the front hits something solid that you finally, finally stop.

There’s a bang like a gunshot and a spray of searing heat across your collarbone. The kind of thing someone should flinch at, but you’re frozen. You have to blink a few times to see what’s in front of you: the airbags deployed, pressing you in.

The claustrophobia is sudden, sharp, immediate. By the time you think to move you’re already scrambling backward out of the car. The ground is uneven, you stumble. The car rests half in a ditch. The engine lets out a low keen. You breathe in, the air sharp and wet in your chest.

Your fingers come to rest around your wrist. You finally notice how much it hurts.

“Shit.” Nick throws his door open and stumbles out of the car. He’s clutching at his hair, pacing in short, agitated bursts. You wish he’d stop. The reality of the situation is still hanging, precarious, somewhere beyond your reach. You want to back away from it slowly, quietly, as if too much movement will draw its attention.

“My car,” he’s whimpering. “Shit, shit, shit—”

Eventually, he seems to notice you. “Rose,” he gasps out as he moves toward you, “are you okay?”

Finally, you flinch.

His hands are still hovering, halfway to your arms. “Rose?”

You hold yourself out of his reach. Your spine is so straight it hurts.

“You can’t tell anyone,” he says, and whether he notices it or not, he’s shifted his stance, his angle. In front of you, there’s Nick. Behind you, the passenger’s door. You’re out of the car, but you’re still trapped. “Rose, please—I just got my license.”

“I told you to slow down,” you say. Your voice gets softer the closer he gets.

“Rose.” He all but falls to your feet. You shrink until your back brushes the car. “I was an idiot, okay? But it’s not going to happen again. You’re not hurt that bad, right?”

Your wrist throbs under the pressure of your grip. You can wiggle your fingers. It’s probably not that bad. It’s probably not that bad, but.

“Your car,” you say. Even in the dark, you can see the state of the front bumper.

“I’ll say I hit a deer.” He shrugs. There’s a sort of nonchalance to the gesture. A chill jerks through you. “My parents can pay. But you get it, right? If I tell them what happened, they will take my car.”

There’s something in the way he says it. And enough of your rational thought has come back to you that you can wrap your head around where you are: in the middle of nowhere, here with Nick Lansbury and his busted car and his huge pleading eyes, and no way ahead but through him. You wonder how he’ll look at you if you say what you’d like to say right now.

“Fine,” you say, with no sense of what you’ve just set into motion.

His arms twitch, as if he wants to hug you but thinks better of it. “And your wrist?”

“I can say I fell,” you say.

“Good,” he says. And he’s smiling as finally, finally, he takes a step back, lets the damp night air hit you like a wave. “Good, that’s perfect.”

He gives you fifty dollars for a cab, and another fifty dollars for urgent care. He tells you to go up the road to call the taxi service so no one sees you together, to text him once you get home. You feel his eyes on your back as you walk.

Like I said before. He’s not a bad person.

(He’s not a good one, either.)

Note to self: Everyone will believe you when you tell them you tripped. There’s rarely any reason not to believe you, at least right now. But in two weeks, Gaby will say Nick Lansbury’s name, and she will notice the way your back snaps straight. She will always notice those things about you.

“Rose,” she’ll say. “Tell me what he did.”

Note to self: I know you can’t read this. I know you can’t know these things now when you need them. I know you will look at this chance to tell her, and you won’t take it. I know you think he’ll make your life hell if you do.

But I’m going to ask you anyway: Let him make your life hell. Be grateful for every second of it. There’s a worse kind