Page 87 of What We Burn

“I need you to show me.” She sways. I steady her with the arm she’s holding. “You’re too good with words, so I don’t want words. I want you to do something.”

“Name it.”

The grin that spreads across her face is the most dangerous thing I’ve seen all day, and let’s not forget I watched Nancy draw a shot through a gap you couldn’t post a letter through.

“Hey, Knoxie?” She crooks her finger at him and he leans down while she whispers in his ear. He nods along, does something weird with his mouth that I think is him smiling, then stands upright.

“I’m driving,” he announces, holding a hand out for my keys.

“What?” I dig in my pocket and drop the keys in his palm. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll find out,” Sage says, and grabs Eli’s hand.

They rush ahead to my car, Sage getting in shotgun and Eli sliding into the back seat while Knox gets behind the wheel.

“You coming?” Sage calls out to the rest of us.

“We’ll ride with Micah,” Holden says, grabbing me by the back of the neck and manhandling me toward the passenger side.

“Rude,” I say, because I have to say something while I’m being dragged along like a shopping cart with a bad wheel. “I have been usurped in my own vehicle by a six-foot-seven tyrant and a drunk girl with a dream.”

“You’ll survive,” Holden says.

“That remains to be seen.”

Micah unlocks the car with a chirp. Holden gets in the back. I take shotgun on principle and immediately twist around to look through the rear window as Knox pulls my car out of the lot with all the ominous calm of a getaway driver in a movie where everyone ends up emotionally compromised.

Sage sticks her hand out the passenger window and waves at us like she’s being driven to prom.

I wave back with both hands. “See you soon, kitten!”

Micah starts the engine and eases out after them. “Any guesses where we’re going?”

“Sex dungeon,” I say.

“No.”

“Kidnapping.”

“No.”

“Sexy kidnapping?”

Holden kicks the back of my seat.

“Ow. Police brutality.”

Micah follows along behind them, and ten minutes later, we’re pulling up outside a little shopfront with a neon sign buzzing in the window.

A tattoo studio.

TWENTY-FOUR

MILO

Istart laughing before I’m even out of the car.

“Oh, no,” Holden says, delighted, moving to stand next to where Eli is looking through the window. “You sure about this?”