Chapter 18 #2
He glances to Aro and then back to me, lingering and hiding a smile, and I try not to be obvious when I strip off my baker’s jacket.
Laying it across the table, I turn back to him, seeing his attention drawn low to my tank top before he inhales a heavy breath and eyes me as if he knows exactly what I’m doing. “Ready?” he taunts back.
I stare at him. Are my panties still in his bed, I wonder?
“Yeah.” And I look to Aro. “I’m not allowed to ride my bike to Weston.”
She chuckles. “Hi,” she tells Lucas.
He nods back to her.
I need a change of clothes, so he’s taking me home before we head back to the gym. Will we talk at all? Will my brothers be there to make him nervous? What will he do if Farrow is there and offers me a ride home instead? We’re neighbors, after all.
Aro dusts off her hands and tosses the empty cupcake wrappers into the garbage. “Can I join you?” she asks both of us. “I wanted to check in on some friends. Hawke will come grab me after lights out.”
Lucas’s eyes dart to me as if I might have a problem with it, but I pop up off my chair. “Sure.”
We tuck in our chairs, and I double-check the front doors, throwing a glance at the closed mirror before I take my bag and phone. We drift into the alley, and I lock the back door, jogging around the passenger side.
“You can get in front,” I blurt out to Aro.
But she pushes the front seat forward and climbs into the back. “Nah, that’s okay.”
Great. Lucas and I are going to look like a thing, sitting in the front together, and if she doesn’t allude to that with Hawke, she’ll tell Dylan.
I put my seatbelt on as Lucas turns the key and starts the car. I avoid his eyes but glance at his hand fisting the stick shift as he punches it into reverse. My clit throbs once.
I blink long and hard, turning my eyes out the window as he backs us out into the street. In a few seconds, we’re on High Street, making our way to Weston.
I left the diary under the laptop on the worktable in the kitchen. I’m sure it’s fine, but I should’ve grabbed it. I have the utmost faith in Hawke to get into the bakery, even though I changed the locks, and I don’t want him confiscating it yet.
I lift my eyes, watching the trees in my side mirror flying past in the darkness.
“That’s an interesting tattoo,” Lucas says.
I look over, seeing him eye Aro in the rearview mirror.
“Yours is better.” She smirks.
Headlights are reflected in my side mirror, and I watch the car far behind us.
“Born and raised in Weston?” he asks her.
“Yeah.”
“Which part?”
“The shitty part.”
He breathes out a weak laugh, and he’s either impressed with her retorts or finds it funny that she’s inferring there’s a non-shitty part of Weston.
I tilt my mirror to get rid of the glare of the lights growing closer behind us.
“People talk about the glory days,” Aro muses. “Bustling population. Traffic. The stands packed at football games and streets lit up with businesses and crowded with pedestrians. It seems like Atlantis, though.” Her voice softens. “A myth that we’re not sure was ever real.”
We cross the bridge, but Aro continues before I have a chance to retrieve a coin.
“I’ve never seen this town any other way,” she tells us. “A ghost town and a breeding ground for…opportunists.”
Growing up, I don’t remember anything good about Weston. We never drove here for a restaurant or an athletic event.
“Not going to ask me any questions?” she presses him. “Like how old I was when they drew me in? Or how much money I stole for them?”
I notice the lights in my side mirror are no longer there and glance over.
The car is still there.
Several lengths behind us but there.
My chest rises and falls a little faster.
“Or,” Aro goes on, “how much money I could’ve made if I’d started saying yes to him?”
It takes a moment to register what Aro’s talking about. Green Street? The gang she belongs to that Farrow still belongs to? Why is she talking to Lucas about that?
Tearing my eyes away from the car in my mirror, I look over at him. His tanned jaw is flexed, but he just stares at the road in front of him.
“Drew Reeves,” Aro says, the words filling the car. “You’ve heard of him, right?”
I watch Lucas, since I know it’s not me she’s asking. I’ve heard of Reeves. He was a Shelburne Falls cop, but he quit two years ago.
Aro continues, “I wonder if it was his idea to recruit teenagers to steal and deal and hurt people.”
I narrow my eyes. Aro’s never talked to me about what she went through here. Why is she sharing this now?
“It was smart,” she tells us. “Throwing minors to the wolves instead of himself.”
“Did he hurt you?” I ask her.
She stares into Lucas’s rearview mirror. “He wanted to.”
We pull up to Knock Hill, and I take in Lucas’s white knuckles, clenched around the steering wheel, and his rigid shoulders. What’s going on?
Pieces start to slide into place, conclusions coming more into view. His back tattoo. Everyone at my party immediately recognized it. Farrow just leaving me with him when it wasn’t abundantly clear that I was consenting to anything.
Drew Reeves is about Lucas’s age, right? Did they know each other?
We stop in front of my house, Farrow’s place lit up like a stadium with music pouring out of it and two women on the porch.
I open my door. “I’ll be right back.”
I want to stay and keep listening, but I’ll talk to Lucas when she’s gone.
I climb out, leaving it open for Aro as I jog up the stairs to my place.
“Thanks for the ride.” I can only just hear her, her tone kind of guarded. Does she know something about him that I don’t?
I start to unlock my door, but when I look back, she’s still at the car and Lucas is talking to her over the roof.
What is he saying that he couldn’t say in the car?
I sweep the street, the car that was following us nowhere to be seen, but I don’t relax as their lips continue to move.
Why is it easier to talk to someone he barely knows?
I don’t understand what he keeps trying to protect me from, but I’m now positive that it’s not from Farrow Kelly or Noah Van der Berg.
It’s nothing that has to do with me.