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The next best thing to dying in his car is dying in his brother’s arms.
Driver thinks so. Blood oozes out of from the stab wound, trickling through Court’s jacket and his fingers. It doesn’t leave much room for any thinking at all, really. He can’t keep a single thought from slipping through along with the blood. But he keeps a vice-like grip on this one thing and it’s enough to hold him over for the remaining three hours of his journey.
Breathing hurts. Driving hurts. Fucking up several of the best things that has happened to him in his short lifetime hurts. It’s his own damn fault. Always has been, always will be.
He hasn’t dressed the wound. He’s pretty sure he’s going to end up with an infection. Could’ve been avoided if he had just stopped at any of the pharmacies or gas stations he passed by before he got on the I-5. But he can’t— He refuses to die without saying goodbye.
Desperately, he presses harder, wincing but forcing his eyes open lest the open road or whatever is waiting for him in hell swallows him whole. He prays to his mother’s God that he makes it to Berkeley first.
When Driver was 3 years old, Driver couldn’t understand that Colt and Ryland will only be gone for a couple of hours that day. He remembered Court told him it was going to be a big day for his big brothers. He packed them food along with clothes and pencils. They both hopped on a bus, waving back with smiles on their faces until the doors closed and Driver lost it. Driver’s chest and feet hurt. He cried and cried as he ran, the bus getting farther down the street until he couldn’t see it anymore. He tripped from a forgotten marble on the pavement and scraped his knee, elbow, and chin. It was the first time he remembered bleeding. Court caught up with him, carried him back to the house, and took care of his wounds calmly. “They’ll be back. They’re just going to school, bud. Like when I go to work? We go, come back with gifts or stories. But we’ll always, always come back for you. I promise."
When Driver was 6 years old, the old bully who lived across from them stole the RC car Court had gotten him for his birthday. He told him to take extra care of it because it was expensive, but Driver brought it outside and lost a round of tug-of-war rather quickly and embarrassingly. Three pairs of feet marched with Driver to that kid’s house but it was Colt who pried the car from the greedy bastard’s muddy hands. His parting words were said through gritted teeth, “Mess with my little brother again, you little shit, and I’ll— I’ll! I’ll fuck you up and, and— Very bad things will happen to you!”
Their dad found out about it, said Driver embarrassed him with his carelessness and then— Driver couldn’t remember a lot of details from that night.
Memories from his past are all he had to pass the time on the drive. He doesn’t weigh his options because he only has one. Court’s dead. Colt is filming in London.
Ryland is near but he isn’t a last resort.
Ryland had come home on his first day in 3rd grade with a card that had a race car in it for Driver. Ryland found Driver silently crying at the door when he was shaking in fear on the porch and was the one who told Colt about the stolen RC car.
Ryland squeezed Driver into his side and covered Driver’s ears when the cops took Court away from them that very same night. Driver remembers that, at least. Though not much from after.
When Driver was 14 years old, Court died in prison, Colt’s adoptive parents got divorced, and Ryland announced he applied for a full-ride scholarship to a University in California. Not Florida. No, he had chosen the farthest place he could study and Driver had no idea what to think of it. Driver wasn’t old enough to go to college, so he took something else out of Ryland’s book and ran away from his foster parent’s home that same week along with their Chevy Malibu.
Bleary eyed and fighting a losing battle with every breath in the very same car he stole, Driver parks the car next to the modest apartment building slower than intended. He pulls the handbrake and turns the engine off with shaking hands.
For a while, he just sits there. The sun is about to set in the California sky. He feels it, too, deep inside. His coughs are wet and iron-tasting, and he swallows it all down. It would be so easy to just take one last breath and be done with it. Quick, sadly not painless, but at least he’d be done.
His vision tightens at the edges, slowly closing in, and it would be so easy to just… close his eyes and rest.
But a knock on the window startles him awake yet not quite fully alive.
“Casey! Case?! What—”
It’s Ryland. He’s wearing a UC Berkeley hoodie and orange shorts no one should look at even if they’re able to think properly.
Driver reaches the latch with his free hand and the reaction was immediate, like a sharp turn to avoid crashing. Pure instinct. All the Gentrys operate on nothing else but that.
Driver’s instincts take over when Ryland puts an arm around him. He hides his face in the crook of Ryland’s neck, lets himself be urged out of the car. He lets himself cry a little, finally.
“Grace, who—” Another voice. Another person seeing this. Shit.
“My little brother. I recognized the car and I just— I didn’t know—” Ryland pleads while he tucks another arm under Driver’s knees to carry him out the car. Out in the sunset where other people could see—
Driver didn’t think this plan through.
“Grace, he’s bleeding! We should call 911.”
Driver’s shaking his head before she’s even finished with the stupid suggestion.
“No! No hospitals. We still have that first aid kit from Linda and I think that guy across the hall has antibiotics?” Ryland matches his roommate’s hissed whispers while they’re both hunched over him.
“Who, Mark? I’m not asking a stranger for spare drugs.” A beat of silence Driver can’t parse through passes. “Fine. Fine. How’d you even know it was your brother’s car?” The woman with Ryland asks, firm but not unkind. Deeply frightened, though.
“A letter he sent! The only letter, really. Can you just please help me? Marissa, please. I can’t carry him by myself.”
Ryland mutters apologies into Driver’s ear and squeezes his shoulder then covers his ear. Instinct.
“Give him here,” she sighs.
“Can I borrow your jacket first? Cover the— the– Just, please.” Ryland covers the most of the bloodied parts of Driver’s torso with a clean green jacket. “Press on that wound, Casey, okay? Marissa– Introductions later. But Mari’s going to carry you with me back to our place.” Another arm on his waist, a stranger taking more of his weight. Driver lets it happen, trusting Ryland more than he trusts himself right now.
They make their way up somehow through the empty lobby and an empty, cramped elevator. Driver’s losing his grip on his wound and consciousness entirely, and he thinks no, no he’s going to disappoint Ryland again. What’s Colt going to think? The pillow under his head is soft, the hand on his cheek calloused but right.
“Marissa says you shouldn’t sleep while we patch you up. So, it’s– You can hear me, right?”
Driver nods.
“Not up to talking, though, huh?”
Driver shakes his head.
“Totally fine. It’s like when we were kids and I would talk your ear off about planets while you pretended to listen.”
Ryland’s got tears in his eyes. He’s always been the softest of the four of them. That’s what Court would say anyway. But he’s definitely not the weakest. None of them could be weak and they all adapted to that pretty quickly. To Driver, Ryland is safe because he was strong and he’ll offer comfort like a glass of water. He would keep him distracted like he wasn’t crying and nothing was hurting.
He talks now while he cleans Driver’s wounds. He tells him mundane stories about his life that he would normally write on the back of the postcards he sends Driver on a semi-regular basis: like what he and his partner Linda had for breakfast yesterday or who approached him this week to argue with him about one of his papers.
Driver feels the sting of the needle while he’s being stitched up. He can see Ryland going a little green from all the blood but bravely pushes through it. Driver tries to say thanks to Marissa when she returns with medicine and a glass of water but he could only whimper instead. She nods as if she understood and leaves the apartment altogether.
Honestly, she could be in the next room and Driver wouldn’t know.
He can’t hold his head up much longer. Ryland’s voice is joined by a ringing he doesn’t appreciate. He could sleep. Didn’t Ryland say he could? He could lay back on the couch and rest.
“Hey, no. No. I’m done with the stitches. Just— drink these. Antibiotics, in case,” Ryland says, feeding Driver the medicine himself with clean hands and then handing him the glass. “In case. But, Casey, it better not be infected because I’m going to be so pissed if you die on me right now.”
Dying isn’t so bad if it’s like this. He’ll do it again.
Driver died.
At some point.
Every time he took a beating or a hand around his throat or a knife to the gut, he anticipated taking his last breath. But he kept heaving and panting and getting up anyways.
Most days, he feels as though he died after they found out Court died. On the day of his funeral, Driver couldn’t look at Colt in the eye and ran away from Ryland’s welcoming embrace. He cried the whole way back to the Daleys house from the cemetery. He spent the whole evening forming a plan in his head on the foundation that: Nobody kept their promises.
He packed a bag full of Court’s old clothes that they let him keep and took the keys to the 1973 Chevy Malibu.
Court used to wake him up unintentionally when he was getting ready for work.
It would be the sound of him opening drawers or his sock-clad feet on the carpet floor while he hopped into his jeans. He would always catch Driver trying to sit up, to walk him to the door and say goodbye, but Court insisted he go back to sleep every time.
And Driver feigned sleep until he was sure Court had left. He would slip away to Colt and Ryland’s room to continue sleeping beside Colt. A few hours later, Ryland would be the one shaking them awake so they could all eat cereal together before the twins had to leave for school.
Opening his eyes and seeing Ryland there made him think of all those mornings. Except it’s clearly evening and Ryland is older. He’s got smile lines forming like whiskers beside his eyes when he smiles. He’s older than Court would ever be.
“Hey,” Ryland says, kneeling beside the couch and taking Driver’s gloveless hand in his. “You with me, bud?”
Driver can’t talk but he’s alive, so he nods.
Awake, alive, and… aching everywhere so badly that the comfort from laying on a couch, dressed in clean clothes, and knowing the dim room was purposeful barely registers. He’s crashing. The adrenaline has worn off, the anticipation of setting a goal and seeing it through is gone now that he’s here where he wants to be. Now in comes the reality of what happened these past few days. Standard, Shannon. Irene, Benicio.
Driver feels spent and torn to shreds, barely human yet he wants to cry like one. Loss is heavy in his chest, feels it in the knuckles that finished the deed and the final souvenir he got from L.A. He takes a deep breath, clutching at the shirt they put him in. His next one comes out stuttering and wet.
Crying like a fucking baby is all he knows how to do now, wracking through him like punches.
He turns to face his brother properly for the first time in years. It just hit him then. Not since the funeral has he been face-to-face with Ryland Gentry-Grace. Third eldest, child prodigy, and accident-prone. Eight years, thirty postcards, and a whole lot of nothing said between them since and Driver thinks he barely knows him.
But that can’t be true. He knows where Ryland lives. He knows Ryland is safe. He doesn’t know if Ryland’s mad at him for only writing to say he ran away and his address has changed but never giving him a phone number to call.
At some point, Driver has to tell Ryland everything that happened.
Impossibly, he cries even harder.
Ryland takes Driver’s other hand in both of his and says nothing. His glasses are hanging from one ear, his chin doing most of keeping it from falling. Driver has snot running down his nose and it’s not blood, he knows that, but it makes him panic. Not in front of his brother.
It’s instinct again to heave and sob, to curl in on himself only to be stopped by a hand on his shoulder because “No can do, bud. Lay back, okay? Gotta keep those stitches in tact.”
Driver should put up a fight but his wires are a mess and he can’t find it in him to run, run, run. He tries to sit up this time but Ryland is as persistent and strong as he is. Always has been.
“No, Casey. Seriously? Don’t make me call Colt.”
That doesn’t work the way Ryland thinks it does but Driver feels warmth spread inside at the mention of their brother anyway.
Now their eldest (winning on a 10-minute technicality), now the one who has taken the role of parent even though they’ve all had a semblance of a pair of those in the years they were separated by the whoever was in-charge of orphans in the state of Florida.
It’s the easy way the name is dropped that eases the thought into Driver that they kept in touch somehow.
Sniffing, Driver whispers, “Colt?” What’s he gonna do?
Ryland lets out a surprised laugh, wiping Driver’s tears with the pads of his fingers.
“Colt can be pretty convincing if you let him,” he states, scratching at his stubble. “He yells.”
“You do, too.”
Used to. Did. Driver had no idea what sort of arguments Ryland got up to now that would involve raising his voice. Back then, though, Driver used to hear Ryland scold Colt for climbing the tree again or riding their bike without a helmet. He wouldn’t yell but he was loud when he wanted to be.
“Has Colt told you how I had to yell at him last week for not eating enough carbs?” Ryland asks.
The only reason Colt has been able to reach Driver in the first place is because Shannon liked to brag to other stunt crews whenever he could, managed to let it slip to the Miami Vice crew that he had his very own Colt Seavers but better, not knowing to what extent that meant.
Eventually, Colt got the address to the garage and almost suffocated him in a bone-crushing hug. Then came the long winded lecture about “—stealing the Daleys’ car?! They were worried sick about you! We all were! Then Ryland told us you sent him a letter, refused to tell us what was in it. Just that you were safe and unlikely to answer anybody else. That shit— Like that made everything okay?! Six years, Casey! And you, what, just never called me? Never bothered to find me?! I am going to— I swear to God— And! And I find out you live five blocks away from me, Casey, what the fuck!”
That went on for 15 whole minutes in Shannon’s office before Driver’s boss took pity on them, handed them $20 to grab lunch at the deli next door. Like they were kids he needed to get rid of. Not totally inaccurate. But Colt complained about it, finding a new source for his frustrations got Driver breathing a little easier. They went to a nearby Mexican restaurant instead and said, “My treat.” He had been winded and overwhelmed at the sight of his brother again to do anything else but nod. It’s Colt, but scruffier and bigger than Court ever was.
Driver had said, “Colt” before they were seated and gave Colt no warning. He just hugged him. Thankfully, he got a hug back.
That was two years ago.
“Yes. I’m glad you made up," Driver tells Ryland.
Ryland carefully lifts Driver’s legs up so he can sit on the couch, draping Driver’s legs over his lap like a security blanket.
“Mostly. It took a lot, and I do mean a lot, of talking. He drove up here for the first time last year and it was awkward as all heck. We both ended up crying right there—” Ryland points to the space between the coffee table and the bookshelf. “We were both high. That might’ve helped. We talked about you, mostly. He mentioned that you guys had some sort of tradition. Mexican food?”
"On Saturdays, if he’s stateside.”
Ryland smiles gently. “Yeah. You were a great ice breaker, bud. But. He hasn’t forgiven me yet for ignoring him up until the day I got the letter from you. That’s a long time to be mad at my own twin brother and I don’t think I’ve forgiven myself for that, either.”
They all huddled on a lower bunk in their first and only group home for five whole months before their social worker found another home they can place Casey. Casey was a special case, they said, the one that suffered more from the abuse. But he hated that it meant that he was going to be alone and away from his brothers for a long time, with strangers tasked to take care of him for a monthly fee.
“You shouldn’t have to,” Driver says, absolving Ryland for something he wasn’t even sure about. For being angry, maybe. They were all like their dad that way. Even Driver would be a hypocrite if he judged any of his brothers for that.
Ryland shakes his head, seeing past Driver’s inner turmoil. “No, but it’s ugly and I don’t want it. All of the—ugh, the jealousy. I hate to say it the way it is but that’s the root and truth of it.”
This is good, Driver thinks. He’s getting answers from questions he never got to ask because the Daleys kept him safe, and to them that meant steering clear of ‘things that might trigger him.’
Ryland flexes and clenches his fist, knocking on his forehead once then twice. He brought the same hand down his face, bringing his glasses to his chin. Driver pretends he can’t see his brother’s tears.
“Court was worried the first time Colt and I visited without you. The good news changed him, in a way. All he wanted was to keep you safe. But he was also happy that at least his twins were still together. We’d all write letters for you when we visited, Court and Colt would dictate and I’d write.”
Driver remembers the joint letters. There were six of them, one for every month Colt and Ryland visited together. They were none the wiser about what actually happened in that house but Driver would rather not unpack that right now. Or ever.
“After the Daleys took you in, Colt and I spent two more years in that group home. There were too many of us in that house with very little food and room but it was okay because we were together. Colt was taking all the punches meant for me, because everyone couldn’t leave me alone, and he was getting blamed for starting fights when he wasn’t. Then the fire, and they couldn’t place us in the same house anymore.”
This might be where Driver should interject and say comforting things, like how the state should’ve known better than to separate them or why the Seavers adopted Colt but not Ryland. But Driver’s choice of words might not be helpful right now. So, he stayed quiet as Ryland cried about unanswered questions. Driver could ask Colt when they see each other again—if. Right, if. He would, though, if that meant doing Ryland a favor.
Ryland calms down and claps his hands once. “Enough about that, though! I need to check on you.”
He checks Driver’s vitals and then tidies up all the first aid stuff scattered on the coffee table. Driver takes that time to assess his clothing: a black graphic tee, baggy joggers, and socks with foxes on them. They’re all a little too cozy for the summer weather but he’s not going to complain. He’ll have to ask Ryland if he washed his jacket.
“We should eat dinner. Have you eaten anything since you— left?” Ryland sighs when Driver shakes his head no. They’re both choosing to ignore the hesitance. Sure. “Okay, I guess we’re ordering in. There’s a Mexican place a few blocks from here.”
Driver keeps quiet while Ryland putters around him, one hand with a phone to his ear while he calls the restaurant and the other’s holding the kit while he walks to the bathroom.
He takes that distraction and tries to sit up. He supports himself with a palm beneath him while he uses his other hand to cover the dressed wound. He can feel it in the way his muscles ache that he’s not fully healed but he’s operated on worse conditions.
He wants to see Ryland’s apartment for the very first time.
The couch faces two tall windows framed by yellow curtains. Between them stands a filled five-row bookshelf. The middle shelf holds several picture frames of Ryland and faces Driver doesn’t recognize. The room to his left is closed and on the door hangs a small empty chalkboard. Next to that is another closed door but with a Back to the Future poster taped on the door. Ryland’s room, probably. When he turns to his right, he finds the kitchen and dining area with its darker tiled walls and flooring.
In between those spaces are trinkets, school books, pencils that shouldn’t be where they are, and mugs that Driver’s pretty sure still have teabags inside. Driver knows from movies that college dorms could be messy, both from watching them and as he’s seen on sets. But this is an apartment Ryland shares with someone else. Maybe they’re both too busy to clean properly?
Driver flexes his hand once, twice. There’s nothing much he can do about the books and the pencils. But the mugs? The mugs, he can wash. Walking is a pain, and he needs to drag his feet across the floor to avoid exerting too much effort, but he needs to do something. He carries three mugs in one hand.
The moment he turns the faucet on, Ryland is behind him protesting and denying any help from someone who is injured. He couldn’t say the word stabbed or on the run but Driver heard it through the haze. Eventually, Driver convinced him to point to which plastic bag was for food waste and where to store the mugs. But Ryland stubbornly insisted that he helped Driver get back to the couch.
The weight of every unanswered question fall along with them on the plaid thing. Surprisingly, it’s not blood-stained. Driver winces as he sits; Ryland ever the empath does so, too. He sighs in relief when he’s sitting on the couch again, failing to hide it from a smug-looking Ryland.
“Isn’t staying still on this comfortable couch so much better when you’re a little torn?” Ryland smiles tightly.
“Don’t nag,” Driver replies. “And don’t be mean. Maybe I’m the one who needs to call Colt.”
That makes Ryland pause. But whatever he wanted to say is interrupted by the buzz of the intercom.
Driver ate his chili con carne and rice with gusto after arguing over whether he should sit at the kitchen bar to eat. Ryland ordered a breakfast burrito for himself, says it’s become his favorite when he’s either too drunk, high, hungover, or a little bit of all three while working on his research and can’t find the time to cook. It’s Marissa’s favorite place, too, but Ryland’s roommate has yet to make an appearance again. Something about staying over at a girlfriend’s place. Driver knows he won’t be able to say his thanks to her before he leaves.
Dinner passes by quietly, interrupted by comments on the food (by Ryland) and anecdotes about what some people have told him regarding his dissertation. Driver knows what his brother is doing, though. The admittance of the biggest crime Ryland has committed so far in his life earlier comes with a price. That’s not something Driver learned from memories of his childhood. Six years away and six years of his life without them had taught him several things he needed to know but couldn’t dare tell his brother that he did.
Colt doesn’t know about the night drives. Just the day job.
Court was never going to know. If he was somehow watching over him like an angel in his mother’s books, what would he think?
Ryland’s washing the dishes now, his back turned to where Driver’s sitting.
It seems a good a time as any to just—say it.
“Someone died because of me,” Driver states to the room that stopped breathing. Ryland’s turned the faucet off. It’s just all white noise. It is. The crushing sounds of bones under the soles of his shoes and fingers cracking under the head of a hammer don’t exist here. “A lot of people died. I was only— I did it to defend myself. So they wouldn’t hurt other people no more.”
Driver can’t see his way out of this before Ryland says anything that could make or break the foundation of everything he believed in. Nevermind that Court, Colt, and Ryland broke their promises and bended to the laws that bound them to wherever they were placed. Casey decided he would keep all of the ones he makes. Nevermind that they all left him because he left them, too, not as an act of defiance but in an attempt to follow their broken footsteps.
What he had faith in, as flimsy and naive that is, is that they would always protect him. Colt begging their father to stop. Ryland calling Court who was working on the broken bike at the garage. Court pulling the trigger and changing their lives for the betterworsebetterworse---the jury’s still out on that.
They’re his brothers.
Or should Casey forget about that, too?
Taking a bigger leap of faith, Driver looks up. Turned away from the sink, Ryland is breathing heavily, chest going up and down in calculated counts. His poker face is good, Driver can tell that much. But Driver prides himself in noticing everything. The widened eyes matched with the shaking hands.
What he knows is that Ryland is afraid.
“So, you killed,” Ryland asks calmly, though it’s really not convincing. “How many?”
“Six.”
“Okay.” The way he says it is the complete opposite of okay. “And is this—what, a one-time occurrence? In self-defense?”
Driver’s smart, so he says nothing. He’ll take the stunned silence as a consolation. He’s only admitting to this and nothing else. What good would letting Ryland know about the other things do?
A cold chill burst through in the warmth he was just getting used to again. The apartment suddenly felt too dark even with the light from under the kitchen cabinets. Driver doesn’t know how to make this right in a way that’s acceptable. He said his piece and it’s up to Ryland to parse through his own feelings with that. What he needs now is an exit strategy. But there’s no discreet way out of this. He should say thanks and just leave. He’ll leave the expectations that they’ll be okay after this, that there will be more postcards. Where would Ryland even send them to? Where would he go now?
“Why did you come here?” Ryland finally asks.
And Driver knows he has to tell the truth. “There’s no one else.” He wanted to correct himself when Ryland winces but he can’t come up with anything that sounds better.
“Does Colt know?”
Driver shakes his head. IIt stings worse than a knife to the guts, the realization that Ryland has to get Colt’s approval or something for him to be okay about this. That there conditions and limitations to how accepting he’s going to be.
“You should've called him. Colt would probably find a way to keep you safe. I’d say call Court but— I am—” Ryland squeezes his fist over his heart, tears forming in the brim of his eyes. “I’m still your brother. Nothing is going to change that. Nothing has and nothing will, okay? But I am the worst person you could have gone for this. I can’t fix this for you, Casey.”
That’s not what he came here for. Driver so badly wants to say that. But he’s suddenly shivering yet frozen still on the stool, unable to deny the, as Ryland put it, root and truth of it. Driver thought he was going to die here and now that he isn’t, he doesn’t know what else he wants from this. No more blood oozing out of him to carry the thoughts away, but there are no thoughts to begin with.
He has to come up with a solution himself.
And what is the one thing he knows how to do?
Hiding his shaking hands in the pocket of the joggers, Driver stands up from the stool. He says, “I’m not asking you to” instead of thank you I’m sorry please forget about all of this and if it came out a little meaner than intended, he lets it and doesn’t apologize for it. He’s so tired. “I only wanted to see you. I’m not gonna stay or hide here. I just didn’t want to die without seeing you again. That’s it. So, I’ll go—”
“Go where?” Ryland asks, shaky and nervous.
“Doesn’t matter, as long as they won’t find me,” Driver says. “But if they do, I won’t be able to tell you. And I hope you won’t hate me for that.”
A pathetic little request, knowing he doesn’t deserve any of it.
Ryland crumples. He surges from where he’s slouching, taking Driver in his arms and repeating the same words over and over: “You’re not dying. You hear me? And you’re my brother. I could never, ever hate you.”
By now, you’ll know Driver isn’t immune to any of this. So he leans into the same hug he ran away from at Court's funeral and steals more moments of comfort than he deserves. He's careful when he reaches out to hug Ryland back. His stained hands have no right to do that.
When Ryland asks him to stay until his wound heals, he does. He plays the role of reluctant brother well because a lot of it isn't an act. He can't take Ryland's bed and he'd rather stay on the couch. Driver lets Ryland believe he was going to stay here overnight, and judging by the look Ryland gave him before leaving him on the couch, he knew what he was planning.
Still, they’re used to playing pretend. When Driver asked about a bruise, Ryland would say it was nothing. They took turns consoling each other after every beating and didn’t ask questions. But that had more to do with not really knowing how to describe what was happening in their house after their mother passed. Court protected them from the violence as best as he could but he wasn’t just a guardian, he was a victim, too. And whatever transpired after he got his hands bloody for them is not his fault.
It’s Casey’s.
It’s all Casey’s fault for thinking violence is the answer to every question and the solution to every problem. Make it all go away with a punch, a bullet, or a nail to the forehead.
Driver adapted and he learned to live with it and making a living off of it. This is his cross to carry and nobody else’s.
Ryland’s right. Driver should take the bed, not the couch. There’s room in his twin bed.
But if he falls asleep first, then he wouldn’t even know Driver has barely closed his eyes at all. He doesn’t have to know that he’s afraid he’ll see images he’s going to have to forget for the rest of his life. He doesn’t have to know that he’ll keep on driving until his body gives up on itself and his mother's God brings him somewhere.
Maybe he'd finally get to meet her.
Driver found his jacket in the washing machine in the bathroom. He picked up his bloodied shoes from where they sat behind the bathroom door and a couple of pain relief medicine from the mirror cubby.
He wrote a note on the chalkboard:
I’ll call Colt
I took some medicine
I’ll write when I can, wherever I end up
As soon as Driver started his car, he hoped and prayed that Ryland wouldn’t hate him for leaving in the middle of the night without saying goodbye.