“Let’s go,” I barely manage, still shaken. When he fails to move, I tighten my hold and tug. “Don’t be stupid.” That gets his attention as he spears me with sterling eyes. I don’t look away. Not this time. Why I choose now to hold that intense stare I can’t quite say, but I’m glad for it. I’m glad for the momentary backbone. “I think you’ve out road raged him. I also think it’d be really stupid if you ended up in jail because of it. All this would be pretty much pointless.” I’m not sure how effective my words are until he walks away a very small eternity later. I rush behind him, hop back inside the passenger seat, and close the door just before he takes off. I don’t stop looking at my side mirror till long after we leave the scene.
***
“You can take the next left and drop me off at the corner of Birch Drive, my house is right around the corner. I’ll walk from there,” I say, into the silence, when he turns on the street that parallels mine. We didn’t speak about what happened earlier at all throughout the ride. The last fifteen minutes have been spent in repressive silence charged with tension thick enough to cut with a knife. This time there isn’t any music to fill the silence. I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not to ask him exactly what happened back there. The sort of rage he displayed had to stem from something. And I want to know. I want to ask. But I won’t because I’ve been unable to work up the courage to do so for namely two reasons: 1) I know I have no right to pry since I was so reluctant to talk about my own issues earlier. And: 2) Fear of his derision as he’ll most likely charmingly tell me to “fuck off” keeps me reasonably quiet.
“You live on Birch?”
I shake my head. “Denton. Just the street over.”
“What number?”
“At 76 Denton Avenue.”
He says nothing more after that as he turns right on Denton. Soon we’re idling in front of the white and blue single-family house with the two-car garage and the pretty perennials lining the cement walkway leading up the four-step porch with the light on. My heart jumps to my throat at the sight of the Durango in the driveway.
“You hold your blades a little too tightly and I always want to smash someone’s face in.” When I look at him, the reason for my fear temporarily vanishes like vapor and he becomes my only concern, the only thing my mind wants to orbit around. His glance is lazy, slightly narrowed, and yet the intensity in it remains unparalleled. In this truck, this space, up so close, his striking features are made even more so by the shadow and light caressing his face as softly and as sweetly as I want to do. “Guess we have to satisfy our demons somehow,” he quips. There’s a self-deprecating resonance to his tenor that pulls one side of his mouth into a humorless grin. “Looks like your old man is waiting.” I follow the path of his gaze over my shoulder to find Tim leaning against the porch railing with his large arms folded across his barrel chest. With the brightness of the porch light beaming behind him, his facial features remain obscured. But I don’t need to see his face to know the expression he’s sporting. Anger is his default emotion. He’s looking in our direction, and I’m praying he doesn’t see much.
The sudden urge to remain in the truck and beg Maddox to keep driving is so strong that I have to chomp down on my bottom lip to keep the words from tumbling out. “Thank you,” I reply, tugging on the string on my shirt sleeve from earlier and mindlessly twirling it around the tip of my index finger once I pull it free of my shirt. “Thanks for the ride.” By the time the string is gone, I’ve wrapped it several times around the tip of my finger, effectively cutting off the blood from circulating to the area.
“So, not just blades then.”
I blink before pulling my hand out of sight. “Will you pose for me?” I ask, ignoring his remark.
He shrugs. “Haven’t decided yet. Like I said, I don’t have time to waste. You gotta make it worth my while.” I’m a target locked at the end of his loaded stare.
My tongue darts out to lick my lips nervously. “How?” I’m not altogether sane, but I’m not stupid. I know what he’s implying. I know where he’s steering this conversation. Even now, his unspoken words charge the air in the truck. It’s heavy and stifling. Every breath I take is saturated with his unrepentant sex appeal. A flush bursts in my cheeks when he reaches out a hand to cup my jaw and languidly grazes his thumb across my damp bottom lip. His gentle caress forces me to acknowledge the part of my flesh I refused to pay attention to before. It’s awareness that’s too strange, too foreign, and yet remarkably familiar. He makes it familiar. I’m a girl and he’s a boy and the suggestion of his touch makes me cognizant of that. It’s electrifying. I want more of it. My breasts feel so full that every time I breathe my tight, pebbled nipples chafe with the sweetest torture against my bra. My pulse is racing, fluttering to the same maddening cadence of my beating heart.
“You’re a smart girl, Aylee. I’m sure you can come up with something.” The dropped octave of his voice coaxes a slickness that runs hot and wet in the valley between my legs. The way it dampens my panties is both embarrassing and oddly alluring.
His sensual mouth forms a grin like he knows. Like he understands exactly how his touch is a sweet devastation. “You should go now.” I mourn the retreat of his hand. “Wouldn’t want to get you in trouble.”
“I…” Don’t let me leave. “Thank you, again.” I remember to grab both my canvas bag and my backpack before I jump out of his truck and close the door behind me. I’m about halfway between the house and the truck before I give into temptation and look over my shoulder. Maddox is looking back, gaze focused on me. I falter in my next step like my body is trying to turn in the opposite direction. Toward the white pickup. Toward Maddox. Toward something unknown and yet so beguiling. But I don’t. I do nothing. The chance to do or say anything has passed. My cowardice is in control now, and it won’t contemplate any sort of defiance. Meek, weak, and regulated, I walk toward the house, toward Tim, toward a misery that I know, one I’ve been conditioned to never stray away from. My subconscious crawls further inside that dark place in my head, while reinforcing walls I’ve built so long ago, preparing for the worse.
The worse is a strong hand at the nape of my neck when I get close enough for Tim to grab me. It’s a viselike grip he uses to guide me the rest of the way to the house. I pray Maddox has driven away by now. I pray he doesn’t stay to see this.
Chapter 11
Maddox
It’s not your motherfucking problem.
She’s not your motherfucking problem.
Mind your own motherfucking business and keep driving, asshole.
This is the annoying-ass banter taking place inside my head while I’m white-knuckle gripping the steering wheel. I’m rolling down the street of this Pleasantville nightmare, my usual lead foot barely skimming the gas. In my neighborhood, if you’re driving this slow, you’re either going to shoot up the place or you’re looking for drive-thru ass. It sure as fuck wouldn’t be because you’re seldom-working conscious decides to take this particular time to fire on all cylinders.
“Fuck!” A hard punch to the steering wheel does nothing to take away my irritation. Telling myself I want nothing to do with this chick seems like a moot fucking point as I make a U-ey at the stop sign and double back to her house.
Aylee Bennett has ‘clingy virgin’ written all over her, and after Grace, I’m not in the market for another sycophant. It would be smart of me to continue down the road, hop on the interstate, and drive my ass back to the slums. Light a blunt, maybe hit up Bria, and forget all about the scared little mouse and the fear I saw in her doe, mismatched eyes. That sort of fear is ingrained. It’s the sort of fear that comes with some pretty heavy shit, and from what I saw of her arms, she was trying to kill monsters on the inside by cutting herself on the outside. Somebody put those monsters there. And I would bet my left nut that it was her old man. The way he’d grabbed her just now set off old warning signals I’ve recognized since I was a child.