Lighting a Match in the Rain

Chapter Twenty-Nine

            We drove in silence for an hour. My thoughts were racked with worries for Macey, and Reed was probably regretting his offer to drive me. My phone had died just a few minutes before, my parents still hadn't heard from Macey, nor had she answered any of my texts. Despite this, multiple beeps filled the warm air as Reed's phone blew up with multiple notifications at once. "Check that for me?" he asked.

His phone was sitting in the cup holder and I hesitated to reach for it. He trusted me to check his text messages? Wasn't he worried it was some crime junkie or Ricky? Did he not worry about me reading a message that I shouldn't see?

Briefly glancing at me, he misread my hesitation and spoke out his password so I could unlock it. It felt weird to be trusted like that. Sebastian never let me anywhere near his phone.

"It's Julian," I told him after finally grabbing it. "He's asking why you kidnapped me and stole Sarah's car." I grinned, thinking it was funny that they just assumed this was all Reed's doing. Funny, but it made me kind of sad. 

"You can tell him that I had an emergency and that you offered to join me," Reed said. "That is if you don't want to tell them the truth."

I slipped him a small thankful smile at his offer to cover for me, but I didn't mind them knowing the truth. If anything, I wanted them to know just in case Macey reached out to one of them for some reason. "I don't mind them knowing," I said, typing out a reply that explained what we were doing. I made sure to have Julian tell Sarah that we were sorry for taking her car. We'd return it as soon as we could without a single scratch on it. Though if we did add a scratch or two, I don't think she'd notice. I think this car was as old as I was. The little rumbles from the front of the car that appeared and disappeared every once and a while were a little concerning.

"So how many of the rumors are true?" I found myself asking Reed after our friends were updated on the situation and my phone was plugged into the car charger. "Everyone seems to have a lot of thoughts that they believe have truth in them...I find most to be unlikely," I admitted, turning my body toward him as much as I could in my seatbelt.

Not a hint of an inciteful expression flashed over his features. "If you are asking me if I'm secretly a goody-two-shoes, you are going to be disappointed in your answer," he said, keeping his eyes and full attention on the snowy road ahead of him. It hadn't just snowed at the cabins. In just the few hours that we were gone, these roads that led us closer to home had gained a few inches of snow, slowing down our journey as it kept falling from the sky.

A weather warning alerted over the radio, informing us and everyone else who had it on that the snow wasn't going to be stopping anytime soon and the roads were going to be getting worse. I turned the volume down. "Should you be in jail?" I asked next.

"You know the answer to that." I did know, so I didn't have a reason as to why I asked.

"Why aren't you?" I decided was a clearer way to get the answers that I wanted. To be honest, I wasn't sure exactly what I'd wanted to gain out of this conversation. I didn't want to interrogate him, but I wanted to know him a little better. I wanted to know his truth, instead of everyone else's truth.

His shoulders bobbled. "I have a knack for getting out of it."

I crossed my arms over my chest, keeping my eyes on him instead of the whitening world around us. "What's the worst crime you've committed?"

A huff escaped his lips. "You don't want to know." If he thought he was protecting me from seeing the worst in him, he was making the wrong decision. It was all of the bad that I was looking for in the first place. I wanted to know so I could help. A twinge deep inside me insisted that it wasn't just because I wanted everyone to be wrong about him.