Chapter Eight
“Joon, are you awake?”
My head is nestled somewhere soft and warm.
Safe. All at once, I’m overwhelmed by a familiar yet foreign sensation.
I’m transported back to winter mornings growing up in Mystic.
Tey shoveling snow outside my window. Fresh barbari bread baking in the oven.
Coming inside after a cold day and heating up by the fire.
Sighing, I lean deeper into my pillow, mussing up my hair.
Then the bedding below me shifts. Moves out from underneath me.
And that’s when I realize that the cotton is no bedsheet.
It’s a living, breathing organism.
A man.
Odd. Normally, my dreams about Ryke are less snug and secure and more pulse-racing, body-jerking fantasies. Regardless, I nuzzle into his chest, desperate for the three more minutes before my alarm goes off and I have to get up and start writing.
Wait a damn minute.
I recognize that voice.
That isn’t Ryke’s voice at all.
And this isn’t Ryke’s cold, wet, chiseled body.
No, these arms belong to someone way more dangerous than the prince of the mer.
My eyes fly open.
The light around us has dimmed, the sun starting to sink beneath the bony silhouettes of the evergreens. The trees now look like ghostly shadows haunting the abandoned field. Daylight Saving Time came and went mere weeks ago, so I’d put the time at around 2 p.m. But that must mean—
Holy shit.
Did I fall asleep for fucking hours?
Worse, did I fall asleep on Nico’s shoulder for hours?!
“Oh my God,” I say, backing away as if every point of contact between us is singeing my skin. “Get off, get off, get off!”
“Me?!” He rubs his hands on his jeans like they’re stained with ink. “You’re the one who passed out practically the second we started—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” I warn, unable to bear hearing the word cuddling fall from those swollen, sleepy lips.
How could I have allowed this to happen?
I guess the late nights updating my current work in progress (combined with all the research I’ve been doing on Ryan Mare, plus the hours of conversations I’ve been playing out in my head and then transferring to my Notes app) are finally catching up with me.
What with our early-morning departure time and the fact that I had only one coffee, I must have crashed.
Hard.
Ironically, that was the best sleep I’ve had in weeks, if not months.
But Nico certainly does not need to know that.
“Holy Furnace,” I whine. “What is wrong with me? I definitely have a concussion or something. How dare you take advantage of a poor defenseless girl with a concussion?”
Nico shakes his head like he’s trying to dislodge water from his ear.
“One of these days, Joon, we’re going to have to get to the bottom of why you hate me so much.”
I snort. “As if you don’t know.”
His face deflates, a sorry sack of skin. Hurt lines mark the corners of his eyes.
“No, Joonie. I don’t.”
My brows knit together in confusion. How is that remotely possible?
Sure, he’d been drinking when it happened.
And yeah, he apologized at the time—sort of.
And it’s not like any of it was ever real.
But that night is etched so deeply into my psyche that I replay it every time someone laughs at me, every time I read a hateful comment or receive a dirty look.
Nico’s red eyes and slurred words that night played a significant part in my villain origin story.
It never occurred to me that for Nico, I’m just a side character.
That the moment I lost trust in him, in our friendship, was barely even a plot point for him.
I look up at him now, understanding dawning on my face.
He has no idea why I treat him this way, does he?
I understand why I hate him.
But if he doesn’t resent me for the same reason, then why does he hate me?
Does he even hate me? Or is the way he treats me just a reflex?
I rub my temples, trying to soothe my oncoming migraine.
Then a faint rumbling noise sounds from behind the truck.
“Wait, do you hear that?” Nico asks.
I nod, drawing shallow circles at my hairline with my fingertips.
“This is the first time I’ve heard another car in four hours,” Nico mutters. “It must be the tow truck. Thank sweet Jesus.”
“I thought you only worshipped science.”
But really, I’m secretly relieved to be given an out.
“Life, death, and taxes,” he agrees. “But we were kind of headed toward the death part.”
He rolls down the window just in time to lock eyes with the driver of a red sports car passing along the back road we’re on.
A man sits behind the wheel, wearing a maroon velour tracksuit, complete with gold hardware and a nondescript logo stitched to the breast. Pieces of some sort of melting wax are falling from his hair.
His face is friendly, his exaggerated smile a red crescent against his pale skin.
Stranger danger?
My stomach churns.
Next to him, a younger woman with gloriously bright blue hair, dressed head to toe in black, smokes a vape.
From the radio, death metal swells like an ambulance siren.
Nico’s relief falters. Definitely not a tow truck, then.
“Howdy, y’all,” the man behind the wheels calls out. “You folks in a lick of trouble?”
Nico regards the man apprehensively, taking in his off-duty track coach getup.
I lean over his body and jump into the conversation. “Hi! So nice to meet you. Thank you for stopping! We were rear-ended—a hit and run. Emphasis on the run. We’ve been waiting for a tow for, like, five hours.”
My pulse quickens as I remember what that means for my mission.
Even if help arrives in the next five minutes, it’ll take another ninety minutes for us to get to the shop.
That means I’m not making it to New York until at least sunrise—if I end up going at all.
I can only afford to take a few days off from work.
After all, that campaign slogan for Clever Fox’s Fungal Cream is not going to write itself.
This was so not part of the plan.
“Is that so?” the man coos, clocking our damaged truck.
His eyes rake over my colorful printed seventies retro set before snagging on the vintage watch hanging off of Nico’s left wrist. It’s a white gold antique that belonged to his great-grandfather. Nico seems to notice and casually places his hand behind his back, pretending to stretch.
“You see, we were just on our way to the county fair up by Hartford. We’re traveling salesmen, Clarisse and me.
We do local carnivals, the Renaissance Faire circuit, sometimes farmer’s markets, if you can believe it.
Selling trinkets and knickknacks. Specializing in rare objects.
Y’all would be surprised by what people find valuable these days.
Like to travel up and down the coast, setting up at as many fairgrounds on that circuit as we can find. ”
I wrinkle my nose. Why is this man speaking like some kind of old-school game show announcer?
He extends his left hand out his window and toward Nico’s. “Thomas Milford, at your service.”
Nico stares at the hand but doesn’t move the arm he’s hiding in order to shake it.
Thomas chuckles to himself. “Smart man right here.” He turns his attention to me. “And what might your name be, darling?”
I smile apprehensively. My parents warned me against making nice with random white men by the side of the road, especially when they look like they’re in costume. And I’ve watched an absurd amount of CSI. Despite what Nico thinks, I’m not na?ve.
But for circus freaks, these two seem relatively harmless.
Eccentric, but harmless.
“Joonie.” I take his hand and give it a firm, no-nonsense shake. “And this is Nico.”
Nico glowers at him.
“You two make a handsome couple,” Clarisse coos, her voice lined with a smoker’s rasp.
“We’re not a couple,” Nico says quickly.
I nod. “We barely tolerate each other.”
Clarisse lets out a full belly laugh. “Well, hon, I hate to break it to ya, but you’ve got what looks like your enemy’s drool all over your forehead.”
Gasping, I take out my phone and check the front camera. Sure enough, there’s a sticky, wet patch of slobber all over my brow and left cheek. I wipe at it manically with my sleeve, as if it’s a virus.
Great.
As if this day could get any worse.
“Where are you two heading?” Thomas asks.
“Nowhere,” Nico says.
“New York City,” I say at the same time.
Nico gives me another one of his looks. This one says, I don’t like this one bit. Stop talking right now before I make you.
I shoot back one of my own: Don’t tell me what to do, jackass.
Thomas scratches his chin, then interrupts our silent conversation.
“Tell you what: Why don’t we give you a lift?
Get you two a little closer to your destination?
It’s getting dark, and all kinds of dangerous things can happen to a pretty girl like you under the cover of nightfall.
Monsters lurking in the dark and all that. ”
His words are delivered in a sugar-sweet fashion but leave a bitter aftertaste.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Nico says firmly. “We’re waiting for a tow. Should be here any second.”
Thomas lets out a dark chuckle. “Fella, the odds of a tow getting here before sunrise feel as low as the Jets winning the Super Bowl. And I wasn’t talking to you and only you. Why don’t we let the lady decide for herself, huh?”
I smiled warmly, liking that I am being given a choice.
“Thanks, Thomas,” I say, hopping out of the truck and grabbing my overnight bag. “A ride would be wonderful. Nico, you don’t mind waiting with the truck, do you?”
Nico’s answering glare is sharp and cutting. I can feel it all the way down to my toes.
I gulp, preparing for a verbal lashing.
Instead, his next words come out lethally soft, a killer’s caress.
“Joonie, if you think I’m about to let you hitchhike to New York alone with a couple of strangers who picked you up off the side of the road, then you don’t know me at all.”
He surprises me by grabbing his own backpack and following me to the car.