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Her jab cut me a little deeper than I liked. Well, if she wanted to play hardball, I could match her hit for hit. “At least I have a job. You’ve been scrounging off Daddy and then the boyfriend for years. Is that why you came out here—looking for someone new to leach off of?”
“How do you know I didn’t already have someone lined up?”
Was she serious about that? I eyed her face and found the same analytical expression I knew that I’d find on my own.
As I opened my mouth with a retort, the car skidded to a halt so sudden it jolted all of us forward. My chest slammed into the seatbelt—
—the image of a shadowy highway flashed behind my eyes, the screech of tires and a shrill scream echoing in my ears—
—and I blinked, my hand clammy where I’d snatched at the seat in front of me, my pulse thudding at double speed. I stared through the windshield, absorbing the view of the guy who’d swerved into our lane, the daylight streaming over his truck and the street around us.
“…the drivers who don’t know how to fucking drive,” Julius was grumbling, pressing the horn.
I pushed myself back into my seat, willing myself to breathe steadily, to even out the thump of my heart.
It was nothing. Some jackass was in too much of a hurry to notice he’d almost caused a pile-up. No one had died. No one was going to die.
This time.
My involuntary panic reaction couldn’t have lasted more than five seconds. I sealed the holes that had cracked in my walls, setting everything back to normal. But when I looked at Dess, she was watching me, and something had softened in her expression.
She’d seen it. She’d caught a glimpse of me that I’d never have wanted anyone to see, not even the men I’d worked alongside through life-and-death jobs for five years now. And in her reaction to seeing it, she was revealing something gentle behind the hardened, jaded front she put on too.
I wanted to destroy that softness. It wasn’t what I needed from her. I needed to prove that she was a monster who didn’t deserve our trust, not an empathetic girl who’d earned it.
“What?” I spat at her with more venom in my tone than I’d intended. Good. Let her hear the venom. Let her hate me. It would make my job a hell of a lot easier.
“You were in a car accident before, weren’t you?” she said, not judging or prodding, just stating it as a fact. As if it was so obvious anyone could have seen it.
Anger flooded me. I’d worked for years so that nothing like this would happen, so that no one would ever dig down into the parts of my life I kept locked away even from myself, and I’d slipped up in front of the worst possible person.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Maybe you should be worrying about your own troubles, not imaginary ones. You’re in a car with four men who you hardly know, and we could do whatever the fuck we want with you. So keep your nose in your own damn business if you don’t want to end up like all of your friends.”
A flash of surprise crossed her expression, but there was no fear there. If she felt any, she hid it well enough that I couldn’t detect even a hint of it. How the fuck could she be so good at seeing through masks and holding up her own?
And why the fuck did I find that talent so intriguing even as it infuriated me?
