His eyes moved from his fists to me—more accurately, my exposed chest. “Get your shirt on and get in the car,” he ordered, voice so rough it was barely recognizable.
I blinked. “Luke—”
“Now!” he yelled.
I jumped, as if I wasn’t used to people shouting at me, as if they didn’t do it on an almost daily basis. They did. Luke? Never.
I snatched my shirt, yanking it over my head, most likely ruining whatever was left of my hair and makeup. Andy had already started the car and was regarding me with panic, as if he was considering driving away even though the door was open and half of me was still in the car.
“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.
But Gage’s visit, his words had shaken some of the cupboards of my minds so hard that the skeletons came out.
Not the bodies, of course. All of those were out in the open, except one. Crime and murder wasn’t something I had to keep a secret from my family, even now when things were as close to the straight and narrow as they’d ever be—that being a definite curve away from anything resembling normal society.
My skeletons were different. The ones I even hid from myself. That shameful yearning for the white picket fence, the dog—heck, maybe even the kids. The whole package. The fairy tale. With the man who represented all of that, the safety and order.
Luke.
But his version of safety and order was destroying the thing he considered a threat to that.
The Sons of Templar.
One hell of a Catch-22.
One of the many, many reasons that I shouldn’t think of that. Couldn’t. But didn’t a girl always want what she couldn’t have?
I downed my tequila, warm and cheap, but you couldn’t find anything else around here. It did the job. Kind of.
I twirled a piece of metal in my hand. An extremely dangerous one. Not a knife, or a gun. Worse than that.
A cell phone.
I’d purchased it in one of those shitty electronic shops that smelled of cigarette smoke and were packed to the gills with rudimentary rip-offs of all of the big names. It worked well enough. I was fingering the one thing I didn’t discard along with my phone. My SIM card.
Inserting it into the phone would mean that my old life would come tumbling back in, would mean that Cade, or even Luke, could find me. If he was actually looking for me, which was doubtful, if our last meeting was anything to go by.
Because of—or in spite of—tequila, my mind went there. To the last place it should have.
The past. With Luke. With my family. With everyone.