Robbers

twenty - eight

// twenty - eight //

They had put five minutes' distance between them and the coffee shop by the time Ryan finally let out how angry he was.

He slammed the heel of his hand into the rim of the wheel, so fiercely and suddenly that Ella jumped. He swore loudly as he did it, raking the hand through his hair harshly as though he wanted to tear out the strands from their roots.

Ella's hands were laced together in front of her, the knuckles pressed against her lips. She was running through every word Kurt had said to them, thumbing through the sentences frantically as her fear began to cloud all rationale. She could scarcely think over the sound of her heart pounding in her ears.

"How the fuck did he know who you were?" Ryan spat, practically talking to himself rather than Ella. His left hand was gripped tight around the steering wheel, the knuckles blanched white and veins bulging from the pressure. "Fucking hell."

"He knows where I live," Ella said slowly, staring blankly at nothing. "He said I don't live far from here. How does he know that?"

Ryan didn't seem to notice she had spoken. His eyes were staring daggers at the road, unblinking as he glared at the pavement as though it had done him some personal offense. The red indicator on the speedometer was rising, and Ella's concentration was broken when the truck's engine revved.

"Ryan," she began quietly, "calm down."

"I can't fucking calm down," he seethed, barely pressing the brakes as he turned left onto a back road. "He knew exactly who you were. And there I was trying to hide you like an idiot because he already knew – "

"You're going to kill someone, slow down," Ella cried out, grabbing his arm when he whipped past a stop sign as though he hadn't even seen it. A car horn blared behind them, and Ella looked in the rearview mirror to see an SUV had stopped in the four-way intersection to avoid Ryan's truck.

He finally eased up on the gas just a little, but Ella was still seconds away from telling him to pull over. Her house was only a few minutes away now, but at this rate, they'd end up smashed into a tree trunk before they could make it to her driveway.

"You need to relax," Ella demanded. "I'm the one who should be losing my shit, not you. He knows where I live."

"Yeah, and who got you into this mess in the first place? It's my fault." Ryan was still livid, and Ella jumped when he swore fiercely under his breath for the second time. "Fuck Kurt. The son of a bitch thought it was funny. I'm going to kill him."

"You're going to kill us if you don't fucking slow down," Ella spat, and it was only then that Ryan finally seemed to hear her.

He removed his foot from the gas pedal, the entire truck immediately losing the deathly bout of speed that had been setting Ella's teeth on edge. Ella's house was approaching in the distance, anyway, so it didn't even matter that he had finally slowed down. A sticky silence fell over them as Ryan coasted the truck into Ella's empty driveway, and he pulled it into park so harshly that Ella was worried something had broken inside the gear shift.

The engine wheezed into silence, but Ryan kept his hands gripped to the steering wheel. Ella sat staring at her knees, the grey clouds that blocked all sunlight from the sky causing the light blue denim to appear milky in color. She hadn't let go of her bag since she'd gotten into the truck, and when she released the straps shakily, the bones of her fingers ached from how tightly she'd been clenching them. Something like cold acid was eating away at the pit of her stomach, and Ella worried she would be sick from the feeling. She was terrified.