10. Fast and Fury
S ure enough, my dad’s head peeks out from the passenger seat window, and even though the tint is darker than what’s legal, I know Nox is behind the wheel.
Their car is so close I can see the scars on Dad’s face as he waves at two more cars behind him.
All three take up both lanes, gaining on us fast.
Orion sucks his teeth. “Well, I’ll be. Wonder how they figured out where we were.”
“I don’t know, but you are so screwed.”
“We all might be,” he mutters to himself, whizzing by the only road I’ve seen in miles at a dizzying speed. “Of course they’d catch up right outside Old Bridge. Mighty fucking inconvenient.”
I almost frown at the cryptic complaint, but I’m too giddy that I’m about to be rescued.
Orion increases speed around a bend, but Nox matches him, getting closer even as Orion hugs the mountain on another curve.
“Where the hell did he learn to drive like that?”
My gleeful grin mocks Orion in the rearview mirror as I discreetly work the tulle at my wrists and run my mouth to rattle him.
“Oh, you know, my dad’s just friends with Felix ‘Phoenix’ Santori, the owner of Nyx Automotive. My brother learned to drive on Phoenix’s racetrack. He’s been hanging out with F1 and NASCAR drivers since he was sixteen.”
“A racetrack, huh? Is that a fact?” Orion relaxes in his seat, one hand on the wheel, the other on the center console. He traces his lips, gaze flicking to the rearview mirror again. “So he’s pretty good at offensive driving. Defensive too?”
“All of it,” I say proudly. “And the cars following him? Probably Benoit and my Uncle Jaime. They all took the same classes. So just call it quits and pray for mercy before my brother T-bones you into a guard rail.”
Orion snorts. “He won’t do that. We both know I’ve got precious cargo.”
“So what? I don’t give a crap as long as he stops you !”
“Now, now. We can’t be reckless.” He tsks. “You’re always trying to go and get yourself hurt. What am I gonna do with you, hm?”
“Pull over and beg for forgiveness on your knees, for starters.”
His smile grows. “Next time I’m on my knees for you, sassy bride, you’ll be the one begging.”
My jaw drops and it takes a second to realize what’s happening when he reaches back toward me, steering with his knees.
“What’re you doing! Eyes on the road!”
“Please,” he snorts. “I could do these switchbacks blindfolded.”
I squirm away from his hand, but he just snags the crossbody strap and stretches it to join the waist seatbelt he must’ve buckled before we left. Then he tugs both, checking their tightness.
Panic tussles with something fluttery in my chest. “I’m in danger!” competing with a totally unhealthy, “Aw, how sweet, he’s protecting me!”
It’s official. I’m fucked up.
Once again, I blame dark romance books, and maybe the fact this so-called “meet-cute” runs in the family.
I harness my sass. “A seatbelt isn’t going to keep me from escaping.”
“True, but child locks will. The seatbelt is to keep my little bird from flying around when I do this.”
Both hands back on the wheel, he swerves the SUV from side to side, jerking it across the entire road like a total maniac. If I weren’t buckled, I’d be slung around the back seat.
“What are you doing?!”
“Keeping what’s mine, mine .”
“I’m not yours!” I slam my feet against the passenger seat but keep them clear of his side. Despite my bluster, my hatred hasn’t actually given me a death wish.
My brother’s engine roars behind us as he speeds up.
“See? He’s going to catch up and pit maneuver you right off the mountain!”
We round a bend, heading straight toward a fog-covered mountain looming ahead.
“Don’t think so.” He chuckles. “Your brother might’ve learned to drive sports cars when he was a teenager, but my brothers and I have raced backroads since we got our first side-by-sides at four years old. Brace yourself. You’ve given me an idea.”
He barrels toward the tunnel on the wrong side of the road, edging the guardrail overlooking a sheer cliff dropping thousands of feet.
“Are you crazy ?” I screech.
He speeds up, then slams the brakes. Tires screech, and my brother barely has time to stop from ramming the bumper. Orion brake checks again, whipping wind through the half-open windows and tangling my hair as glass crunches behind us, lurching us forward.
“What is wrong with you?!”
My brother’s bumper is mangled, but he revs again as Orion floors it.
“What are you doing?” I scream. “You’re insane !”
“Believe me, you haven’t met insane. His name is Hatton Fury.” A strange glint flickers in his eyes as he smiles at me in the rearview.
“Do you think this is fun ?” I shout, but my gaze locks on the pitch-black void framed in a semicircle of stone ahead.
“We’re coming up on a tunnel, baby. Better hold your breath, but don’t pass out on me. It’s a long one.”
“Hold my breath?”
“Yeah, so you can make a wish.” He nods, as if he’s not hurtling me and half of everyone I love into our doom.
“Ready…”
He slows.
“Set…”
Kills the headlights.
“ Go !”
He catapults into the void as I scream bloody murder.
The other cars’ headlights are out, probably from the collision earlier, and the only way I know they’re in the tunnel too is the engines’ roaring ricocheting off stone.
Orion jerks forward then brakes, forward, brake, forward—forcing me to cling to anything I can with my arms still behind my back. Tulle whirls around my legs, and wind lashes my hair into my wailing mouth.
I want to be free. I want to be free. I want to be free…
So I can kill him.
There’s a bang behind us, and a shower of sparks. If I wasn’t shrieking air from my lungs already, I’d be holding it now.
Light is a pinprick ahead of us as Orion slows. A car rumbles past, scraping us, and popping something off the SUV. He curses, and his arm lashes out behind him to cover my face with one hand, while his other smacks the window button, rolling it up and protecting me from debris before it hits.
When he removes his hand, the light in front of us has brightened, so I can see the other car as Orion whips the SUV to the right, slamming into the back with a god-awful screech.
It spins out and he easily skirts around it, tearing ahead as the other twirls in place.
This close, I glimpse my dad bracing himself against the door while Nox wrestles with the steering wheel.
Behind us, Benoit and Jaime veer into the tunnel walls to avoid hitting Dad and Nox, but in their effort, they ram into each other.
I peer past Nox as he rights his car, holding my breath as Uncle Jaime and Benoit climb out, guns raised. But Orion was right. They won’t shoot, and their faces twist with something like rage and defeat when they realize it too.
We burst into the sunlight just as Nox regains ground. My seatbelt bites deeper into my chest with every tight switchback, until my breath runs out and I gasp clean air.
A teary choke rips from my lungs. “I did not give you that idea!”
“You’re right. It was the ‘right off the mountain’ part that inspired me.”
“What does that mean?”
He rounds the next curve, every tread of the Headhunter’s four-wheel drive hugging the guardrail on the drop-off side of the road, the forest plunging below. My calves press into the seat’s edge, bracing for the next turn around the mountain.
But instead of bearing left, he keeps going—aiming straight for the woods.
He’s going to turn.
He has to.
Right?
Right?
“Orion!”
The guardrail ends and we blast past two narrow trees onto a long-forgotten dirt road overgrown with thin brush.
Branches snap against the frame, tires spraying gravel, until the SUV’s brush guard splinters through an old gate.
Orion fights the wheel as we careen over the bumpy path before finally, mercifully, straightening out and decelerating.
“You almost killed us!”
The grin Orion flashes me in the rearview is all dangerous confidence and adrenaline. “Nah, we were fine. I know what I’m doing, baby.”
But the smile vanishes. He glares past me. “But they don’t. Goddamn, Nox. Stop already, man.”
The sports car skids down the dirt road, no match for the rocks and roots pitting the ground.
Horror chokes me as my brother loses control, clipping a massive oak before the bumper anticlimactically crunches into a boulder.
The car zigzags, finally ending up wedged between two trees, smoke pouring from the hood and tire wells.
After a beat, my dad and Nox climb out. My dad roars, but this far away, I can’t hear with the windows up. Nox slams a fist on the smoking hood. A shuddering breath leaves my chest as relief drains my adrenaline.
“They’re okay, Luna.”
I suck in a breath, remembering my captor, then my head swivels to find Orion looking at me, concerned eyes watching me, his lips a hard, unforgiving line. He shifts back to take the SUV out of park and my eyes flick to the barren, rocky road in front of us. I hadn’t realized he’d stopped.
In a daze, I turn around as the SUV kicks up gravel and drives away. Tears sting my eyes as the tunnel of trees close in behind us, swallowing my family until they disappear.
“You know,” he begins casually, “I never thought about it, but running away on ‘crush and run’ gravel is perfectly poetic.”
The woods blur, a watercolor of greens and browns, reds and yellows.
After a moment he tries again.
“So… what’d you wish for?”
I whip around. My shock and anger glare into the rearview mirror, where Orion’s mismatched eyes are overly bright with mirth.
But there’s a tremor in his hand as he rakes it through his hair, and his voice is pitched a little too high.
“Wait, don’t tell me. It’s bad luck. It won’t come true if you tell.” His smirk is tight. “We don’t want that, do we?”
I answer through gritted teeth. “You won’t want it to come true. But I sure as hell do.”
His eyes narrow, then a slow smile curls his mouth. “You’re hot when you’re mad. I like that in a fiancée. You’ll fit right in with the Furys.”
“Had many fiancées, have you?” I snarl.
“No, Luna.” His gaze locks on mine, all humor gone. “I’ll only ever have you.”
I let him see every drop of my hate.
“Be careful what you wish for, Orion Fury.”