Page 240 of Fatality

She rolls her eyes, and my hand shoots out to grab her jaw, my fingers digging into her cheeks.

“Drama queen.”

“Roll your eyes all you want. Keep being a brat. It only makes me harder for you.” I tighten my grip just enough not to hurt her, but enough to emphasize what I'm saying. “Now you're coming with me, and we're going to talk.”

I let her go, but not before sliding my thumb between her lips and pressing against the inside of her bottom lip.

I rev the engine, and it roars like a purring cat.

I'm ready to have her full attention and show her exactly how I operate.

CHAPTER 51

Riven

Panic Room – Au/Ra

The Charger speeds away, I’m frozen in place.

Stop.

The word reaches my throat and dies there before it ever becomes a sound.

My body isn't mine anymore—my lungs burn, desperate for air, but they refuse to fill. Every muscle has turned to stone, locking me into the passenger seat while the engine screams louder than I ever could.

He's laughing, of course he is, he lives for that shit.

I barely register it anyway.

The city outside folds into streaks of neon and chrome, crosswalks dissolving into light, side streets appearing and vanishing in the space between heartbeats.

Too many places to crash.

My brain counts them before I even realize I'm doing it. That alley, that truck with the new robot ad to get to your home for chores, that intersection.

That's where I'd die. That's where we'd die. That's where—

My heartbeat pounds so violently it drowns everything else, blurring my hearing until the world becomes a muffled roar beneath the howl of the engine.

My hands ache from gripping the edge of the seat, though I don't remember reaching for it.

I can't blink. If I blink, I'll miss the thing that will probably kill us.

Everything beyond the windshield feels unreal, as if the city has sunk beneath dark water.

Neon bleeds across the glass, smearing every building into impossible colors, every taillight into a wound of red.

He's saying something—another thrill-drunk comment—but his voice never reaches me.

I don't hear words.

I hear tires clawing at asphalt, I hear metal twisting, I hear shattering glass that hasn't happened yet.

My body has already decided we're crashing, it only sees Kyle and the sound of his body, the flesh hitting metal.

“E-Evren…” I only manage.

I want to tell him to slow down, that I'm terrified, that Kyle's accident—now that he knows—traumatized me to the point that every time I'm in a car speeding beyond the limit, I freeze like some fucking ice statue at one of my parents' cold galas.