6. Six Days Until Bonding
Chapter six
Six Days Until Bonding
Laurel
By early evening, nothing about Sealed by Sight feels less horrible.
Crickets are singing when Carrson tells me to wait by the front door so he can pull the car around.
I’ve got my small, battered suitcase by my feet and my backpack on my shoulder.
It’s still fall break, which is crazy given everything that’s happened.
The kidnapping, the whipping, being reunited with Carrson.
It feels like weeks should have gone by, but it’s only been a couple of days.
A mechanical roar sounds from the side of Ashford House, and I turn my head to watch as Carrson drives up in the most ridiculous car I’ve ever seen.
The thing is low to the ground and wedge-shaped, like it should be a doorstopper for giants.
It’s matte black, and when the doors open they rotate up into the air like a bird spreading its wings.
Carrson hops out and jogs over to grab my suitcase, which he places in the trunk. Good thing I packed light because not much else would fit in there. He gestures to the passenger seat, but I can’t move. I’m too busy staring.
“What,” I point, “is that?”
“My car.” He pats the hood affectionately. “One of them, anyway.”
“That’s not a car,” I argue, “that’s a spaceship.”
“It’s a Lamborghini.”
“A Lamborghini,” I repeat slowly.
“Yeah. A Lamborghini Revuelto.” The word flows off his tongue like he speaks fluent Italian. Wait, does he speak Italian? I’ve never thought to ask.
In my defense, we’ve been kind of busy.
I take a step down the stairs. “How much does it cost?”
“A lot.”
There are shadows under his eyes and strain around his mouth, but he smirks anyway.
I know what he’s doing. He can’t give me an answer for everything waiting ahead of us.
He can’t make The Order disappear or undo what Jack demanded.
So he’s offering me something else: a ridiculous car, a road trip, a few hours where fear doesn’t rule every moment of our lives.
Part of me wants to snap at him, remind him how precarious everything is. But no one knows that better than Carrson. He’s watching me, waiting to see whether I’ll let him have this, if I’ll play along, and it occurs to me maybe he needs the reprieve as badly as I do.
“A lot? That’s not a number.” I narrow my eyes dramatically.
“A very lot.” His grin widens, and some of the tension leaves his shoulders.
I plant a hand on my hip. “You know, a few months ago I was delivering pizza and had eleven dollars in my bank account.”
“Now you’re dating a guy with a Lamborghini.” He walks over to me and holds out his hand, grinning more easily. “Isn’t life wild?”
I let him drag me down the steps.
“Come on. You’re going to love it. It has four wheels and goes vroom vroom.” He helps me into my seat like he’s Prince Charming and we’re starring in some bizarre remake of Cinderella. Except Cinderella wasn’t kidnapped by a rival gang leader and driven around in the Batmobile.
I climb inside, worried about getting dirt on the carpets, which are pristine. The seat hugs me from seven different angles. The door closes with a muffled whir, and then Carrson’s in the front seat with his hand on the wheel.
He presses a button, and the interior lights up while the engine roars to life.
An entire TV screen appears on the dashboard before me.
There’s another screen in front of him. I poke at a button and YouTube appears with a cat dancing in a tutu.
“There’s more screens in here than at NASA Mission Control. ”
“That’s not true.” Carrson watches me with amusement dancing in his eyes. “NASA has at least one more.”
I face him. “You don’t actually know how many screens NASA has.”
“Yes, I do.” He flips on the turn signal and glances in the side mirror.
“How?”
“Because I’m rich.”
I laugh, then press my hand to my mouth to stop it. The last thing I want to do is encourage him.
Carrson guns the engine, and the car shoots into traffic. He swings into the passing lane and accelerates around a line of slower vehicles. At the back is a beat-up truck with paint peeling from the hood and a bumper sticker that reads Bee Happy beside a smiling cartoon bee.
I decide to follow its advice.
Carrson clears the truck and presses harder on the gas. The engine thunders through the cabin.
“Why is it so loud?” I ask, pressing a hand over one ear.
“So people know to expect me,” he says, raising his voice to be heard over the sound.
We rush down the main street, heading toward the highway. Every head swivels to watch us go.
“I think it’s working,” I yell back.
Once we hit the freeway, some of the road noise dies down so I don’t have to yell to be heard.
“Do you speak a foreign language?” I ask, curious now that I’ve thought of it.
“A couple. My father used to take me with him on work trips all over the world. He’d make me go to all the boring meetings and listen to them talk.
” Carrson drives with one hand casually draped over the wheel, which for some reason I find unbelievably sexy.
“I know Spanish, German, Italian, and Mandarin, although my accent isn’t great.
” He glances over, and his forehead creases. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to climb across the center console and straddle me.”
Heat rushes up my neck and onto my cheeks. “What? I can’t help it,” I mumble. “Smart guys are hot.”
He grins, delighted. “So it’s not the car, or my leadership skills, or my good looks? It’s the languages that turn you on?”
I hide my face in my hands so he can’t see how it flames.
That only makes him laugh, the sound coming from his belly.
“Wǒ ài shàng nǐ le, kěshì bù zhīdào gāi zěnme gàosù nǐ.”
The words are so soft I almost lose them to the hum of the tires against the pavement.
I lower my hands and look at him. “Was that Mandarin?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing important,” he says, far too smug for that to be the truth, but there’s something in his expression that keeps me from teasing him about it.
A hint of nerves in the way he keeps glancing over at me and then back to the road.
Carrson Ashford can lie with his whole face when he wants to, but whatever he just said matters enough that he’s afraid I might somehow understand it.
“My dad speaks Italian too,” I say, letting him keep the secret for now. “That’s where he met my mom. In Florence, even though he’s American. He was living there, and she was studying abroad in college.”
“Florence?”
“According to my mom, it was love at first sight.”
“According to your dad?”
“Also love at first sight, but he told the story with more complaining.” I smile softly, remembering all the times my parents talked about it. “My dad swore he’d never go back to the United States, but once he met my mom he was a goner.”
“Your mom changed his mind?” he asks. “About staying in Italy?”
I look out the window, watching gas stations and exit signs fly by.
“She changed everything,” I say, picturing my mom with her long brown hair, just like mine. “He tried to resist. They dated long distance for a year, while he worked as a bartender and she studied, but they missed each other too much. He moved to California, and they got married six months later.”
“A bartender?” Carrson winces, and I know he’s remembering the version of my dad that he met. The one lying in soiled sheets, too drunk to remember to pay the electricity bill.
“Yeah.” I look down at my hands twisted in my lap. “Back then he could hold his liquor.”
“What happened?”
I know what he means. What happened to make my dad fall apart the way he did.
The freeway stretches ahead of us. Go any direction long enough, and we’d reach the ocean.
“Life, I guess. Losing my mom. Then…me and senior year.” I don’t have to explain more. Carrson already knows. “It all got to be too much.”
I drift for a minute, lost to my thoughts, but before they can go too dark, Carrson interrupts.
“What you’re telling me is your dad met a pretty girl and immediately abandoned all his plans?”
I give him a small smile. “That’s the story.” The sadness slips back in. “Too bad it doesn’t have a happier ending.”
“They got you,” he says. “Seems like a pretty good ending to me.”
I look at him, but he’s watching the road again, expression unreadable except for softness at the corners of his mouth. As if whatever tragedy came later can’t erase the fact that once, somewhere in Florence, two people fell in love and set a whole future in motion.