Chapter 1 #2
Cassie’s gaze darted from me in the back seat to Monroe beside her. “Was that Wolf Brookes I just saw?”
“Yeah, he was just saying, ‘Hi,’” Monroe said.
Or coming to gloat. I was sure he’d heard about my attempted murder of Brent. If not, it was convenient timing.
When Wolf’s old silver Chevy pickup reversed out of a spot across the lot, I noticed Bellamy, one of Wolf’s friends from back home, sitting in the driver’s seat. They were probably up to some bullshit. Stealing or dealing, like they always had. I’d heard Wolf was back into that stuff.
“Well , he can fuck off.” Cassie cranked the engine. At least someone had my back.
I knew I was being unfair to Monroe, but seeing Wolf that day, of all days, had me feeling raw. In a weird way, though, it reminded me that I would be okay.
Brent had broken my heart, but I’d survived Wolf’s ripping it out. Granted, I’d cracked my own ribs and held my chest open for him.
Wolf’s truck pulled onto the street, leaving a cloud of dark exhaust. A niggling sadness washed over me as I watched him disappear.
At one time, Wolf had been my home, my safe harbor, my everything.
In my darkest hour, his tattooed arms had felt like the only thing holding me together.
We had been bonded in ways I could barely explain.
I used to think we would always find our way back to each other. Back when I couldn’t have fathomed the amount of damage a person could do to another.
Closing my eyes, I fought the knot in my chest and focused on my breathing. “My mind is calm,” I whispered. “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”
That was a good one. Wolf had caused me plenty of pain, and he’d definitely been my weakness.
“You and those damn affirmations,” Monroe mumbled.
Those affirmations had become so habitual that I’d almost forgotten it was Wolf who’d introduced me to them in the first place.
His mom had used them to help her accept that she was dying.
So, when I had felt like I was breaking, he started giving them to me in little notes, thinking they might help.
In a messed-up way, those stupid little quotes were all I had left of him.
“You know what’s better than hippy positivity?” Cassie said, ramming the car into gear. “Setting shit on fire.”
That was the truth. What I needed to do was leave all thoughts of Wolf Brookes there, at that gas station, focus on setting my ex-boyfriend’s car on fire, getting revenge, and feeling better about my crappy life.
A few minutes later, we turned onto Brent’s dead-end street, and Monroe looked over her shoulder. “You sure you want to do this?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“If we get caught, you might go to jail for arson. Your parents…”
In my anger, I hadn’t really considered all the ins and outs.
With my dad sick, the only thing standing between my parents and homelessness was the small amount of money I managed to contribute each month.
It was a constant weight on my shoulders, and one Brent had known all about. Yet, he’d still cheated…
“I’m burning that car.” This was for me. The first thing I’d done for myself in a long time. “If you guys want out, though, I understand.”
“No!” Cassie said. “I want to burn shit.”
“You know I’ve always got your back.” Monroe turned to the front again. “That’s why I’m double-checking.”
Cassie slowed to a stop across from Brent’s house, with its grime-covered windows and random couch on the overgrown lawn. “You have got to be kidding.” She pointed toward Brent’s drive, where his dark-green Challenger was parked.
It took me a second to process the sight of Wolf standing beside the driver’s door—the driver’s door with a smashed window. He popped the lock just like I’d seen him do a hundred times, to a hundred other cars.
“Oh, fuck no.” I threw open the door. Not that car. That car was mine.
Wolf slipped behind the wheel, which meant I only had seconds.
“What’s got you so pissy, Jade?” Bellamy’s voice drifted across the street.
I turned, annoyed at the sight of his smirking face leaning out of the driver’s side of Wolf’s truck. The engine was running, and I knew he’d be ready to flee the second Wolf got that car started.
Flipping him a bird, I stormed forward. I couldn’t even shout at the prick, or I might wake someone from their hangover and ruin my whole plan. Well, he was already ruining my whole plan.
Monroe never mentioned Brent’s name, but Wolf must have put two and two together. Most likely thanks to a certain video and my penchant for rage-arson. It pissed me off that he knew me that well.
The Challenger’s engine roared to life before I’d even made it up the drive, the sound breaking through the Sunday morning quiet. Screw Wolf and his superhuman hot-wiring skills. And screw me for finding it so hot. Bad boys were so high school. I was supposed to be older and wiser now…mature.
“Wolf,” I practically growled his name as I came to a stop beside the shattered window.
His gaze met mine, and my heart stuttered in my chest. Time seemed to pause, an age of unspoken feelings pinging between us. At least until he broke the trance by ramming the stick into reverse.
“Don’t you dare!”
The rumble of Wolf’s truck speeding off sounded, and a slight smile crept over his lips.
“Really wish I had time to chat, but…” He gripped the passenger headrest. The tendons in his tattooed neck popped when he turned to look through the back windshield.
Tires screeched, and the scent of burning rubber filled the air before he backed out of the driveway, taking out a row of trash cans in the process.
Well, if anyone had been asleep before, they weren’t now.
The car sped off, fishtailing halfway down the road, and I took off toward Cassie’s Honda, my anger bubbling over when I threw myself in the backseat. “Follow him!”
The engine screamed like a yowling cat when she floored the accelerator to catch up.
“Damn, he hot-wired that thing fast ,” she said, an air of admiration in her voice.
I wanted to tell her that crap was a trap, but she was already a lost cause where deviants and bad boys were concerned.
She swerved around another string of overturned garbage cans—probably Wolf’s doing. “Does this mean we don’t get to set it on fire?”
“You can. If you can catch him…” Monroe said.
I knew she thought that was unlikely, but I was full of anger and determined as hell.
I leaned between the front seats, staring at the Challenger winding through the dilapidated back roads ahead of us. “Oh, we’re burning it.”
Wolf would try to sell it—a car he never would have touched if it weren’t for the fact that I wanted it. He just had to profit from my misery.
Cassie hooked a right at the crooked stop sign, barely able to keep up in her tiny car.
“Drive faster, Cassie!” I shouted.
“I can’t get another ticket!”
She wasn’t looking at me, but I deadpanned the rearview anyway. “If a cop passes us, who do you think they’re pulling over? Us, or the speeding Challenger with the smashed-out window and a walking rap sheet behind the wheel?” I glanced at Monroe. “What’s he on now? Three, four arrests?”
Monroe snorted. “As if the Pikestown cops will care. He’s their beloved number thirteen.”
Bitterness tinged the back of my throat at that truth. Wolf Brookes was the best football player Pikestown had seen in years and their best chance of getting their team into the conference championship.
The Challenger disappeared around a pine tree-lined bend. When Cassie rounded the same corner a few seconds later, it had vanished. Just gone. Of course he’d lost us. He was used to losing the police, for God’s sake. Three girls in a ratty Honda were nothing.
Gravel crunched under tires when Cassie pulled onto the shoulder. She glanced around her tattered headrest, an apologetic look on her face. “I mean, Brent still lost his car, right?”
“It’s not the same.”
He hadn’t looked out of his window and cried at the sight of it in flames on his drive. God, how I’d wanted those tears. What it came down to was: I hadn’t been the one to screw him over.
“And now, Wolf-fucking-Brookes is going to profit from my shitty ex.”
“You weren’t going to profit when you torched it,” Monroe said.
I dropped my forehead against her seat. “You know he only did that to spite me.”
She let out a breath. “I’m sorry I told him.”
“It’s okay.”
I was disappointed, but there was a tiny part of me that delighted in the fact that I clearly still bothered Wolf in some way. I might have ignored him, but he couldn’t ignore me, it seemed. He couldn’t just go home and forget all about me… He wasn’t indifferent.
Still, the thought of him getting a fat wad of cash while I’d had to sell my morals and dignity just to survive these past few months enraged me.
No, that Challenger was supposed to be mine. To steal, to burn, to cover in damn glitter if I wanted to… If I couldn’t have my revenge bonfire, then I was getting that money.