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“Get in, Rosie, before he decides to lock us up,” he demanded.
I was about to do as he instructed when the savage version of Luke stopped me.
“Not with him. With me,” he ordered.
I froze for a split second, fear and joy mixing in my stomach even worse than tequila and red wine.
On autopilot, I leaned back and shut the car door. Andy didn’t hesitate in roaring backward the second I did so, blowing up dust with his hasty escape. Good thing I didn’t give him anything I couldn’t get back. Guy was a douche.
“Not a word. In the car,” Luke said, reading my mind as I glanced up at him to ask him what the fuck was going on.
I blinked again. “Front or back?”
He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. With himself or me, I wasn’t quite sure. “Jesus, Rosie, the front.”
I quickly darted to the door he opened. It slammed as soon as my butt was in the seat. I regarded the radio and police paraphernalia like an alien on a foreign planet.
The air thickened as Luke got in and slammed his door shut. The moment of silence between us, the first time we’d been truly alone, was both beautiful and terrifying.
“Seat belt,” he barked.
I glanced at him. “Seriously?”
He clenched the steering wheel in answer.
I did as requested, something extremely rare for me.
He reversed out of what was known as the second-best make-out spot in Amber. I didn’t go to the first because it was closer to town and had a higher chance of getting me caught by whoever Cade had gotten to stalk me tonight.
We didn’t speak for the longest time, the car too full of quiet for one of us to add words to it. Too full of questions and answers and almosts. The radio wasn’t even on: there wasn’t the space for music.
I watched Luke’s profile the entire drive through Amber, the lights illuminating his stiff jaw and granite features every now and then. I didn’t even realize he was taking me right back to the party before we were almost there.
“Why are you taking me back here?” I asked, tearing through the air in the car.
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
Of course he couldn’t exactly drop me off at home, saying, “I just beat the shit out of the guy sucking face with Rosie and stopped her from having her first time in the back of a car with a douchebag like so many other girls.”
If it was anyone else, they literally could’ve dropped me off and said that, verbatim. They would’ve gotten a pat on the back and a beer for their troubles.
Anyone but Luke.
There would be no pat, certainly no beer. Just a lot of fucking questions as to why the man who considers the law to be set in stone would so easily break it for the first daughter of a club he was intent on bringing down.
That’s what I was asking myself. Too afraid to ask him. Too afraid of the answer.
He pulled over a block away from the party. Even through the closed windows, I could hear the thumping base and screams of inebriated girls.
“Breakin’ this up in fifteen. You’ll want to move on before then,” he said, his voice both rough and flat at the same time as he stared straight ahead.
“Why?” I whispered, deciding to conquer my fear.
He wrenched his eyes to me. “Because you’re better than that, Rosie.”
It was meant to be soft, but it hit me like a punch in the chest. I unbuckled my seat belt, glaring. “Thing is, Luke, I’m not,” I spat. “You’re so intent on making me good, even if it’s just in your mind. Especially if it’s just in your mind. Maybe that makes you sleep better at night, I don’t know, but stop trying to make me into something I’m not so it suits you better. It’s fucking bullshit!” I narrowed my eyes at him as well as I could in the dim light. “I’ll tell you a secret. My brother and all those men with rap sheets as long as my Sephora receipt… all those criminals. Those outlaws?” I paused, letting the venom in my voice penetrate. “They’ve got nothing on me.”
I spat the last part out, jamming all my bitterness and sadness into it, before jumping out of the car and slamming the door shut. I didn’t look back as I stomped back to the party, where I would drink five more tequila shots and wouldn’t be gone by the time the cops showed up.
Luke was not among them.
I hated that I let myself wait long enough to look for him.
To hope.
Hope was deadly.
Rosie
Present Day
Four months passed after Gage left and things went back to whatever version of normal I’d constructed. Not that I’d ever, since birth, experienced something close to normal. I had convinced myself that it was good, great. The only thing worse than death was normalcy. Nine-to-five, white picket fence, two-point-five kids and a golden retriever.
