Chapter one
“Dios mio, Kaleb! Qué auga tan caliente!”
Shit!
“Lo siento, mamá!” I shout back. The thin bathroom door and the hiss of shower water drown out the bass of my low timbre. The sound rumbling deep in my chest, even if she doesn’t quite hear me.
That’s my mom though—admonishing me for using too much of the hot water. We’re limited; water heaters don’t hold much anymore so we burn through it pretty quick in this old house. The torrent is already beginning to cool, steam thickening around me as the temperature from my blazing skin and the colder water struggle to mix.
In all honesty, I should have jumped out of the shower long ago, but shit happens. Doesn’t take much for me to get sidetracked when I don’t have something for my hands to tinker with, such as the frustrating fucking turbo I’ve spent all day trying to install in the Civic. At first I couldn’t get the intake to attach. Then I scraped the absolute hell out of the knuckles on my right hand when my greasy grip slipped off the wrenchand slammed into the exhaust manifold. They split wide open, poured blood all over the damn place and are currently mocking me while I bathe.
Puffy and angry skin burns when the slowly-cooling water cascades over them, add in soap and they’re practically screaming for relief that’s not coming any time soon. They’re annoying but moving around them is what’s keeping me distracted—partially. What’s really haunting me is a pair of silver eyes that have done nothing but consume my dreams and flit through my thoughts when I’m least expecting it.
My heart doesn’t act right either, when I get to thinking about them, pounding ferociously in my chest, catching my breath between the fluttering muscles. Seeing her, thinking of her, and racing; they pump so much adrenaline into my bloodstream I live in a constant high.
Tonight’s the night, though. I’m going to see my girl for the first time in a handful of years–two to be exact. The last time I saw her? My graduation. She still had a baby face but doesn’t anymore. How do I know? Well, my homie Logan has been after her friend for a while and spends many of his weekends at our other buddy’s house. When they do hang out, he sneaks Polaroids and shows them to me back on campus—sometimes my girl is in them and when she’s not, I turn a blind eye. Needless to say, the photos with her in them come up missing every time. I like to think he knows I'm stealing them, but I’ll never admit to it.
Having ten sticky fingers is the lesser of my crimes, but we all know nothing is illegal unless you get caught. Good luck nailing me to the cross; the police aren’t quite fast enough yet—maybe one day.
That’s the effect she has on me by the way—turns me into one dumb motherfucker. Chopping my thoughts up into millions of little pieces too emulsified to be distinguished from another.Pure idiocy. When it comes to her, I struggle to figure out where one thought ends and the next begins.
Don’t get me started on time either. It melds together, the seconds, minutes, and hours, there one second thenpoof—gone in a cloud of rich exhaust. Next thing I know, I’m still knee deep in my damn head and have fucked up something else on the car. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to start something over all because I was daydreaming like a love drunk fool.
Things have been like this since the day we met. The memory is still so fresh I can hear the chattering of the lunchroom in the back of my mind. It was my junior year, and she was a freshman; tension was high, the air a little testy, and students were moving around all shifty like. That’s when I caught eye of what was happening when I spotted the devilish girl absolutely wailing on someone.
Before the coaches could step in, I swooped over, wrapped an arm around her waist, and jerked her back as the victim lay crying and bleeding—scrambling back with gratitude. She held my attention for point two seconds before I was focused on the writhing typhoon in my arms, fighting me in order to get back to her target.
I held on tight to the whirlwind, eventually getting to see who I was holding captive but not after a few new bumps and bruises of my own.
“Woah killer! Relax!”
“If you know what the hell’s good for you, you’ll let me go!”
Her voice is breathy, a little on the lower side—unlike the rest of the girls in our school—and laced with so much disdain it makes me laugh.
“I’m not too bright. Why don’t you tell me what will happen if I don’t, hmm?”
Zero hesitation, she’s wheels around and gives me not just a piece of her mind but the whole fucking cake.
“I’ll beat your ass next, hotshot. There’s not a single one of you in this school that scares me—especially some half-sacked jock. Now kick rocks, goon.”
Before she can escape me—because let’s be honest. That little jab hurt a smidge—I grab and drag her back to me. Both of my hands, calloused thanks to football and my needy car, cup her furious face; still pink with anger and a few cat-fight scratches. What I’m met with sucks the breath out of my lungs and I forget where I’m at, what I’m doing, who I am.
The sharpest pair of sterling-grey eyes, molten in their anger, meet my roasted-coffee toned ones. Fucking hell, she’s beautiful.
“What’s your name, Diabolica?”
She scowls, hands instantly finding and shoving at my chest—her enthusiasm barely ruffling the buttery-leather of my worn-out jacket. When I don’t release her, the coaches scraping her victim off the floor to our left, she softens. Inhaling the longest calming breath I’ve ever seen.
“Nadia.”
I don’t know if she’s ever realized how much power she has over me, but ever since that day, her hooks have been buried deep into my skin—barbed, bone scraping hooks. Then, if I moseyed too far away, the mere mention of her name would drag me right back to where I belong—her side.
Anyway, you can bet your fine ass I’m not going to confess any of this to her—she’d use it against me for fun. I can’t have that when I’m trying to sweep little miss viciousness off her feet and cart her back to the city with me.
A quick shake of my head flings water all throughout the steamy shower. Obsidian strands snap to my forehead in an array of directions and patterns the movement wafting the stall with the lemony-bergamot scent of my Drakkar Nior shampoo. I’ve used this brand since high school for very obvious reasons.Ma was given a bottle as a white elephant gift during a Christmas potluck dinner at an old job. She didn’t want to be rude and give it to someone else, the thought of having another man’s shampoo in her bathroom since my dad disappeared hurt too much, so she gave it to me instead.
I wasn’t going to use it either, but when Ma lost her job, we were low on money and I was out of my normal brand. You wouldn’t catch me dead smelling foul, I had to do what I had to do.
