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ZEKE
“Turn on some music.”
My response is to stare straight ahead through the windshield. The way I’ve been for the past hour. I don’t even glance up at the rearview mirror, where I know I’d find Mia glaring daggers straight through me.
“Hello? Did you go deaf? Music. It’s too quiet in here.”
Again, she gets nothing from me. My hands tighten around the wheel, and I can’t help but imagine them tightening around her slender neck. It’s bad enough I spend most of my waking moments reminding myself how dangerous it would be to give in to my craving for her. Why does she have to make it so much more difficult?
Then again, maybe I should thank her. Hating her is so much easier than wanting her.
Though the level of intensity is about the same.
She mutters something under her breath. “Zeke. I know you can hear me. I’m only asking you to put some music on… please.” She whispers the last part.
“Huh? Sorry, I guess I couldn’t hear you. It’s this funny problem I have. My ears don’t pick up when people are being rude little assholes.”
“I didn’t know it made me an asshole to want music in the car while we’re on our way to school.”
“You know damn well what I mean.” I finally take the chance of looking in the mirror, and I end up wishing I hadn’t. She’s wearing a skirt just barely long enough that her father didn’t tell her to get changed the second he saw her in it.
But it was short enough for him to pull me aside. “Make sure she doesn’t wear shit like that around school.” Right. Now I’m supposed to dress her in the morning. Why not put me on diaper duty while I’m at it?
Ordinarily, back at the compound, it would have been bad enough trying to function with her looking the way she does.
Now it’s so much worse because there’s nobody nearby. Nobody looking over my shoulder, nobody to report back to the boss that I spent a little too much time eyeing up his delicious little daughter. Her long legs, so smooth and tempting. I bet she feels like silk, though I wouldn’t dare put a finger on her. I haven’t even touched her arm or her hand since that night. I don’t trust myself.
She crosses one leg over the other, and my mouth goes dry. “Excuse me, Zeke? Would it be too much trouble to turn on the radio? I think the ride would be much more enjoyable with a little music.” Her sickeningly sweet voice carries a bitter edge that’s almost enough to make me laugh. She’s got an attitude on her, but then so do I.
“I think I can arrange that.” I touch a button on the wheel, and the radio flips on. “See? You treat somebody with respect, and you get respect.”
“Who are you? Mr. Rogers?” She gives me an epic eye roll before returning her attention to her phone, scrolling mindlessly through whatever social media platform she’s on at the moment. I only chuckle, focusing back on the road.
I’ve seen pictures of the condo we’re moving into, and I can’t pretend it’s not impressive. An entire family could live there comfortably—the bedrooms are enormous. I would have killed to have a room that big when I was a little kid, crammed into what was little bigger than a closet with three cousins my grandparents were caring for along with me. Two sets of bunk beds were almost too much for the room to hold. I used to have to turn sideways to get between them.
On the surface, I’ve come a long way. And my job, while infuriating and harder than just about anything I’ve ever had to do, is a hell of a lot easier than digging ditches and walking for miles in both directions to get to a factory, both of which my grandfather did when he was my age. It’s something my dad always liked to remind me of whenever I would complain the way kids sometimes do. But that was before he started working for the boss—before our lives changed. Before I got pulled out of my grandparents’ house and into the Morelli family, too.
I don’t dig ditches, but I’ve dug more than a few holes, which I later filled with what was left of the people I was assigned to eliminate. I can’t help but wonder what my granddad would think of that.
“Can you change the station? Something a little less boring?”
I look at her in the mirror. “This is classic shit.”
“Classic?” Her nose wrinkles in disgust. “That’s just another word for ancient. Music from, like, the eighties.”
I know she’s doing this to fuck with me. I know she listens to stuff from so-called ancient times, too. She wants to start a fight, is all. “This is the stuff I was brought up on. It’s good if you give it a chance.”
“I don’t feel like giving it a chance today. Just change the damn station.” I should know better than to try to talk any kind of sense to her. We could be in a burning building, and she would bitch me out if I so much as offered to help get her to safety. All because it was coming from me.
It’s safer this way. I have to remember that. It’s better if she hates me because then she won’t throw herself at me like she did that night. How many times have I jerked off to the memory of her perfect body so close to mine? Right there for the taking. All I had to do was reach out and grab her, and that would’ve been the end of it. There would have been no way for me to stop myself once I got a hold of her. Once I knew what she felt like under my hands.
Instead, I’ve spent my nights obsessing over her. Fantasizing about what might have happened if I wasn’t so strong.
“Do you have all your classes scheduled?”
She glances up from the phone. “Why do you care?”
Is this what I have to look forward to for the next few months? “I care because it affects me. If you don’t have your shit together, your father will find a way to make that my fault.”
