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“I know what you're going to say, but I have to. I need to know why.”

Vega looked at me for a moment, silently gawking at my request. “The why doesn't matter. He's trying to kill you. The man literally wants you dead, and you want to go ask him about it. He'll take that opportunity to kill you right then and there. I won't put you in that position.”

“You're not putting me in any position. It's my choice. Vega, you said you wanted to help me.”

“And I do, but I won't knowingly bring you to your executioner. I can't do that.”

“I refuse to just run away like some coward,” I snapped. “I deserve to know why. Don't you think I deserve to know?”

“Of course I do. But you're not going to get answers by throwing yourself in front of a moving bus.” The dirt road came to an end. Vega took a left onto smooth, even pavement. “I won'tdo that. All of this would be for nothing if I show up with you like a damn gift, and he kills you.”

“All of this is already for nothing, isn't it?”

“No.”

“No?” I asked, my brows arching high and my mouth twitching at the corner. “How can you say no? Look at where we are. What do we have? Where are we going? We have nothing, and we're running towards nothing.”

“I think it's possible to still find something good when the world is against you.” Vega's lips thinned into a tight line as he glanced in the rearview mirror before hopping onto an on-ramp for the highway.

“You're so full of shit right now. You don't think that,” I said. What good was coming from this? The floodgates opened. Every repressed memory was blown to the surface. I exhaled a long breath as my heart slowed. I thought it stopped completely, but I could feel the faint pulse as I placed my hand against my chest.

“What? What is it?” Are you alright?” he asked.

“I'm fine,” I said, brushing off his concern. “Look, I appreciate what you're trying to do, but we both know that's a load of shit. There's nothing good in either of our lives.”

Vega was trying to make me feel better. It's what people did when they were watching you suffer. They tell you they're sorry for what you're going through. They try to ease your pain with false promises that things will get better. Life will go on. The pain won't last forever. Blah, blah, blah. It's easy for someone on the outside to rub your back and pet your head and tell you things will be okay. But it wasn't Vega who watched their mother get shot by their father. It wasn't Vega who just woke up to a living nightmare.

“I'm serious.” Vega flicked his eyes to mine briefly, then back to the road. “If you don't find the good, you'll slowly dissolve into something unrecognizable.”

“Says the man whose mother just stopped caring. What good is there in that?”

“You're missing the point.”

“So you think that all of this will lead to what? A pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.” I rolled my eyes. “That's what I call being naive.”

Vega leaned close to me and whispered. “There's a difference between being naive and seeing what's right in front of you. Maybe you need to look a little closer.”

Look closer at what? I was attacked, abducted, and shot at. We were currently running for our lives. Where the hell was Vega even taking us? What was going to happen when we got there? It didn't matter. I had nowhere to go anyway. I couldn't go home. I couldn't go to work. I couldn't go anywhere in that damn town if I wanted to stay alive.

I was done thinking. The future was hard to imagine. At that point, there was no future for me. It was going to be a life of running. A life of looking over my shoulder at every turn. A life of wondering if the floor creaking, or the sound of footsteps, or the wind was someone coming to kill me.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“We just need a safe place to lay low so I can figure out what's next.”

“Where issafeanymore?” I half chuckled as I lay my head back against the headrest and looked out the window.

“I have olive branches, Poppy. I know where we can go. He won't find us.”

“How do you know that? I've known him my whole life, and I have no clue who that man is.”

Vega reached out and took my hand. He squeezed it gently and gave me a tender smile. “Some people have two faces. Your father is one of them.”

“I think deep down, I always knew that.”

“You felt it, didn't you?”

“I felt something. I'm not sure if that's what it was, but there was always something lingering in the back of my thoughts.”