Extra Chapter: Will

A/N: This was for a scholarship I entered last month. I got 3rd place, but only 1st place received a scholarship. Still, thanks to everyone who voted! I love you all.

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Kidnap My Heart

Extra Chapter: Will

“You want me to climb in where?” My girlfriend’s best friend stared at me in shock.

“The trunk. I said I was gonna smuggle you out of the house so you could come with us, didn’t I? Not my fault you got grounded and this was the only way to keep it a surprise for Emma.” Alright, so maybe it wasn’t the only way, but it was the best thing I could come up with on the spot. We'd been trying to figure out a way to get Taylor in the car and out of her house without alerting her parents or my girlfriend, Emma, and well… voila. Plan A.

“Will, I don’t know about this…”

I ignored her and shoved the clothes Emma had packed for our road trip in an empty trash bag, throwing the now empty suitcase aside. “See? Plenty of room in here. You’ll be fine.” I paused when I heard approaching footsteps—Emma’s, most likely. “Alright, quick, get in. She’s coming. The trip shouldn’t take that long, anyways.”

“It’s a five hour drive!”

“There’s a flap you can lift that connects the trunk to the inside of the car. Just lift it if you need something.”

Although she still didn’t look convinced, I somehow managed to assure her she’d be safe and got her to climb in the trunk just in time.

“Are we all set?” Emma asked, walking towards the passenger seat of the car.

“Yeah, we’re good. Hey, how about you drive us there? I have a, uh, broken toenail.”

She furrowed her eyebrows. “What?”

“What?” I feigned innocence, figuring I should be alert in case something came up. Honestly, I wasn’t completely sure the whole trunk thing had been such a good idea after all, and I didn’t want to drive with that kind of distraction looming in the back of my mind.

“You want me to drive? I thought you said I was a horrible driver.”

“Oh, you are,” I said before I could stop myself. “But I, uh, figure now’s a good a time as any to teach you how to be a safer driver.” There. That sounded like a legit excuse.

She raised an eyebrow. Maybe my excuse wasn’t as legit as I thought. “You want to teach me about safe driving?” She shook her head and climbed in the driver’s seat.

“Have I ever crashed Christine? Have I ever even dented Christine?” I asked, following her lead and climbing in the passenger seat.

Emma rolled her eyes and said nothing as she started the car and pulled out of the garage and driveway. A minute into the ride, she reached over to turn the radio on. Remembering my whole “safe driving” spiel, I slapped her hand away. If I didn’t want her to suspect me of anything, I needed to play the role of teacher, and I needed to play it well.

Man. When I’d imagined roleplaying with Emma, I’d kinda had something else in mind.

“What—”

“No messing with the radio when you’re driving. Pick a station before you leave or let your passenger change the song for you.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Of course I’m serious. If you look away for even one second, a huge semi could come out of nowhere and blast you off the road. And then—splat. Bye, bye, Emma.”

“Will, stop being such a drama queen. Nothing is going to happen.”

“Eyes on the road!”

She gave me a sour look but did as I said and focused on the road again. A thought occurred to me all of a sudden and I found myself saying, “You don’t do this distracted driving stuff when you’re alone, do you?”

“Define ‘distracted driving stuff.’”

“I don’t know. Texting, fixing your hair, checking out hot runners, eating. Whatever.”

“Will, that’s you. And the only people who run near my neighborhood are old men.”

I ignored her and went on. I was starting to take this safe driving teacher thing a little too seriously, but it kind of struck a nerve. Still, I tried to keep things light. “What if, in your hurry to reply to my dirty text, you ran into a ditch, and when your parents decided to look at your phone to see what your last words were, they read—”

“Will,” she interrupted with a laugh. “It’s not a big deal. Calm down.”

I suppressed a sigh. “Look, all joking aside, you gotta be careful. I mean, accidents happen even when you’re not messing with anything. But when you are—”

A thumping sound coming from the back—the trunk, specifically—interrupted me.

“What was that?” Emma asked.

“What was what?”

“That noise,” she said, craning her neck to check the back for—actually, I didn’t know what she was expecting to find. A serial killer? A—

“Watch out,” I shouted, reaching for the wheel to swerve out of the way. She’d missed a stop sign and accidentally made her way onto an intersection. The wheels of the surrounding cars screeched as brakes were slammed on in an effort to avoid us. I heard screaming and then—nothing. I considered the possibility that we were dead, that we’d died in the most ironic way possible, arguing about distracted driving, but I doubted heaven looked anything like Hicktown, USA. We were alive. My haphazard steering had somehow gotten us off the interstate.

Angry pounding on the window snapped us out of our shock. “Lady, what do you think you’re doing? You could’ve gotten us killed,” a middle-aged man yelled through the window.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Emma choked out. “I—”

He started spouting off insults at her, and I had to say something, even though I was still reeling from our almost-accident. “It’s not her fault. It’s mine. I distracted her.” I’d been so focused on addressing the most obvious form of distracted driving that I didn’t recognize the worst distraction of all: me and my stupid ideas.

“I’m so sorry,” I said once the guy finally went back to his own car. “This is my fault. That noise you heard was Taylor. I stuffed her in the trunk so she could come with us and surprise you, and—” I was cut off by the sound of the trunk popping open. Taylor had pulled the emergency exit latch and climbed out of the trunk. I breathed a sigh of relief. She was okay. She was furious and shaken, definitely, but she was okay.

“Never—again—will—I—listen—to you,” she choked out between shaky breaths.

If I hadn’t been so shaken myself, I might’ve laughed, mostly out of relief. But I was paralyzed as memories flooded my mind. Of all of the distractions out there, people were the worst—not because of numbers or statistics, but because of guilt. Cell phones didn’t feel guilt when they caused accidents; people did.

How could I have forgotten?

I should’ve remembered the day my mom lost control of the car.

I should’ve remembered the day I watched her slip away—because of me.

I distracted her.

And I almost did it again.