how to love // z. m.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six

"Toni, wake up."

I winced as I opened my eyes and looked around to see sunlight all around me. And a new surrounding location.

I was in the passenger seat of a car.

My heart spun out of control as I sat up quickly and tried to open the door next to me, but it was locked, and I couldn't get the door unlocked on my side, either. It's only a drivers' side feature in this stupid, destructive, monstrous, deadly, murderous vehicle.

"Zayn!" I shouted. "Let me out!"

"No," I heard him say next to me. "You're going to get through this. Your parents would want you to."

I stopped yanking on the handle when he mentioned my parents, and I looked at him. I could feel the fear in my eyes, and I sensed the determination radiating from Zayn.

"Please," I said weakly.

"At least try," he said gently, reaching a hand out to touch my arm, trailing it up and down it.

I looked forward. We were sitting on a road. The top of a hill, actually. I focused on what was outside of the car instead of the car itself, and what a vehicle of its type had done to my mom and dad.

A group of birds flew overhead in a V-formation as they always travel in. A squirrel ducked into a bush on the side of the road. The sun was setting off in the distance. It's around nine, so we won't get back home 'til two in the morning, estimating. Ugh.

I then went to focus on what was inside the car --- once again, not the car as a whole.

Hanging from the mirror was one of those smelly green hanging trees, the ones that smell like pine. There was a grey seat belt tightened securely around me. I guess Zayn has been taking good care of me while I was asleep. The floor of the car was relatively clean, only bits and pieces of the paper wrapping of straws littered the floor, and near the bottom of the door there was some dried up grass laying there.

Then, I finally looked at Zayn, in the drivers' seat.

I hadn't noticed him take my hand. He held my wrist up to me, and then put it to his cheek.

"See?" he said quietly. "Your heartbeat is slowing down. You're relaxing." He then brought my wrist to the side of my own face. Sure enough, it was steady.

I looked around the car, and according to my wrist, my heartbeat wasn't changing at all. I looked back up into Zayn's eyes and smiled weakly. "Thank you."

"No problem," he smiled. We stayed like that, looking at each other, until we both kind of shook out of it at the same moment when we realized that the sun was officially down below the horizon.

"What were we doing here, anyway?" I asked, setting my hands in my lap.

"Spook Hill," he said. He turned the keys and I jumped, grabbing onto Zayn's arm, my eyes darting like a wild animal. "Shh," he whispered. "Remember. Just relax. I won't let anything, or anyone, hurt you."

I did as he said. I closed my eyes and silently meditated. I thought I would just feel stupid for doing that, but it worked, and I felt fine.

I felt Zayn do a U-turn, and suddenly, along the side of the rode, there was a sign stuck into the ground. Zayn unbuckled his seat belt and started getting out of the car, so I did, too.

He took out his cell phone for light and walked up to the sign, lighting it up in the dim light of the moon and the leftovers of the sun that wasn't really completely gone yet.