Chapter 13
Ray used his sleeve like a shammy on the hood of his ice blue Bugatti Chiron. He looked at the darkening clouds with a grimace.
“What’s the point of having these beautiful ladies if you’re never going to drive them?” Lyra rolled her eyes before stalking over to the bright yellow Lamborghini Aventador.
Ray rubbed once more before stepping back with a gusty sigh.
“I’m sorry, Betty. But she’s,” he jerked his head to where Lyra gripped the wheel. “My number one girl, and I’m trying to win her back.”
The private airstrip loomed ahead of us.
No planes landed between midnight and five a.m., so all it took was a quick phone call and a strategic name drop to have this place opened for us.
The last thing I wanted to do was have a drag race.
But Lyra needed to blow off steam, and I would follow her to the ends of the earth.
“Who’s getting the golden seat?” Ray arched an eyebrow.
Next to Lyra.
Hunger sharpened the lines on all our faces.
“Me.” My voice was rough.
I couldn’t handle nuance, not with my back on fire. Sweat beaded on my bottom lip as I remembered the long hours I spent prone over a table. Lyra thought I’d been out flaunting the caution we needed right now. It was personal hell. One I wasn’t ready to admit. Not yet.
Ray and Jonah crossed their arms in unison, and I fought the urge to point it out.
“Let me have this, please.”
I wasn’t above begging. My pride was in tatters now that I knew how much I had lost. They were in the same position as I was, but I didn’t have the closeness they did. I’d always seen them as my rivals.
Ray flicked his wrist. More. The instruction was flippant, and it made me grind my teeth. He wanted me on my knees? He wanted me to cry? I’d come close earlier in the day, with a swell of emotion that startled and humbled me.
Had that been what Lyra felt when I put her in the ground? I’d do anything to take it back, but life didn’t work like that. All I could do was earn her forgiveness. Prove she could trust me.
“What have you done to deserve the privilege?” Jonah exuded stern dad energy.
“Nothing.”
“Good chat, Chief.” Ray scoffed as he stalked past me.
My hand shot out, and I yanked him back by his bicep. A horn blast rang out. Lyra was getting impatient. I unclenched my fingers one by one.
“Wait…” I tightened my jaw. “I owe you both an apology and an explanation.”
If this was ever going to work, I had to make peace with them both of them.
Sharing Lyra’s heart made my insides pinch, but if the alternative was never having her?
I would do anything. Right now, I clutched at desperate straws, because she wanted nothing to do with us.
This precious moment was an opportunity I couldn’t relinquish.
They stared at me.
“I never asked for Lyra’s love. She gave it to me as if it weren’t the most precious thing in the world.
Nobody had ever cared for me like she did, she does.
My entire life I’ve been a weapon, but to her, I was someone worth giving her heart.
That made me greedy. It made me possessive.
There is little about me worth loving. I’m unhinged, that’s obvious, I think. ”
“You think?” Ray screwed up his perfect nose.
“She fell in love with a monster, and I took it for granted. I used her weakness against her when I should have been her shield. I have to fix what I broke because I can’t live without her. Like the two of you have found something with each other.”
Color rushed into Jonah’s cheeks, and Ray tossed his arm around his shoulders. “So what? It doesn’t mean we don’t love Lyra as well.”
I grabbed their wrists and yanked them close. Their pulses throbbed.
“You can, I can’t.”
Jonah yanked himself free with a scowl.
“What do you mean, Chief?” Ray’s heavy arm fell over my shoulder.
I took a deep breath. Loath. Loath to open myself up to these men. But I knew I needed to. They weren’t my competition, but my brothers.
“There is only one person in the world who makes me feel like anything but a warmed-up corpse. Lyra. My Little Liar. She’s the only one in the world I could ever love. Let me have a seat in her car. I promise that whatever fight I put up will end. We can work together to win her back.”
“I think we’re good on our own.” Jonah flattened his lips.
“Perhaps. But there is no one on Earth who knows her like I do. You want to win her back? I have the blueprint.”
They couldn’t see underneath the arrogant mask I pasted on. I needed their blessing more than ever. If they knew how my knees trembled and how my breath stank of bile, they would know how weak I was at this moment.
Jonah shook his head, but Ray laid his hand on his shoulder and squeezed. A look passed between them, a silent conversation that made my stomach twist.
“You know we won’t back down,” Ray said, setting his jaw.
I dipped my head. “From now on, it’s the three of us winning her back. I promise on my black fucking soul.”
“Go on, shoot your shot.” Jonah shoved me and stalked to the Lamborghini.
Lyra blasted the horn until it echoed into the night, and the sound covered my muffled curse. White spots danced in front of my vision as I staggered to the car. I only hoped I didn’t look as fragile as I felt.
Lyra’s knuckles whitened around the steering wheel.
“You want me to get out?”
Please don’t say yes.
“I don’t care.”
I clamped my tongue between my teeth as my back kissed the seat. I ached like a bruise all over. With every heartbeat, a fresh flood of regret dragged me under. Lyra flattened her boot until the engine roared. Smoke billowed out behind us in a gray cloud.
Ray revved next to us, hanging his head out the window and howling like a lunatic. Lyra had a spark in her eye, like hard diamonds. I wanted to kiss the tension from her tight jaw.
I’m sorry, Little Liar.
The words were safer left unsaid. I knew Lyra better than she knew herself, and apologies would only make her build the wall between us higher. She checked her mirrors and fiddled with the radio, anything to ignore my presence.
“You think you can beat him?”
I stared at Ray, still acting like a lunatic as he slapped the side of the car.
His antics brought a sliver of a smile to Lyra’s lips.
Those hard diamonds in her eyes warmed. My tongue pressed against the roof of my mouth.
I couldn’t give her this. The realization prickled the back of my neck.
Playfulness. Fun. They weren’t in my repertoire.
I could devour Lyra, protect her from the inside out. But I couldn’t make her laugh.
“He underestimates me. You all do.”
I leaned back in my chair and let the pain radiate. The hurt was penance. The only thing I underestimated was the chokehold she had on my heart. Enough to lose my meager sanity for a moment.
Lyra chewed on a piece of gum, and the minty scent filled the car.
“Not going to argue with me?” She peered down the dim airstrip.
“Little Liar, do you want me to beg?” For the second time that night, I offered my capitulation.
“You wouldn’t.”
The finality in her clipped tone pierced me. Oh, Lyra. You don’t know how far I’d go to have you in my arms again. There was no power in begging. I learned that lesson well. But I didn’t have a choice. This wasn’t like in the hospital, where the louder I cried, the more needles came.
“Why are you breathing like that?” Her gaze snapped to my chest, which rose and fell in short, shuddering breaths.
I held up my hands, covered in a fake tattoo of twin snakes around a rose.
“Do you know why I wear these? I can’t get the real thing, so why bother?
” My back twinged. “There was a man across from me in the hospital, covered in tattoos. He dipped in and out of lucidity. Some days were better than others. On those days, we’d chat through the glass, he’d test my knowledge of facial expressions by having me guess and have me practice my own. ”
Lyra shifted her grip on the steering wheel.
“What was his name?”
“His real name was Martin, but everyone called him Doe because he walked like he’d just been born and had these bright, wide eyes and long lashes.”
“What happened, Beck?” Lyra knew this wasn’t a story with a happy ending.
I didn’t have one of those. Until I met her. I would get my happy ending.
“The staff at the hospital wanted to break me. The patients were toys to them, and I was no exception. But because I didn’t feel the way everyone else did, it seemed impossible.
One day, they tied me up and pricked me with needles.
Pierced my veins for no purpose other than to hurt me.
It was the only thing I despised. But this day they brought in Doe, strapped him in a chair opposite me, and did the same damn thing. ” I scrubbed my hand down my face.
“Beck…”
“I begged for the first time. Screamed and cried for Doe, but they didn’t care. Those sadistic fucks had gotten what they wanted.”
“And Doe?”
“Blood clot. Died right in front of me.” I stared at her and tapped the fake tattoos. “I said I’d never let another needle pass through my skin, and I’d never beg for someone either. But I would for you, Lyra.”
Her wide-eyed, slack jawed, almost horror-filled expression jolted as Ray slammed his horn. The sound screamed out into the darkness, a little bit like my confession. But I didn’t need Lyra to say anything about the past I’d buried so deeply. She’d understand in time how much she meant to me.
“Don’t forget your seat belt.” I reached over and dragged one across her body.
She let out a whimper before clamping her lips shut.
“Are you ready?” Jonah called.
I put my window down and held up three fingers. Lyra inhaled, spine straight. Two. The engine growled. Three.
Her foot flattened the accelerator, and we pitched forward into the darkness. My back slammed against the back of the chair, and I swallowed a groan. But pain was purpose. I gripped the handle of the door as wind tore through my hair.
Lyra’s teeth flashed as the tires ate the airstrip.
“He’s catching you,” I shouted over the roar.
“I know.”
Ray pulled the Bugatti level, screaming something through the open window. Jonah looked less enthused, his eyes shut tight.
“Show them who you are, Little Liar.”
She threw me a sharp-toothed grin, and the engine exploded. Wind stung my cheeks until they burned. We inched away from Ray, all burning rubber and reckless adrenaline.
“Is your heart beating faster?”
“No.”
“I could kill us both, right now, you’re not even a little afraid?” A spark flared in her gaze.
Not a spark.
A galaxy.
The wheels hit a patch of gravel, and the tail whipped wildly until Lyra wrestled it back into control. I licked my wind-chapped lips.
“You want to know the only thing that I’m truly scared of?”
The words were low, stolen by the hungry wind as soon as they left my lips. I didn’t think she’d heard.
“What?”
The speedometer climbed enough to eviscerate us if anything went wrong. But it was just the dark and the wind. Ray nudged forward at our backs. Lyra glared into the rearview mirror and swung the ass of the car out. Ray slammed on his brakes and blasted his horn, scolding her for the rash move.
“You dying without me.”
Call it fatalistic. Obsessive. Insane. I was all those things and none of them if I didn’t have my Little Liar.
She chewed her lip. “Where have you really been going these last few days?”
Now it was my turn to clam up. I shrugged.
“Congratulations,” I said as we skidded over the finish line. “We’ll never underestimate you again.”
Lyra let out a squeal that shattered my eardrums. “Eat that, Taillight Ray.”
I couldn’t tell her the truth, not yet. My back throbbed under the weight of my secret. I needed Lyra to know the full extent of my devotion, not just the beginning.
I had a long way to go.