Chapter Eighteen #3
“Please. I’ve ridden motorcycles through traffic you can’t imagine in cities you’ve probably never heard of.”
“Cool,” he mutters, but it almost sounds like I’ve insulted him. He swings onto the bike in an easy, fluid move that I really
wish wasn’t mesmerizing. He looks back at me, his gaze unreadable. “Let’s go.”
“But you’re afraid to be close to me.”
His gaze flashes, then darkens. He studies me, standing here on the curb. “I’m the one trying to get you on the back of this
bike. If anyone’s afraid, princess, it’s you. Now, let’s go. Clock’s ticking.”
Then he holds out a helmet he pulls from a saddlebag.
And he’s not totally wrong. I’m not sure I’m afraid, but I’m definitely something that’s making it hard to get my limbs to move. But eventually I do, taking the helmet and pulling it onto my head, then gingerly sliding onto the back of his bike.
Meaning my legs are straddling his and unless I want to heave my ass off the back of this machine, I need to relax into that.
Into him.
Just like that little fantasy moment inside.
A laugh wants to bubble up in my throat because this is patently ridiculous, but I’m afraid it might sound hysterical, so
I choke it down.
“Hold on,” he tells me.
The engine roars to life and I have no choice but to curl my hands into the sides of his jacket as he eases off the curb and
onto the street. My body tilts into his and I decide not to fight it, because I think that might call more attention to how
close we are somehow.
The leather of his jacket smells entirely too good. His shoulders are remarkably wide.
I tell myself I’m gathering these details the same way I learned about streetlight campaigns and potato wedges as mud-cleaning
agents in the diaries. It’s all information. Information is good.
The fact that the leather jacket and wide shoulders belong to a man I already find entirely too attractive is neither here
nor there.
We don’t witness any crashes as we go, and I almost wish we did so I could think about something other than Jack’s body. Though
I do count more dead cats and the remains of something larger yet indistinguishable on the way out of town, as we go hurtling
into the pretty October blue sky and golden stalks of what must once have been corn.
“Is that just normal roadkill?” I shout over the sound of engine and wind, but he doesn’t answer. I assume he can’t hear me. I try not to think of screeching opossums being dragged into the shadows leaving nothing behind, not even some fur. And I looked.
We ride into the soft Iowa wilderness and everything looks shockingly picturesque today. Not like our first drive into town,
all empty and threatening.
Has the landscape changed, or have I?
Jack pulls off the highway and onto the gravel lot of the Kirkpatrick Airfield. There’s a truck parked in front of the main
building and some kind of smaller vehicle with no doors over by another building. Otherwise, there’s no sign of people.
We both get off the bike and Jack pauses, frowning at the building.
“It isn’t my business to tell, and normally I wouldn’t, but I feel like having a little background here is only going to help.”
He turns that green gaze of his on me, and it feels even more intense now that I know what it feels like to wrap my legs around
him. Now that I have sensory input regarding the muscles in his thighs—but he is not talking about that. “Cleo’s mom—”
Something in me deflates, because I understand all this now. “Yeah, Nora told me what happened to Cleo’s mom.” I smile thinly. And everything clicks into place. He read my dreams. My
lifelong dance with psychotic breaks. “So that’s why you brought me. Firsthand nutcase experience.”
He looks down at me, startled, and his brows draw together. There’s some real confusion there. “Who thinks you’re a nutcase?”
Everyone? But not here—a fact I can’t seem to get used to. Not here and not him and that . . . does something to my heart that I don’t
want to examine. I shake my head. “Never mind.”
The perplexed look in his expression doesn’t change, but he continues. “When Cleo’s mom was committed, Virginia came to live out here and help raise Cleo. Before that, she’d lived in the house you’re in now and helped your grandma raise your dad and your mom.”
All these people I never knew about. My father’s entire childhood a blank to me, and maybe even him. He knew he didn’t have
a father, but I don’t know why it never occurred to us to ask about his mother. How he met Mom and how it might all connect.
Just another no-go zone. Mom. His life before New York. Because he doesn’t remember. I believe that, even if, according to Harrison, Amelia thought he did.
Maybe I can’t fully wrap my mind around it.
“Virginia was your grandmother’s sister, so obviously a Darling. If something is going on with her, it might connect to you
or Amelia. That’s why I thought bringing you would help.”
Because I’m a Darling, not because he thinks I belong in a psych ward. This should not mean as much to me as it does. I clear my throat. “Got it.
Well, let’s go see if Lexi Darling can help.”
Seems unlikely, but hell, this not-a-nutcase-in-Iowa is willing to try.