I texted Lia.
I have an emergency. Can you come back to the dorm?
She was there in ten minutes, bag over her shoulder, and she looked at my face when she came through the door and I saw the concern written all over hers.
"I need to go home," I said. "I can't explain why right now. I just need to go."
She looked at me for a long moment. At my face, at my hands, at whatever it was she read in me that she always seemed to be able to read.
"Okay," she said, nodding. "Let's go."
~0~
Six hours.
We crossed state lines.
I watched the city give way to highway and highway give way to open road and I sat in the passenger seat with my hands in my lap and tried not to think. Tried not to let my brain keep pulling at the thread because every time it did my stomach went with it and I needed to h
