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chance at saying good-bye to his mother, his chance to take care of her, all for nothing. Worse than nothing.
    He swallowed hard and let the chain of his dog tags slide through his fingers, rubbing the thin slivers of metal between his fingers to ground himself.
    “Still feel like sharing?” Lilly asked, watching him guardedly from across the seat.
    “No.”
    After a brief hesitation, she said, “Good,” then closed her eyes and rested her head against the seat back. “Neither do I.”

Chapter Five
    Lilly watched the odometer turn over another mile. Virginia seemed to be a never-ending state. A never-ending state filled with windy roads, nightmarish tunnels, and scarily spectacular views. She tensed and squeezed her eyes shut as Nate rounded a curve and the road dropped off into nothing on the passenger side. Beautiful? Yes. Terrifying for someone afraid of heights? Double yes.
    Just a few more hours, and they’d be back on level ground where they belonged. She checked the map on her phone just to make sure. Yes. Flat land was where this girl belonged.
    The fact that she’d desperately had to pee for at least thirty miles wasn’t helping matters. Her bladder screamed at her to open her stubborn mouth.
    She peeked at the clock on the dash. Already past two. They’d left North Carolina and made the turn onto I-81 ages ago. How long did Nate plan to drive before stopping for a bathroom break? She’d watched the man consume two bottles of water and a full cup of coffee. Surely his body had needs.
    She wiggled in her seat and peeked over at him. He’d been even more tense and on edge than usual since she’d shut down their little heart-to-heart. So they both had dead mothers. It wasn’t as if they needed to bond over it. She’d already experienced firsthand what happened when you opened up to Nate Jennings, and she didn’t intend to make the same mistake twice. Trusting him would be asking for heartache.
    “I have to pee,” she finally said when her bladder reached the point of no return and she spotted an exit up ahead.
    “You just went a couple of hours ago,” he said.
    “What are you, the pee police?” she retorted. “I wasn’t aware you were keeping a chart of my bladder function. Are you tracking my fluid intake as well?”
    His knuckles blanched white around the steering wheel and he blew out a frustrated breath, flipping on his blinker at the next exit. “This is why I travel alone,” he muttered.
    She rolled her eyes. “Please. You travel alone because no one is desperate enough to sit in a confined space with your surly ass for an extended period of time.”
    “Nobody but you, right, Princess?” He whipped into a truck stop before she could respond—or object—and threw the truck into park at a gas pump. He looked at her expectantly as she took in her surroundings.
    “You have got to be kidding me.” She watched a trucker in a flannel lumberjack shirt walk past her window carrying a ginormous soda cup. This was not one of the usual neat and clean freeway rest stops. This was a grungy and oily off-brand service station attached to a questionable diner with yellowing windows that hadn’t been washed in decades, on a no-name exit in the middle of nowhere.
    They hadn’t even opened the truck doors yet and the cab was already inundated with the disgusting aroma of diesel fumes and fryer grease. Crinkling her nose, she held a hand over her nose to block the stench. There was no telling what kinds of poor defenseless animals were being slaughtered and fried in that place. Visions of Deliverance danced through her mind.
    Nate unbuckled his seat belt and raised a brow. “You said you needed to use the bathroom. I provided you one.”
    “I said I wanted a bathroom, not a place where I have to wear a biohazard suit just to touch a door handle,” she said, eyes wide with horror.
    He popped his door open and climbed out, stretching his arms above his head. A sliver of tanned, scarred skin peeked