Chapter 17
The highway stretched out like a strip of gray nothingness, the kind of endless road that made your eyes heavy and your mind wander to places you didn’t want it to go. The hum of the tires on the asphalt was steady, hypnotic, and almost enough to drown out Carrington’s presence beside me.
Almost.
But, just like this entire week, the asshole was truly impossible to tune out.
I kept my eyes fixed on the road ahead, watching fields blur past in the fading light, trying to ignore the itch under my skin.
Tomorrow I will be face-to-face with my father.
The man who sat behind steel bars and concrete walls in Kentucky. The man who managed to haunt me even though I hadn’t seen him in years.
“You’ve been sulking for two states,” Carrington said, voice smooth and smug.
His hand rested lazily on his lap, fingers tapping in rhythm to the beat of the music as he kept fucking flipping through the radio stations.
One minute we would be listening to classical, with him doing some ridiculous impression of a violinist, and the next he would put on screamo and headbang long enough to give me a headache.
Is this how parents of fucking kids felt on road trips? Geez-us, a family vacation probably needed a vacation from the vacation if the kids were anything like Carrington.
“You planning on talking, or continuing on with sulking. Do I just keep enjoying your silent brooding?”
I shot him a glare. “I’m not sulking.”
“You are.” His lips curled into that infuriating smirk. “You get this little crease right here—” He reached over with one long finger and tapped between my brows. “That’s your pissy bitch fit line. Did you pick that up from porking my sister for so long?”
I swatted his hand away. “Stop distracting the driver, Care Bear.”
“Don’t worry, Sunshine, I could drive with my eyes closed.”
I laughed without humor, the sound squeakier than I intended.
“Fat fucking chance you’re driving my car. You are a muscular version of a damn female when it comes to driving, and your skills will kill us both.”
“Aw, shucks. Do you like my muscles, Baby Boy?”
I tried to ignore his eyebrows wiggling at me like some creepy old Uncle Ted.
“Maybe we were always meant to die anyway,” he said lightly, though his eyes never left the road.
“The darkness in us has a clock. Everybody with it snaps at some point. Goin’ out with you in the rain?
Meh, there’s worse ways to take a dirt nap.
We can just give in now. In the end, the storm will consume us both, Sunshine. ”
I shifted in my seat, pulling my jacket tighter. I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t. The minute Carrington brought an anvil into my life, it became a storm I couldn’t escape.
But…to let it consume me? No. He’s wrong. I had to fight my darkness, even if he chose not to fight his. It’s all I know.
Hours in the car with his bad karaoke, sporadic dancing, jarring, and fucking child car games felt like torture.
He didn’t need to touch me to get under my skin.
He had this way of filling the space with his insufferable heat, with that agitating pressure…with himself. Even the occasional brush of his knuckles against my knee when I shifted gears felt deliberate, calculated, like he wanted to remind me he could touch me whenever he damn well pleased.
“I don’t know why you came,” I muttered.
“Because I wanted to.” His laugh was low, almost cruel. “Because you’re a fucking mess, and I don’t trust you to face your Daddy Dearest alone. You may just let go of the light you try so hard to keep. And that won’t be for him. I will be the reason you stop hiding. Not him.”
I clenched my jaw. “I don’t need you.”
He flicked ash out the window from the cigarette he’d lit without asking.
The smoke filled the car, clinging to my throat, that fucking Turkish smell making me lose all sense.
Although with his never-ending chimney smoking, I was getting oddly used to it.
Guess I was getting the quick and dirty version of exposure therapy.
It no longer reminded me of my father. Now, it was attached to Carrington’s stupid grin.
“That’s the funny thing, Shiloh. You keep saying that, but you’ve been proven wrong time and time again. Do I need to make you scream the truth again, Baby Boy?”
I went quiet.
We pulled off the highway, the sun had already dipped, painting the sky a bruised purple.
Carrington was sleeping when I slowed at the glowing vacancy sign of some roadside hotel, complete with peeling paint, a buzzing neon sign, and the kind of place that smelled like stale cigarettes and fucking hookers.
I wonder how the rich little boy will like my lived-in style choice.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, do you want a disease?” he muttered, jostling from the window and looking around as I parked.
I killed the engine and turned to look at him with my own wicked glint. “What, too classy for you? I thought you liked punishment, Care Bear. This is classic grit and spunk.”
“Yeah…” he said, stepping out with me. “If grit is used, condom wrappers from slags, maybe. I’m pretty sure my asswipe sperm donor rents these shit holes out for months for his lays.”
I chuckled. “Well, maybe we’ll meet your step-mommy.”
“Please don’t make me kill you.”
“Oh, c’mon. We could even run into a mini Carrington. Maybe a half-sibling you don’t know about.”
He looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read. “Would you fuck them too? You’ve got a thing for my siblings, Baby Boy.”
My mood soured, and I sighed. “Your sister is my fucking girlfriend of a year, ya know.”
He ignored me, walking forward, practically skipping to the damn lobby.
Inside, the clerk didn’t even look up from his magazine when I slapped cash on the counter and asked for rooms.
“Two rooms, please.”
The clerk man grunted. “Nope, sorry. We got one. You and your butt buddy can have that one. I ain’t got two.”
My stomach tightened, and I felt my blood drain from my face. “Are you fucking kidding me? How? Too many drug addicts and hookers tonight?”
One room? With Carrington?
The slob behind the counter shrugged, finally looking away from the swimsuit magazine to size me up, along with Carrington, who was poking some stain on the wall with a fake plant leaf.
“Don’t know. Don’t care,” the clerk said. “You want it or not, pretty boy?”
I opened my mouth to argue, but before I even knew what was happening, Carrington was in front of me, gripping the man’s hand so hard I could hear bone cracking in his grip.
“Look, I know he’s pretty. But don’t you fucking dare say another word except ‘Yes, Sir’ and hand this pretty boy our key, got it?”
The clerk grimaced, panting in rage and pain. I couldn’t move. I watched a dark cloud take over Carrington. The clerk turned his body awkwardly, still held in Carrington’s strong, bruising grip, and grabbed the dangling green key from a wooden pinboard.
“That’s a good boy,” Carrington said mockingly, gesturing for me to reach out my hand to the worker. “Now give the man his key and go back to the real magazine you’re hiding behind the Sports Illustrated. Your butt buddies await you.”
Ah. That made sense.
The only thing out of this weird fucking interaction that did. I reached out my hand, letting the moron drop the key in my grip, and shrank away from Carrington when he let go of his wrist.
“Great job. You are an excellent consumer slave.”
Carrington patted him on the head like a dog, and the man yipped, backing away from us. Carrington’s eyes were…black. The dark, dangerous, all-consuming cloud of rage had swallowed the gold.
“Hey,” I said carefully, reaching forward to touch his shoulder, trying to give him something to bring him back to the world and out of his trance.
I knew how this felt.
It was how I felt in the woods when I almost killed that woman. Carrington was doing all he could to avoid killing the motel manager.
“It’s okay, Care Bear. Let’s go to our room. It’s been a long night. We need to get some sleep.”
Carrington stared at my hand on his arm, his eyes swirling with the tiniest amount of gold. Little by little, I pulled him outside of the office, and he started to soften for me.
“It’s okay. Let’s get to the room, okay? I’m here,” I said again, trying to ground him. “Don’t leave me, Carrington. Don’t go there.”
Don’t leave me?
I realized I actually didn’t want him to leave me, and that scared me more than being hunted by him.
“Yeah,” he responded a bit absently, his eyes blinking slowly. “Sunshine. Here. For you. Sunshine.”
I didn’t know why I did it. Maybe it was because I hated the fucking rage that I knew physically hurt, maybe it was because I wanted him to come back to me, or maybe it was because I needed it, too.
I leaned forward, gripping the back of his head, linking my fingers in his soft, tousled black waves.
“Come back, Care Bear. Come back.”
Before I could make sense of it, I pulled him to my lips, pressing my weight into him, forcing him to respond. At first, he was stiff, robotic, and barely interactive.
But as I kissed him deeper, and used my tongue to open his mouth to me, explored his spicy taste, molded my body to his, and let him feel me submit, I could feel the moment he started to come back.
I could feel the darkness leave him, see the gold return to his eyes.
His hands wrapped around me, one going to my throat, his grip throwing me back against the wall by the stairs, the other held under my chin, angling my head up to kiss me deeper.
Moans echoed off the wall of the alley-like hallway outside, and I realized it was from me. I was fucking melting. My body was falling into a rhythm that just felt natural with my stupid ass sadist.
“I’m here, Baby Boy. I’m here.”
I felt his words in my mouth, and hearing that he was here with me, that I brought him back from his darkness, made me feel hope for the first time in so long.