LeitaKree

The rest of the day passed in a blur, little more than smears of landscape across the window of the car. Not that anything really stuck. I tried to sleep—I did, I swear—but the crack of the shotgun startled me out of my exhaustion-induced stupor the moment my eyes drifted shut. Dimly I remember the passage of time, if only because one moment Phoebe and I were surrounded by nothing but empty fields, and the next she was pulling into a packed gas station. Cars were lined up ridiculously long, worried parents and frightened people watching the numbers climb higher. Phoebe checked the gas gauge, decided that her quarter-full tank (or the empty r

The last batch of caramel bubbled sluggishly in the pot and Nate pulled the wooden spoon up, nodding at the coating along its back. The candies were a labor of love, to be sure—he'd argued and bartered and finally ended up signing over what would likely be several weeks of aggravation in order to get the ingredients together. He picked up the pot and poured it carefully into the carefully-greased pan waiting for it, spreading out the rapidly thickening candy just as Bailey poked her head around the corner. "They done yet?" "Last batch is coolin'." He shot her a brief smile as he scraped the remainder out of the pot and added it to the p