Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Isabel climbs into my truck and trails French-tipped fingers appreciatively over the dashboard. “Damn, look how much room there is in here. A girl could get used to this.”
Without power steering, it takes all my concentration and strength to back out of her parents’ curved driveway, but I’m smiling when I pull onto the main road. “Is that your subtle way of saying I’ll be our designated driver next semester?”
She laughs, but the sound is dry and flat. “Yeah, maybe.”
My brow furrows at the sudden shift in her tone. “I was kidding . You’ve been driving us around for years, I’m excited I finally get to repay the favor.”
“I know,” she says with a forced laugh, but there’s a strain in her voice. When I glance over, she’s fidgeting with the hem of her pale-yellow dress.
“Hey,” I nudge her with my elbow. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Isabel waves me off with a shrug, her lip trembling slightly as she turns toward the window. “Cross my heart.” She draws an X over her chest instead of her usual T for trust .
“Okay, what’s going on?” I ask gently before putting all my strength into making a wide right turn.
“It’s just…” She lets go of a heavy sigh that sounds like it’s been bottled up for quite a while. “I’ve been talking to some of the patrons at Rib Cage and… I don’t know. Do you ever wonder what the point of it all is?” She gestures around her and sighs again when I shake my head.
“I mean, is this all there is?” Her voice pitches an octave higher. “Like, why are we going to school in the first place? So we can get a job that makes some rich guy even richer? Just to pay off the degree we didn’t want to begin with? Why? Because it’s expected of us?”
Out of breath, she scoffs and reaches for my hand on the shifter, curling her fingers so tightly around mine her nails threaten to break the skin. “There has to be more,” she says, eyes wild and brimming with unspent tears. “Life has to mean more. I’m not here by accident, and you didn’t survive that fire just to leave this place and never look back, right?”
Her statement lingers in the air between us, the shock waves reverberating through my skull like an unexpected slap to the face. I rip my hand out of hers, and the second I do, the spark in her gaze fades. She blinks and then the look is gone entirely.
“Sorry,” she mumbles. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I think I’m just tired.”
I eye her skeptically as her jasmine perfume swirls around the inside of the truck, the familiar scent laced with the light hint of something musky and foreign.
“Who have you been talking to at the bar?” It’s not the most sensitive question to ask, considering she’s obviously feeling out of sorts, but it’s the most pertinent. “Was it one of the Blackthornes?”
This time, she really does laugh. “God no. Honestly, forget I said anything. Jenny and I hung out at my brother’s place after I got off work last night and I’m exhausted.” She pauses, and I feel her heavy gaze caress my cheek.
“Noah and Ryker were there,” she prompts when I don’t respond. “ Ryker disappeared for a couple hours after everyone passed out. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
My muscles tense. I want to keep pushing her on the previous topic, but of course she’d go and bring up the one subject I’d find more interesting.
“No, ma’am.” Keeping my facial expression as neutral as possible, I take a left turn, stopping at a crosswalk to let a sour-faced Dorothy Blackthorne cross the street. It takes her a second to realize who’s driving the truck, but when she does, she promptly makes the sign of the cross over her upper torso with a pasty white finger and quickly waddles away.
I roll my eyes. Damn Blackthornes.
“So, Ryker disappeared in the middle of the night? Where do you think he went?” I do my best to sound uninterested, but the question comes out a little too high-pitched.
“Yep. He asked me what I knew about the break in and got all broody when I suggested he talk to the person who was there. I thought for sure he’d snuck off to do just that,” she says with a disappointed huff, thankfully not noticing how I’m hanging on to her every word. “But if he wasn’t at your house, then I have no idea where he ran off to. He and Noah were already leaving when I woke up, so I didn’t get a chance to ask.”
I scrunch my mouth to the side and shrug. “Weird.”
Still mulling over where he could have gone after leaving my bedroom last night, I pull into a parking spot in front of Benny’s Ice Cream Parlor. After throwing the truck into park, I stare blankly ahead at the picture frame windows while a nervous churning bubbles to life inside my stomach. One that has nothing to do with Ryker.
Isabel must sense the shift in my mood because her soft hand lands on my forearm. “It looks really crowded in there. Why don’t I just grab the cones and bring them out like I normally do?”
I glance down at my outfit. Black boots, jean skirt, and a tight black cap-sleeve T-shirt that I changed into after work today. I have my little red bandana tied loosely around my neck, but no jacket… Which means the scars on my shoulders and neck are readily visible for anyone who looks hard enough.
I shake my head. “No. I’m going in so I can officially cross off number seven on my bucket list.”
Stop hiding. Go out more.
I might’ve misplaced the list itself, but I need to finish it and I’m running out of time. I take a deep breath and crack my door, flinching when two hands slam onto the hood of my truck.
“Nice wheels,” Cooper Blackthorne sneers, picking at a rusted section of metal as a dark cloud momentarily blocks out the sweltering sun. “Looks like you and your truck have damage no amount of paint or makeup could cover. Fitting.”
My grip on the handle becomes crushing. Maybe now would be a good time to cross off another bucket list item…
I look Cooper up and down, scowling at the rolled-up sleeves of his Deadwood Fire Department T-shirt and the disgusting way his overly suntanned skin and Blackthorne-brown hair are soaked in sweat. I scan the street to see if his friends are close by, noticing three more sweaty firefighters jogging into the station a block away—clearly just finishing up some sort of group run.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Isabel whines, “but he’s not worth it. Let’s just go.”
“Sure as hell seems worth it to me,” I say through gritted teeth. “And since when did you start trying to talk me out of doing something unhinged?”
Annoyed, I go to shut my door, only to have Cooper rip it all the way open, my grip on the handle yanking me out of my seat and onto the pavement . I land hard on my hands and knees, barely stopping myself from face-planting into the blacktop.
Before I can pop back up, tires are squealing on the road behind me, the nauseating scent of burnt rubber suffocating as it crawls inside my lungs and squeezes. Eyes watering, I cough, and a door slams a few feet away, followed by thudding bootsteps .
“Back the fuck off, Blackthorne,” a smoky male voice says from my left.
Ryker.
My body exhales a sigh of relief, only to start choking on the tire fumes all over again.
“I’m just repaying Willa for your little visit last night,” Cooper sneers. “You’re lucky you didn’t land that punch or I’d be doing a lot fucking worse. That being said,” a hissing sound fills the air, “this might not be your truck, but payback is payback.”
Isabel shrieks, and my head snaps to the right where Cooper is removing a pocketknife from my rapidly deflating front left tire. My fingers flex on the pavement.
What the hell? Where was he even keeping that thing?
Ryker’s massive hand wraps around my bicep, steadying me while I scramble to my feet. The second I’m upright, I lunge for Cooper, but Ryker’s fierce grip stops me.
“There are about a dozen gawking idiots staring at us right now,” he growls against my ear. “If he fucking touches you, I won’t be able to stop myself from laying him out. It was hard enough to pull back last night…”
A flicker of understanding bleeds through my anger. Getting into a fight would lose him his spot at the academy… But what does he mean last night? His fingers tighten around my bicep. Glancing down, I spot the angry red abrasions on his knuckles.
My throat dries out, and I slowly lift my chin to meet his stormy green eyes. “Ryker, what did you do?”
Cooper belts out a laugh. “Your fucking guard dog ambushed me in the middle of the night and accused me of breaking into your house. Then he punched my truck like a goddamn animal and cracked the fucking window.” Slow jogging backward, he points an aggressive finger at Ryker. “You’re lucky I’m at work right now. If you ever come at me again, it won’t be her truck I sink my knife into next.”
“ Motherfucker ,” Ryker says through gritted teeth, shoving me aside to go after Cooper who’s thankfully already a half a block away .
I reach for his shoulder. “Don’t. It’s not worth it.”
Ryker stops mid-step, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple as we watch Cooper disappear inside the station. Fists clenched at his sides, he glances toward the peaked stone arches of the police station on the other side of the Old Town Square and then roughly rakes his fingers through his hair.
“We’re leaving,” he says, grabbing my elbow and dragging me to his truck before unceremoniously throwing me inside. “Isabel, do you need a ride?”
“Nope, I can walk,” she says with a smile, already locking up my Chevy and tossing him the keys. The second he turns to close the door, she gives me a little wink and mouths, “ Go get ’em, girl !” before pantomiming a small explosion with her hand.
“ Traitor ,” I mouth through the dirty, half-open window.
Ryker doesn’t say a word to me as he climbs in and takes off, speeding down the road in the opposite direction of my house.