Deadline≫hemmings a.u

4.5

"Michael, we have to turn back!" I cried as he swerved back onto the road, scrambling to the back of the car to try and get a view - any view beyond those crates. "We can't just leave him there!"

"Melanie, get in your seat now!" he ordered, his voice unyielding as he pressed his foot down harder on the gas, the compound growing smaller behind us.

"No!" I yelled, looking out the back window and straining my eyes. "Michael, turn back!"

"No!" Michael snapped, swerving the car unexpectedly and tossing me to the side. "Sit down!"

"That's Luke we left behind, Michael!" I screamed back at him, tears freely falling down my cheeks. "Your best friend! We have to turn back!"

"No, goddammit, Melanie, get in your seat!" Michael demanded again, swerving the other way and sending me in the opposite direction.

"Why?" Fresh sobs tore through my body and my head pounded from all the yelling, but I needed to go back.

"Are you stupid?" he asked incredulously. "Because we'll get killed!"

"You're just a fucking coward!" I screeched, hitting my fist against the window.

"Will you sit the fuck down?" Michael growled, accelerating the car further. I couldn't even see Marcus's office building anymore, it was too far behind. "And I'm a coward for not wanting to get us killed?"

"You're a coward for leaving him back there!" I countered, my chest hurting as if it had been trampled by a thousand horses.

"You would have been killed, and I'm pretty sure Luke's dying wish to me was to keep. You. Safe." Michael said those last words extremely deliberately through gritted teeth, his eyes burning in the rearview mirror.

"It wouldn't be a dying wish if we go back and save him!" I protested, my heart shattering all over again with every block we passed that brought us further and further away from Luke. "You let him go, Michael! Now we have to go back for him!"

"There's no saving him, Melanie!" Michael's voice was raw, cracking at the end. "He's dead, don't you get it? Luke is fucking dead!"

Before I could do anything, I was thrown from my spot by the window as Michael hit a bump in the road and turned onto the ramp to the freeway. I tried to stop myself from falling with my arms, but they buckled under me and I tumbled to the ground, striking my chin on the ground just like I had earlier.

"He's dead!" Michael repeated, his voice sounding foreign to my ears. There it was, the horrible reality I was being faced with.

The memory of that blow combined with this one sent red hot spikes of pain into my head that made bursts of white explode before my eyes. A gasp was ripped from my lips that was quickly overcome by a sob.

Up front, Michael paled at the noise, his head whipping back to see me crumpled on the floor. I tried to get up on my elbow, cupping my chin with one hand. My mouth flooded with a metallic taste. I must have bitten my lip of something when I fell. Michael's face, which had been a tense mask of anger and fear had softened now that we wer far enough away that he could pay some attention to me.

His eyes widened as he took in what his reckless driving had done. I painstakingly got myself up enough to scrambling back into the corner of the car. My head throbbed from sobbing, screaming, and hitting my chin hard.

"Melanie I - " Michael cut himself off as I put up walls around myself, shutting him out.

Gone was my denial to what had just happened, gone were my protests and demands to turn back. It felt like everything inside me shattered at his words and the crippling reality he presented me with. Everything around me came tumbling down just like that. I wanted to believe Luke was still alive there back there. He survived, he dove back behind the storage unit and he got away and he needed us back there.