4. Calliope #2
“Impressive. Most people miss.” He releases my hair slowly. The long strands tangle in his fingers. “Don’t touch your face for a few hours. It’ll only make it worse.”
I touch my cheeks and wince. My skin feels raw and swollen. “I sprayed myself with pepper spray in my own car. That’s a new low, even for me.”
“Could be worse.” He leans back against the hood beside me. “I once watched a man set himself on fire trying to light a cigarette off a battery terminal. He was fine. Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Lost his eyebrows.” The corner of his mouth twitches into a crooked sexy smile.
I cannot think about how sexy he is.
“My car,” I say, because someone has to.
“Right.” He doesn’t move.
I slide off the hood, my legs wobbly. “Can you fix her? She’s... she’s important to me.”
Vex steps back, giving me space. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with first.”
He pops the hood. The light from the open door catches him in profile.
I look longer than I mean to. Even though he literally broke into my car and I’m not running.
That should bother me more than it does.
He moves like someone who’s already done the math on every exit in the lot, which should bother me too. It doesn’t.
“So you know my sister well?” I ask because I’m a little, just a little, bit curious if she is one of the names in his big black book.
Vex’s head disappears under the hood. “Calypso? No.”
“Then how does she know—”
“To call the shop?” He looks at me with those brown eyes that are doing dangerous things to my belly. “My minion fucks her. Remember?” He says it without flinching, maybe to see if I’ll react.
I don’t react and I do remember her saying that. He has me flustered in a way I haven’t felt in a long time. I’m used to my sister’s shenanigans. So I push back. “She’s determined to have her own harem.”
He holds eye contact, his pouty lips stretching across his face. It’s not a normal smile. Normal people have smiles that stop. Vex’s smile is doing so much more than that. It’s telling me a story. One with a tell.
He sees what I just did. And he likes it.
“Likely the battery, maybe the alternator,” he says over the hood. “But let’s get it to the shop so I can look it over.”
“Isn’t that an easy fix?”
“I could, jump you.” He says it like it is not the battery we are talking about.
“Ah, no thank you.” I swallow because I’m not opposed to that idea. Mostly. “No.”
“The shop it is.” He nods to himself.
“Did you test it?” I don’t remember seeing him test it.
“Yes.” It’s clearly a lie.
“No multimeter,” I say, crossing my arms. “You didn’t even pop the cap. Try again.”
He straightens up, no hands raised. “I wanted you in the truck. The shop was the excuse.”
“Why?” I narrow my still-stinging eyes. He definitely might be a serial killer. “What if you’re a murderer?”
“I’m not.” He attempts to reassure me.
I do not feel reassured.
I cough for his attention. You know that weird little throat thing people do.
“Listen it’s nearly midnight. You’re sitting in a dark parking lot crying over cookies, and your sister promised me something I can’t refuse either.” He wipes his hands on a rag from his back pocket.
“What did she promise you?” I ask. The wariness comes up automatically at the mention of Calypso.
I really hope she didn’t offer him sex.
“To stop calling my shop at three in the morning for emergency tows that are just her needing rides home from bad dates.”
I snort despite myself. “That sounds like Calypso.”
“I like her,” he says, which is not the same as nice. He closes the hood.
“I’m taking you home. Someone will come for her in the morning.”
I look at my Subaru, Joy, still sitting lifeless in the Acme parking lot. The pink-striped car seat is visible in the backseat. I feel like I’m swallowing around a rock in my throat.
“I can’t just leave her here,” I whisper.
Vex follows my gaze to the backseat, then looks back at me with something I can’t quite read. Not pity exactly but understanding.
His nostrils flare once, then again before his brow does the wrinkly thing and he nods.
“She’ll be here in the morning.” He doesn’t look away from me. “I’ll see to it.”
My eyes go hot again. I roll them up to the ceiling and dare the tears to fall. “Promise?”
Those chocolate brown eyes twitch between mine when I look at him again. “On my life.”
Something about the way he says it makes me believe him.
I grab my purse, the half-eaten bag of cookies, and my phone from the front seat.
After I lock the door I follow him around to the passenger side.
He’s stayed within five feet of me this whole time, scanning the parking lot for threats that aren’t there.
The fact that he does it makes me trust him all the more.
He opens the door for me and instead of letting me climb in he lifts me up and settles me on the seat. Then he does the weirdest thing.
He puts my seatbelt on for me.
I have never in all my years had a man do that for me and I didn’t know I was missing it.
The seatbelt clicks.
His hand grazes my collarbone. His skin feel cool, cooler than it should be but he probably just runs cold. But his touch wakes something up inside of me I thought died years ago. Desire. Then he’s pulling back all too soon and a part of me wants him to touch me again.
See this is why I snuffed out desire. No good ever comes of it.
He rounds the truck. My heart does something funny in my chest.
He’s just being nice to you Callie.
Right, he isn’t interested in me, he’s just being nice. When he climbs in, the air pressure changes the way it does before a storm, that drop you feel in your back teeth.
Three years. Three years of no men, no flutter, no nothing. And the universe sends me a stranger who smells like a forest and buckles my seatbelt like I’m something worth saving. Joke’s on him. I’m not.
“Where to?” he asks, turning the key in the ignition.
“Fifty-fourth.” I stare out the window as we pull out of the Acme parking lot, Joy growing smaller in the side mirror.
Vex drives with one hand on the wheel. The other rests on his thigh, palm up, fingers loose, like he forgot he has a body. The silence between us isn’t uncomfortable, but it’s loaded somehow.
Until his phone rings, flashing across the truck’s console screen.
Daddy Laz.
Oh I have so many questions. But he declines the call.
“I’ve been a very naughty boy.” He says it in an unhinged way that makes me wonder if I’m safe with this man. I honestly can’t tell.
“Daddy.” I have to say it.
“He hates it.” He chuckles. “Laz is way too uptight.”
“I know a Lazarus,” I mumble, looking out the window at the streets passing us by. “He’s stiff too.”
“It’s gotta be the name.” His eyes are on me. I keep mine on the window.
I live close so the drive is maybe five minutes.
The moment he turns onto my street, something in him changes. His grip on the wheel. The way his shoulders set. He doesn’t like it. Which is endearing in a way. But I’m also just making it up. He could love the slums.
He probably does.
“Right up here.” I point to my little apartment.
“No,” he says as though he has any say. He doesn’t. He still stops the truck, double-parking. His hands clenched on the wheel as he glares at my apartment.
I pull out a business card and set it between us. “Will you call me when she’s ready?”
That jolts him out of his staring contest with my apartment. “Second or first?” he asks instead of answering my question.
“Will you call?”
“Second or first.”
I don’t answer. Instead I get out of the car and turn to him. “Call me when she’s ready.” Then I slam the door in his face.
I don’t look back as I make my way to my apartment door, fumbling with my keys. My hands still tremble slightly from the pepper spray. And it takes me three tries to get the key in the lock.
The street behind me is quiet except for the low rumble of Vex’s truck engine still idling.
“You’re not going to answer me?”
I turn. He’s against the truck, arms crossed, the corner of his mouth doing that crooked smile thing.
“You didn’t answer my question either,” I counter, finally getting my door open.
“I’m going to fix your car. Tomorrow. That was never in question.” He takes a step toward me. Only a few steps before he thinks better of it and stops. “I’m asking if you’re safe here.”
The question catches me off guard. No one’s ever asked me a question like that.
“I’m fine,” I draw the words out.
Vex shakes his head slowly. “That’s not what I asked.”
Three years of I’m fine and nobody has caught me on it. Not once. Mom doesn’t catch me. Calypso doesn’t catch me. The therapist almost caught me twice. I just lied harder.
A stranger caught me in a parking lot in under twenty minutes.
We stare at each other across the distance between us. The streetlight above casts shadows across his face, making him look more dangerous than he probably is. Or maybe exactly as dangerous as he is.
“Second floor.” I don’t know why I tell him.
Liar.
His shoulders drop a quarter-inch. “Good. Higher is better.”
“For what?” I ask.
His jaw works. His head tilts, that animalistic angle dogs do when they hear something humans can’t. “Don’t invite anyone in, Calliope.” He pauses for a moment his eyes doing a slow roll over my body that I feel on a visceral level because they roll back to my eyes. “I’ll know.”
He climbs back in the truck. I back up slowly and let myself into my apartment.
What the hell did that mean?