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The kiss reverberates down my spine and I grip his arms hard, digging my fingers into his muscles and moaning into his mouth. I don’t know why this makes my brain melt, why it makes my entire body want to bend and break for this man, but I can’t help myself.
I throw myself into the kiss with every inch of me, and I groan as he tightens his fingers in my hair and pulls hard enough to make it hurt.
I gasp as I pull back and we’re both breathing hard, steaming up the windows as a truck blares its horn and speeds past on the road. The Rover rocks on its frame from the wind of the close call, but neither of us moves.
“You want to make this more complicated, don’t you?” He bites my lower lip and the pain’s its own kind of pleasure. “I’m ready to go there with you, Cora. I’m ready to take it as far as you want.”
“No,” I whisper and try to shake my head but he’s got me tight. “We can’t. Even if we want to.”
“You think can’t has ever mattered to me before?”
“And that’s all the more reason why.”
He looks into my eyes and if he’s searching for something, he doesn’t find it. His fingers slip back out of my hair and I release a soft whimper like I want him to grab me again, but he turns to the steering wheel, breathing hard, trying to get himself under control. I straighten my body, smooth my pants, fix my hair, and check myself in the mirror. Thick black eye makeup and a scowl that hates the world, just like Ben said, but it’s not hiding a damn thing.
I’m not sure I have anything in me left to hide.
Nolan starts the car and drives. We don’t talk about the kiss or anything else. It’s too complicated and I don’t think we could handle it, not yet. There’s too much at stake and too much danger ahead, and all I want to do is get back home, sit down on our little couch, and watch TV with Kady for a while.
“Do you smell that?” Nolan frowns slightly and flicks a switch on the air conditioning. “Smells like smoke.” He squints at the sky, searching for something.
We’re around the corner about a half -mile from my trailer and my heart starts to do a wild flutter. “Is something burning?”
“I’m not sure. I can’t—” He squints over the trees as he turns into the trailer park. “What the fuck?”
“Smoke,” I say and my entire body goes cold. It’s spilling into the sky, thick and dark gray turning to black. “That’s smoke.”
He drives faster, tearing through the narrow streets until he reaches my trailer. He slams on the brakes and we sit there staring.
The trailer’s on fire, the flames licking up the sides and pluming black into the sky.
Chapter 10
Cora
My mind goes blank.
It’s like one second, I’m in control of myself and acting like rational human, and the next something animalistic comes out and takes over. I shove the door open before the Rover comes to a complete stop, and I run out screaming for Kady as I stagger toward the burning trailer.
My home. Everything I own, everything I love, it’s all inside there. My sister, my world. We don’t have much but everything we worked for, everything we earned through hours of hard work and backbreaking labor. Everything is in there, my mother’s memories, my sister, everything, and it’s burning so hot I feel the ash on my face.
“Kady!” I scream. “KADY!”
Rough hands grab me and pull me back. “Cora, stop it, you can’t.”
“Let me go.” I flail and fight and struggle. I have to get inside the trailer and find my sister. I have to save something—anything—some scrap of the life we used to have. The fire’s so hot I feel like it’s melting my eyelashes and turning my face to candle wax but Nolan keeps dragging me back and back, away from the raging inferno as sirens blare in the distance.
“We have to get out of here.”
“What are you talking about? Kady! KADY!”
“Stop it,” he says roughly and yanks me hard, shaking me, staring into my face. “She’s not in there.”
“How do you know?”
“Look, the tuck’s gone and my guys aren’t here. They’re supposed to be tailing her and they wouldn’t leave her alone, not for anything. She’s not here, Cora.”
“You have a traitor in your family!” I’m screaming in his face, out of my mind with worry and grief. “You don’t know what you’re fucking doing!”
“Stop it,” he growls and shoves me back into the Rover. I struggle like a rabid animal and hit him more than once, but he manages to overpower me and get me inside, shut the door, and lock it. “Get yourself under control, god damn it, Cora.” He pulls out, driving fast as the sirens get closer and closer. A neighbor must’ve called the fire department, probably to make sure their own trailer doesn’t go up in flames.
