BEN’S POV
I don’t remember how I survived the drive out of the scene. One moment, I was stumbling into my car with blood pouring down my arm, sound of gunshots still ringing in my ears, screams echoing in my head… And the next, I was on a long, winding road leading out of Dallas, the lights fading behind me like a nightmare shrinking into darkness.
My arm was badly injured, blood gushed out violently where the bullet grazed it. Not deep enough to kill me, just deep enough to remind me that death had brushed past me.
I didn’t stop until the city felt like a distant planet.
I headed towards the Marble Falls, a quiet, small lake town in Texas where my mother lived. A place so peaceful that seems wrong to arrive with blood on my shirt and terror in my bones.
By the time I pulled into my m
