Page 158 of Not Quite Dead Yet

Time to be brave, time to be useless.

She kicked off the gravel and ran to him, straight into him, hard to stop, both of them colliding into the truck.

Billy’s arms wrapped around her, Jet’s left hand hooking onto his elbow, holding on as he held her. She pressed her face into his chest, harder, crushing it. Jet couldn’t feel it in her cheek, but she felt it somewhere else, felt like wings.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, voice lost in his shirt.

‘It’s OK,’ he said, voice lost in her hair. ‘I’m sorry too.’

‘Got nothing to be sorry about.’

‘I do, Jet.’ He pulled back so he could look down at her, eyes pale and shining, a summer lake with no end, not even when he blinked. ‘You talked about having a deadline, one last week, to prove something. And I did too. Something different, something I thought was just as important – the only important thing, actually. And that wasn’t fair, on either of us.’ He breathed out, let something go. ‘I don’t need to prove anything, and you don’t either.’

Jet thought she knew what Billy meant. Maybe she’dalready known, since she heard his song, maybe even before that too.

‘I don’t hate you,’ she said.

‘And I don’t hate you either.’ He smiled. ‘Shall we?’

He stepped back, opened the passenger door for her.

Jet climbed inside, struggling because Billy’s guitar was in the footwell, her legs either side of it.

‘What’s this doing here?’ she asked as Billy dropped into the driver’s seat.

‘Oh.’ His cheeks flushed. ‘Well, I’ve never got someone out of jail before.’

‘You thought you could sing me out?’

‘No.’ His dark hair trailed into his eyes. ‘I was going to find a pawnshop, sell my guitar, sell your truck too, get money for bail, whatever it took.’

Jet gasped, but not really. ‘You were going to sell my baby?’

Billy ran his hand over the dashboard. ‘Would have hurt me too. We’ve bonded.’

He shifted, his elbow accidentally bumping the steering wheel, a hiccup of the horn.

Jet laughed. ‘She says,Hands off.’

‘That’s fine,’ Billy said, dropping his eyes. ‘You can love something without needing it to love you back.’

Jet nodded, looking at him as he looked away.

‘How did you do it?’ she asked. ‘Get them to let me go?’

Billy’s cheeks flushed harder, still not looking. ‘Don’t be mad.’

‘What?’

‘I … I said we were together, in the truck.’

‘Doing what?’ Jet pressed, just enjoying this, watching him squirm.

‘Screwing like teenagers,’ they said at the same time, burst into laughter, Billy accidentally hitting the horn again.

‘Me too.’

Billy sniffed, swallowing the laugh. ‘Good thing we got our alibi sorted beforehand, huh?’