Chapter 13 Miles
Miles
I think seeing her kiss him made me lose my damn senses.
It’s been twenty minutes since I drove off, but I can’t bring myself to care. My hands are still tight around the steering wheel, eyes burning holes into the empty road ahead.
Okay. I did a bad thing. I know that.
Not to Jamie. Not to her.
But I did kind of run Ryan off the road.
That’s what he gets for driving a Vespa. And for going after my girl.
The thought hits me mid-laugh, the sound sharp and humorless in the closed space of the car. My girl? I think bitterly. That’s Jamie’s girl now.
The image of her mouth on his—the way she leaned into him like she wanted him—sends bile up my throat. I grip the steering wheel harder and mutter another curse under my breath.
I grab my Gatorade from the cup holder, the orange kind, the one I keep because it hides the taste of pills.
Painkillers all thanks to my dear friend, Koa, for hooking it up with stronger shit than my uncle gets.
I shake two into my palm and toss them back dry, then chase them with the drink.
The plastic crackles as I squeeze it too hard.
My head’s pounding again, the bruises still raw from where Victor clocked me. My temple throbs with every heartbeat, a reminder that I can’t seem to keep myself from making bad choices.
I think I fucked up.
Not the Ryan thing. Screw Ryan.
The Jamie thing.
We haven’t talked since I told him the truth. Since I tried to end whatever the hell this was with Chloe. Since everything started falling apart faster than I could keep up.
I don’t even know if we’ll ever see eye to eye again.
Jamie’s the only person who actually knows me—the only one who didn’t walk when things got ugly. And now I’ve managed to screw that up too.
I sigh, dragging a hand down my face. The motion makes me wince as my fingers brush the bruise on my cheekbone. The skin is tight, still swollen. My uncle really fucked me up this time.
I reach for the stereo, needing noise, needing anything to fill the silence before my thoughts swallow me whole. The radio crackles to life—static first, then a familiar melody I don’t expect.
Taylor Swift.
I bark out a laugh. I shouldn’t even know the song title, but I do.
This past summer, I listened to her music for two months straight. Don’t even remember how it started. Some random playlist that played on a loop when I was crashing between jobs. I never liked the music. Still don’t. But I guess it’s different now.
Because of Chloe.
Her humming that same song under her breath, on the drive reaffirmed that. That’s what I hear now, louder than the actual lyrics.
So, no. It can’t be that bad.
I tap the steering wheel along with the beat, head tilting back against the headrest.
I can’t believe the girl in that cheerleader skirt driving a red Audi is fucking my best friend right now.
It’s absurd. The universe has a cruel sense of humor.
She’s so damn pretty, but God—what terrible taste in music.
The corner of my mouth lifts anyway.
It’s almost laughable.
The road stretches ahead, long and empty, slick from last night’s rain. The city blurs into a haze of neon and exhaust as I merge onto the freeway.
I connect my phone, redownload the album and let it play. The whole damn thing.
Every chorus, every bridge. I listen on repeat for the rest of the night as Rico and I make drops, warehouse to warehouse, handing off packages under the dim flicker of streetlights. The smell of diesel, the cold bite of wind, the hum of the tires on the asphalt—it all fades behind the music.
Rico mutters something at one point, half awake. “Bro, you still got that touchy feely music crap on?”
I don’t even bother answering because all I can think about is her laugh.
The way she looked in that stupid oversized shirt that wasn’t hers.
The pills kick in eventually, dulling the pain in my head but not the one clawing at my chest.
I keep driving.
The city lights smear into color through the windshield. The night hums low and endless, and for a few seconds, between one drop and the next, I almost convince myself that I’m fine.
Almost.
Then the next track starts. And her fucking voice is right there again in my head, and I know sleep’s not coming for me anytime soon.
I’m not a stalker. That’s what I tell myself as I kill the engine and let the car sit heavy in the gutter, the tail lights glowing like two dumb, slow eyes in the dusk. It’s completely normal that I parked three cars down from hers. Totally normal.
She could walk past a dozen cars and not notice me.
I light a cigarette and hold the ember like it’s a compass, waiting. The smoke cuts the air and pulls my thoughts into sharper focus.
What is it with this girl and miniskirts, anyway?
She has the legs for it, I’ll give her that. Toned, dangerous, hot. The sight of her walking across the lot will make a man forget his own name, and I’m a man who never forgets.
She appears like she always does—blond light in the falling gray, laugh trailing behind her as if the previous hour of her life was a private joke she’s letting me listen to in bits. She’s with someone. A girl I don’t know, textbooks hugged to her chest.
When she sees my car she changes, just a flicker at first—eyes sharpen, the laugh tightens, the full-throated warmth closes up like a flower at dusk.
She doesn’t hurry. She’s not about to run.
She opens her car, slides into the passenger side, pulls out a stack of texts and a small makeup bag.
Reapplies gloss. Locks the door. Perfect little ritual of a girl who knows how to look put together even when she’s a mess inside.
She turns, and for a heartbeat I want to tell her to run. From me. From this school. From all of it.
I don’t say any of it.
She looks at me like she’s seeing me for the first time, or like she’s just decided to stop making me invisible.
“Are you stalking me or something?” Her voice is flat, half accusation, half joke, and God, she looks too good saying it.
“Get over yourself,” I say. The truth that I’ve been following her all day with the subtlety of someone who doesn’t believe in subtlety makes me sound weak.
Makes me admit she matters enough to track.
Can’t do that. Can’t tell her that her laugh is the new rhythm in my chest and the smell of cherries haunts me.
She’s bundled in a tank top, coat slung over it, scarf looped once like a careless ribbon. Gum in her cheek. She chews it with a rhythm that makes me want to tell her to stop doing things that look so adorable.
She starts to walk away, and I do the stupidest thing possible. I step in front of her and take her hand like I own the right to block her path.
Her green eyes catch the light, and I don’t even get to enjoy the feel of her looking back at me because she glares at me.
“What do you want?” she asks. Annoyance hangs in each syllable.
I almost ask her how far she went with Jamie last night. The sentence sits like a stone on my tongue, and I chew it until it tastes like blood. I almost say I’m sorry for the commotion. I almost say a dozen things that might put the night back together in some twisted, rational way.
She cuts me off before I can find the words to make it not stupid. “I have classes,” she says, that small flinch in her voice the first crack in her armor.
“Yeah, I know. Media Studies and then Broadcast Journalism,” I parrot, stupidly, mocking my own tone, because I can’t seem to be anything but an asshole lately. It gets a reaction, a small flash of irritation edged with amusement.
She calls me a stalker again, but there’s something like a smile at the corner of her mouth this time. It twists, disappears.
“An asshole too, if I remember correctly.”
That earns me the kind of smile that feels like a jab. It’s brief. She looks like she wants to say more like she wants to peel off the surface of this strange, stuttering thing between us and find the truth, but instead she says, “Well, you are. And shouldn’t you be with Leslie?”
I follow her gesture toward the quad, toward the cluster of girls. It’s like watching a play I both want and don’t want to be in. My throat tightens.
She folds her arms. She’s jealous? Mad? Furious with me.
Then I catch the sight of marks along the hollow of her throat, puckered bruises that bloom dark against pale skin, the faint, desperate circles at the base of her neck.
Hickeys. Not the candy kisses of teenagers, but the kind you get when someone is trying to prove ownership or need.
I’d seen those marks on Bella and a few others during the week—light, indiscreet.
Jamie loves them. He hands them out like confetti when he’s celebrating or when he wants to mark a night as his.
“You fucked him,” I say before I can stop myself. The words are blunt and the taste of them is bitter.
Her reaction is immediate. Eyes wide, alarm flaring—then a temper flare that makes me grin like an idiot because I know I hit something that matters.
“What?” Her voice is too loud for the lot, but she doesn’t care. She looks like someone about to set a fire to prove a point.
“I knew you wanted to be a cheerleader like Bella,” I say, stepping to her. “Never took you for a puck bunny too.”
“Fuck you, Miles,” she spits. The words are sharp, raw.
“I know you want me too, but I guess you’ll have to ask Jamie permission first, huh.”
I don’t expect the pain. The slap lands across my cheek with a clean, hot sting that lights up even the bruises my uncle left me with.
For a sliver of a second I forget all the rules—forget Victor, forget the warehouse, forget the way the world breaks and keeps breaking under my feet.
I feel nothing but a rush of red hot anger. The old hunger rises in me like a tide.
“Stay away from me,” she says, voice shaking, and then she turns and walks away like she’s punishing me just by moving.
I watch her go. I should be smart. I should walk back to my car, chew on the guilt, maybe throw out the falafels I grabbed for her in a stupid attempt at being thoughtful.
I should, but I don’t. I’m so mad I can’t see straight.
Every rational bone in my body snaps and I fantasize—dangerous, repetitive fantasies—about dragging her back and spanking her so hard her whole life recalibrates around me.
Instead, what comes is a cold laugh and a deeper, more terrifying certainty. I’m so fucked.
Jamie is going to be furious, and for a sliver of a moment, the idea of being in front of him, of having to explain this mess, makes my stomach drop.
I open the car door because I need something to do with my hands, and I grab the falafels. I fling them into the trash can by the dumpster. Fuck it. Fuck it all.
What did I expect? That she’d be okay after I was a dick after our kiss in the rain? That she’d stand there and tell me she liked me, that she’d been confused, that everything could be easy again? Life doesn’t hand out easy. It hands out choices that fucking suck.
I slide into the driver’s seat, chest heaving.
My face throbs where she hit me, but it’s the bubbling heat behind my ribs that’s worse.
I turn the key and the engine answers like a beast dragged awake.
Anger tastes metallic in my mouth. Regret tastes like stale beer.
I want to steamroll everything in my path until Jamie’s grin is wiped off his face for good.
I want to carve a place in the world where she can’t look at me like I’m a bad joke.
Instead, I drive away. The lot recedes, and her silhouette grows smaller in my rearview mirror.
I should be smarter. I should be better.
But I’ve always been a little ruined, a little too raw around the edges.
This proves it. This shows me how quickly I can tear a thing to pieces when I don’t know how to keep my hands to myself.
Screw her.
On the highway, I toss out the panties I should have never taken in the first place and kept all this time. Fuck it. Whatever this was is fucking over with.