Chapter 15 Wren #3
He comes back just seconds later, holding a set of keys. “Here,” he says, tossing them at me. “Hold onto them.”
I look down at the silver in my palm. Not entirely convinced it isn’t a trick, I click the fob and the rear lights flash twice.
“Happy?”
“No.” I zip the keys into my coat pocket anyway.
“Good. If you’re being kidnapped, you’re not meant to be happy.” He raps the trunk lid with his fist. “Now, hurry up. I’ve got puppies to slaughter.”
Sighing, I take a step toward him, and despite every fiber of my being screaming in protest, I clamber inside.
“Lay down.”
I’d rather cut my own bangs than lie down in this trunk, but alas, I’ve already walked through the gates of hell, I might as well make myself comfy.
Shifting sideways, I bend my knees and lower onto the bed, then drop my head with a self-soothing puff. I feel sick, and the musty carpet smell entwined with the faint kick of fuel isn’t helping.
The car groans under Gabriel’s weight as he drops to his haunches and sits on the rear bumper.
“Good girl.”
What?
I thrive off being called good, but the words are unexpected coming from Gabriel Visconti; my body’s reaction even more so. My breath shallows, and the lightest lick of heat sizzles in my core. I’ve always been a people-pleaser, though his praise feels more pleasing than it should.
“I’m going to shut the lid now, okay?”
If I weren’t so distracted by his approval tap dancing on my skin, perhaps I’d have protested, but he’s reshuffled my priorities, so all I can do is nod.
The night’s sky slides behind a veil of black, and the darkness becomes even darker.
An ominous click steals the breath straight from my lungs. Terror lights like a match in my stomach, my nervous system the wick. It tears through my veins, the fire burning me from the inside out.
Gasping, I slam my palms against the lid on instinct, driving my knees upward and bucking my hips.
“I don’t like it, let me out!”
“You’re going to let yourself out,” he states. “Most cars have a safety release latch. Take your right hand and feel along the lining.”
In a blind panic, I do as he tells me, skimming my fingertips along the edge of the cage. “There isn’t one!”
“In the middle of the front wall.”
My hand snags on something plastic and protruding. I pull it, and now the click is one of dizzying relief.
I kick upward with all my strength until the gap between the lid and the bumper widens. Cold air whooshes in, and I inhale it in large, desperate gulps.
“Oh my God, I’m dying.”
“You’re not.”
“I am. Can’t breathe.” I sit upright and glance up at him. He’s standing a foot away, arms crossed, observing me with a look of indifference.
When my breathing slows, he crouches down and lazily rests his arms on the bumper. “All new cars have release catches. If they don’t”—he reaches inside the trunk and pushes out the left rear light—“these pop out. Shove your hand through and wave like crazy.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
He shrugs. “Then you’re fucked.”
“Great,” I mutter, unzipping my jacket to let some air circulate around me. “I’m going to be sick.”
“Not in my car, you won’t.”
Yeah, well, he’d deserve it. Though I’m not stupid enough to say that while I’m still cross-legged in his trunk, an arm’s reach away from being trapped within it again.
Instead, when he rises and steps aside, I clamber awkwardly out of the vehicle. My boots touch solid grass, and the impact rolls a thrill through me. It’s the adrenaline-fueled type you get after staring your fears in the face and realizing they’ve blinked first.
I look up at the dark house and exhale into the night. I’d almost forgotten about the power outage. I almost forget Gabriel’s behind me too until he slams the trunk shut and his voice touches my nape with a rough edge.
“Why don’t you drive?”
My lids flutter shut. His question’s a hard puff of air to my high.
I curl my hands into my fists at my sides and stare up at my bedroom window. “Never learned.”
I’m not a liar, I’m a pretender. There’s a difference. His frigid silence drifts up my back, and the heat of his gaze chases after it. Swallowing, I turn around to gauge how believable I sounded.
He’s leaning against the trunk, one foot crossed over the other. His expression is invasive and gives nothing away. I turn around and lean against the car too, because standing beside him suddenly feels less scary than being in his line of sight.
I was wrong. Because at least I couldn’t feel his heat crackling down the right side of my body when I was in front of him. Couldn’t feel his arm brush over mine as he slides a cigarette between his lips.
He strikes a match. The sharp hiss sizzles through my blood, and I strain my eyes sideways to stare at him as he shields the flame from the wind with a cupped hand.
He blows a tendril of smoke into the night.
Then he extends the cigarette pack to me.
I glance down at it, then up to him. He’s still staring straight ahead.
I’ve never smoked a day in my life, though for a second, I’m half tempted.
Partly because it’d give me something to do instead of fidget, and partly because there’s something dangerously thrilling about sharing a smoke with the Boogeyman.
I shake my head.
“You don’t drink, you don’t smoke,” he murmurs, snuffing out the match with a snap of his wrist. “What does the Good Samaritan do for fun?”
It’s too dark to tell if he’s genuinely curious or if he’s trying to belittle me. When I don’t answer, a small noise of amusement follows his next exhale and confirms the latter. I watch it dissipate into the dark, my shoulders hitching in defense.
Raking my fingers through my ponytail, I force myself to look up at him.
“They call you the Boogeyman, you know?”
“Good.”
“But you don’t scare me.”
It’s the blackest of lies told in the most transparent of tones. If he took a half step to the left, my stomach would lurch into my throat.
He studies the stars through another puff of smoke, the corners of his lips lifting. “And yet, you haven’t stuck your tongue out at me since.”
“And yet, here I am, standing in the dark alone with you again.”
At the word again, he stills, the cigarette an inch from his mouth.
I realize, with a pounding pulse, that I’ve reached out and touched the taboo.
Alluded to the night we’ve barely spoken of.
But now that it’s out there, I want to squeeze it, rip it open, and lay its entrails on the grass before us.
Perhaps I’m still riding the high of escaping his trunk, so I press on.
“You never told anyone about that night.”
His eyes are still fixated on the sky, but I’m close enough to see a muscle flex beneath his beard. He flicks the butt on the grass, then runs a hand over his mouth.
“Neither did you.”
My chest concaves with the weight of my next breath.
Of course I didn’t. I couldn’t. Uncle Finn was still furious with me, and I couldn’t go to him with yet another drama, and certainly not so soon after the first.
Silence brews between us, and it’s louder than the relentless howl of the wind. I’m fascinated by how Gabriel seems to melt into it, as still as a statue. Unaware of the restlessness in my legs or how hard my heart is beating.
The conversation has died; I know it’s time to go, but I also know I don’t want to.
Standing here, side by side with a man like him in the dark is making my blood hum with excitement.
I feel like I’m doing something I shouldn’t, like I’m a teenager who’s shimmied down the drainpipe in the middle of the night to meet a boy too old and too wrong for her.
I run my palms over my puffer, for once at a loss of what to say. Sure, I have a million questions I want to ask—like how he got that scar and why the cold never bothers him. Why he’s here at all. Instead, I glance up at dark house again, and something clicks.
“You’re behind the power outage.”
“Tell me why.”
I pause. Then the realization sprouts and sparks, lighting up my core. It’s the same reason he never told anyone about that night.
“If it happens in the dark, it didn’t happen,” I whisper, a tremble in my tone.
The words feel sordid coming from my mouth. Exhilarating. The feeling heightens when Gabriel slowly turns his head and his eyes warm my lips again, as though he likes what came out of them.
“Smart girl,” he murmurs.
Christ.
My pulse is pounding. Other parts of me too. Because Gabriel Visconti wants to keep this a secret. This. Us. Here, alone, under the stars. I’d think I were hallucinating if my body wasn’t having such a visceral reaction to him staring at me.
I look up at him through my lashes, wrestling with every breath.
“Why’d you teach me how to get out of a trunk?”
“Because you piss me off,” he bites back, too quickly.
He swipes the back of his hand over his mouth, as though trying to erase the remark that just shot out of it, and rolls his shoulders back, recalibrating.
“You’re too close to my family for comfort.
If someone wants to get to Rory, they’d go through you.
You need to learn how to defend yourself from these things. ”
Oh, right. He’s responsible for his family’s security, so of course having to rescue Rory’s best friend from a creepy guy in a phone booth would get his back up. Him being here in the middle of the night isn’t anything strange or secretive in his book, he’s just doing his job.
A brick of disappointment wedges itself between my ribs, though I don’t know why.
Before I can pick it apart, he shoves a gloved hand out between us. “Keys.”
With a small tremble, I unzip my pocket and hand them over. He curls them into a tight fist and nods. “Consider lesson one complete.”
My heart leaps an inch. “There’s going to be another lesson?”
He glances toward the house. “Your mains switch is outside in the white box on the porch. Just flick it.”
“I know how to do it,” I huff. Lie.
Seems like I can’t stop telling them around this man.
He smirks like he knows it too, then turns on his heel and stalks over to his motorcycle.
“Wait. When’s lesson two?”
The wheels hiss under Gabriel’s weight as he throws his leg over the seat. He tugs on his helmet and checks his mirrors. Then his gaze slowly crawls back to mine, as though answering me is an afterthought.
“When you least expect it.”
He slams down his visor so suddenly that the sound makes me flinch. With a sharp rip on the throttle, the bike’s engine roars to life. The vibration rumbles across the grass, surges through the soles of my boots, and trembles every nerve, cell, and bone in my body.
And I’m still trembling, long after the dark swallows his tail lights.