Chapter 44 #2
“Yes, ma’am.” Bohnes hits the throttle and I do the same. I’m on the left. He’s on the right. One civilian vehicle or tractor or cyclist and we’re all in big trouble. Shit, a deer could be deadly today. Play your games of chicken another day, you stupid black-tailed fucks.
“Once you were on the truck, Adrian, what would you do?” Alexei wonders, making the situation worse for me. Widow is so headstrong that he doesn’t need backup bro support from my other husbands. This is ludicrous.
“I’m going to get Ash out of a runaway train, that’s what.
” Widow leans out the window, like he’s studying the space between us and the truck.
It has a step bumper on the back, like a moving truck.
There are handrails on either side and a padlock with chains at the bottom of the door.
In every possible regard, it’s a vehicle that anyone would look at once and then forget. It’s unremarkable.
Except for the fact that nobody’s driving it.
This hideous feeling creeps into my veins, a sickening hyperreality where a soulless water-sucking energy-munching robot monster is not only taking the profession I love most (that is, driving) but also the man I love the most.
Equally the most, that is. There is no such thing as choosing for me. I’ve been a why choose girly since the beginning, baby. It’s in my blood. And today, either we all live together or we all go down in flames trying.
“Adrian,” I begin, torn between reasoning with him and trying to puzzle out our next move.
“Scarlett,” Widow says, his gold eyes too wide and his hands shaking with adrenaline. “Parking space, Scarlett.”
“Widow—”
“PARKING SPACE!” he screams at me, panting like a wolf.
His eyes soften suddenly, filled with love, poured like gold from his perfect heart into mine.
“Baby, it’s one for all and all for one.
You did this. You made me love him. Princess, please.
Trust me. That’s what I’m here for, remember? I’m the muscle. Let me do this.”
I flick my eyes his way, tightening my hands even further on the wheel.
“Kiss me,” I choke out, and he does. Widow leans over and presses the most beautiful, most loving kiss to my cheek that I’ve ever experienced from him. And then, wasting no time, he turns and crawls halfway out the window.
“I’m flush with the other side of the vehicle,” Bohnes reports, also panting. We’re all so fucking hyped right now. “Go for it, Widow.”
I adjust the Bugatti, putting us as close as I dare to the truck. This is stunt-driving at a level that makes even my adrenaline-addicted heart nervous. Anything could go wrong. Widow could die as easily as Ash today. I could lose them both.
We’re inches away from the truck, blasting down the wrong side of the road at over sixty miles an hour.
“There’s a car coming!” Alexei calls out. “Fifteen seconds to impact.”
Widow grabs onto the vertical handrail at the back of the truck with both hands, dragging himself out the open window and landing with his feet on the step bumper. He quickly snaps the carabiner onto the handle and then goes straight for the bolt cutters.
I whip my car out of the left lane and back behind the truck, seconds away from meeting my end against the front of an old blue Ford. It rockets past my window like a pale blue paintball.
Using one strong arm to keep himself steady, Widow bends his knees and lowers himself down enough to reach the lock’s metal shackle with the bolt cutters.
His hair is whipped by the wind. His clothes, too.
One misstep and, even with the carabiner, he’ll probably fall and end up crushed beneath the tires, stripped to the bone by the road, or smashed between the Bugatti and the bumper.
Breathe, Scarlett, breathe. It’s not a bad plan. If you weren’t driving, you’d have tried to do it yourself, don’t even lie.
For any normal human being, snapping that metal with only one hand on the bolt cutters would be impossible.
I’ve long since suspected that Adrian Arden Lawless is a werewolf.
The lock snaps and the chains come unravelled, all the metal bits flying off the back of the truck and crashing into the pavement with a sea of silver sparks. The Bugattii drives like butter, weaving around the mess like it ain’t nothin. It’s not even hard for me to avoid it.
We, uh, never talked about how Widow was going to get out of the truck after he got in.
He’s reaching for the handle to the roll-up door, the bridge appearing like a monster ahead of us.
We’re getting close to it. Closer. We’re on it.
The white truck jerks violently to the right, knocking into the Chevelle and nearly taking Bohnes’ black hearse into the Mohawk River along with it. The railings are crumpled like pieces of aluminum foil and over the edge the truck goes, taking Widow—and Ash, if he’s really in there—along with it.
I hit the brakes, the Bugatti spinning wildly as I fly down the length of the bridge all alone.
I’m turning like a top, facing the wreckage and then the road, the wreckage then the road, the wreckage.
My foot presses the gas down, lurching the car forward until I’m back on the bridge with the Chevelle.
The car is hanging half off the edge, teetering dangerously.
One wrong move from either Alexei or Bohnes and they’re going over.
Using my reptile brain, I compartmentalize my feelings so that I don’t lose my mind to grief and fear.
Throwing the sports car in park, I leap out, taking a coil of Bohnes’ rope and using the hook at the end to grab hold of the Chevelle’s bumper.
Hopping back into the Bugatti, I hit reverse and drag the Super Sport back onto the bridge, saving the last of my fuckboy’s cars while possibly losing two of my actual fuckboys in the process.
Bohnes, Alexei, and I are all out of our vehicles and rushing to the edge of the bridge, just in time to see the white truck bobbing facedown in the water and being carried away by the sluggish current.