Page 28 of Out for Blood
I almost laughed.
“One thing you can taste.”
I think.
“My toothpaste.”
“There you go.”
The tightness in my chest eases another fraction.
The world begins to settle back into place.
The road becomes the road again.
Not a memory.
Not a nightmare.
Just a road.
Tyler threads his fingers through mine and brings my hand to his lips for a brief kiss.
“That’s it.”
I stare at our joined hands.
My breathing finally begins to slow.
“You with me?”
I nod.
“Yeah.”
His thumb brushes across my knuckles.
“Good.”
The city lights glow in the distance ahead of us.
Home and my vision began clearing.
And for the rest of the drive, Tyler doesn’t let go.
By the time we arrived home, and I could finally form a sentence everything flew out of me.
Tyler listened to every word, every detail, without interruption or false reassurance.
When I finished, and the disappearance of Marie and Sofie sank into reality between us, something locked into place. There was no hesitation, only purpose.
I never went back to the hotel, and we didn’t go back to seeking any type of normalcy.
We started looking.
I drag myself back to the present.
The dark web isn’t chaos; it’s structured, layered, intricate like a web spun with intention. Each thread leading somewhere, each connection feeding into something bigger and harder to reach.
