30
The car is silent on the way home, and I can tell it’s because he’s working through whatever happened tonight.
Meanwhile I’m left to imagine. The more I learn about everything that was going on in the past the more I realize that I barely knew them at all and it vibrates under my skin like an itch I can’t scratch.
It’s a strange thing to look at Riggs and wonder who he really is.
I’m constantly questioning every move made because I don’t know if it’s the man I know or the man I don't. I want to get to know that one, the version of Riggs he keeps tucked away, the one he hid to protect me. I just don’t know how to go about the conversation when he has such views on Koa’s legacy.
He’ll tell me small tidbits, things he thinks won't skew my perspective but will give me helpful insight to why they did what they did, but he doesn’t understand how jarring it all is.
“What happened?” I ask, turning down the music as he shifts gears and pushes the Mustang faster.
“We dealt with it,” he grunts and I scoff, causing him to grip the wheel a little tighter. “You don’t need to know.”
2023
“Come on Cress!” Koa slams the back door as he chases after me.
It’s pouring rain and the keys slip in my hands, but I just need to be somewhere, anywhere else right now.
He’s lying again, straight to my face with a smile and I know it but he won’t relent.
“What do you want from me?” he barks from the stoop as I fumble to find the car key, but the chain is heavy from all the others I need at the hospital and my heart’s pounding too fast to focus.
“No!” I stop trying and tilt my head to the sky in a feeble attempt to catch my breath.
Koa’s scent engulfs me; a sweet smell that overpowers the fresh scent of rain and grass. His arms wrap around my middle and he holds me there like he’s scared to let go. His hand comes up and presses against my heart, sliding underneath the cardigan to find skin.
“You’re hiding stuff,” I whisper.
“I’m not. I tell you everything.” He lies through his teeth and the worst part is I almost believe him. But I see it, the way he keeps me separated from them. I never see Rafe or Murphy anymore. Birdie is in and out of the house without a peep.
And Riggs.
My heart betrays me and clenches so tightly in my chest I flinch. I know he feels it because he inhales slowly. It’s like he can read my mind.
“I’m going insane trying to figure out what could be more important than our life, our family.” I sob out the last part and he tightens his grip.
“Cress, you gotta understand…” he starts and I can feel the excuses rolling off his tongue before he even says them. “I’m doing this for our life, and our family.”
“You say that to make me feel guilty but you never tell me what you’re doing,” I hiss but I don’t move. His arms bring too much comfort and his voice quells the way my heart races. I hate it. It feels like I’m betraying my common sense, but he’s here now and he loves me, I know he does.
“You don’t need to know.” He kisses my temple, his warmth mixing with the cold wet sticky hair. “I love you.” He pulls away and the air rushes in, but when I turn around he’s gone and I’m still just as pissed off and alone as I always am.
PRESENT DAY
“I do,” I blurt. “I need to know.”
Riggs looks over at me and the car swerves a little on the road as he loses his grip on the world around him.
I know I probably sound insane, whatever happened was bad enough for us all to pile back into the cars and take off before the first race even started.
All while Murphy scrubbed the network on his cellphone, no doubt erasing any footage of what went on in the stairwell.
“Cress.” His throat tightens, the muscles rippling with control.
“No,” I say, turning in my chair. “Tell me.”
He inhales slowly and pulls over to the side of the road.
“Why the hell are you so determined to know?” Like a cruel twist of fate the sky opens up and the rain starts to cascade around the car in sheets.
“Because being in the dark got us into this situation!” I snap. “He used to do that! I’d ask and he’d tell me that I didn’t need to know. Tell me. If I’d known what was going on—who he was, what he turned you into—”
“Stop,” Riggs grinds out. “That’s why you don’t need to know. What happened in that stairwell will change how you look at them, at me.”
“New flash, Riggs. I watched Birdie kill a man,” I bite. “That ship has sailed.”
He drops his head, dark curls bounce around before he pushes them back with his fingers and looks at me again. “We roughed him up a little, asked him questions he wouldn’t answer, but he’s dead—I shot him in the head.”
I force the nausea down at the idea of watching Riggs do something like that. He’s right, it tilts my view sideways, but it doesn’t change, it’s just rattling. It was a simple thing to digest when they were illegally racing, that I could handle.
But they’re killers.
They were long before I knew, and now because of me they’re adding to the body count.
“I shouldn’t have told you.” Riggs shakes his head.
“No,” I correct him. “I— I wish you didn’t have to.” My hands shake in my lap.
His expression shifts and his head tips to the side like he isn’t expecting the gratitude but lately that’s all I can do, thank them for laying down their lives over and over again for me. And after everything.
“I’d do anything for you,” he says after a long moment of deciding the argument isn’t worth it anymore. His voice is quiet but not void of tension.
“I know,” I whisper, my heart racing faster than it ever had with Koa.
There’s something about Riggs that makes me feel like I’m speeding down a busy highway in the wrong lane.
Like nothing before him or after him would ever fill that gap of adrenaline that he creates from scratch. I want it injected in my veins.
“Anything,” he repeats as the heat rises in the car between us. There’s so much we should be talking about, so much that I’m fucking terrified of. The blood on his hands, the blood on mine.
I nod, understanding the stakes even as the nausea flips in my stomach.
I watch as he slowly undoes his seatbelt, putting the Mustang in park and climbing from it before I even have the chance to ask him what he's doing. The rain runs down his body, soaking his hair and clothes.
He opens the passenger door, leaning over me and shaking out his hair and coating me in cold droplets. “Riggs!” I squeal as he pops my seat belt then retreats to kneel beside me. “What are you doing?” I laugh nervously as he grabs my ankles and spins me in the seat.
“Working out this tension,” he grunts, “and my adrenaline.” He works at the button on my jeans, pausing momentarily to push his wet curls from his eyes before returning to push them over my hips.
When he manages to get them down my thighs and calves he chucks them in the backseat and the highway rattles as a semi truck passes in a hurry.
I shiver from the rain and Riggs smirks as he pushes up on the frame.
He leans down, pressing his mouth against mine and steals the warmth from my lips before making a trail down my body.
His wet hand pushes up my shirt so he can place more kisses against my stomach.
He hooks my leg over his shoulder, exposing me to him and the night air as he moves lower.
He places another soft kiss to my center through the soaked underwear and looks up at me. “Is it the car or me?” he dares to ask.
“The car,” I tease him and it only makes him more determined. I’ve never done anything like this before, and my heart is beating through my chest as he bites down gently. He pulls the fabric to the side with his teeth and lets out a deep groan as he sucks my clit between his lips.
My brain can’t believe I’m letting him do this on the side of the road, but my stomach flips at the contact, turning my thoughts fuzzy and useless. Rain slips down my leg, coating me and him as he laps at my core.
His hands squeeze my thighs as he devours me like he’s starving for it. Cars pass by but neither of us care as he spreads my legs wider, diving deeper with his tongue. I push my fingers into his hair to ground myself in reality as his own trail down the back of my thigh.
Riggs covers me completely, sealing his lips around my clit and sucking deeply. His tongue is flat against my entrance, pressing inside me before he breaks away to lick up my center. He hungrily swallows my wetness that’s mixed with the rain.
“You taste too good,” he murmurs, his tongue brushing over his bottom lip.
“Don’t stop.” I sound pathetic but I’m long past feeling shame for begging. When he’s between my thighs it’s like the world melts away and I have a moment of peace just to myself.
That’s why he’s doing this, to bring us both back to the center.
Where we were before tonight happened.
Riggs smirks against my thigh before going back to the task at hand.
He uses his thumbs to spread me apart, pushing his tongue past my entrance, licking everything he can touch and swallowing me down.
He hooks his fingers inside of me, curling them against that spot that makes my toes curl.
His mouth returns to my clit, sucking hard while he pumps in and out.
The rain is pouring down around us, soaking everything it can touch and drowning out the short, breathless moans that fall from me.
My back arches against the seat, the uncomfortable plastic of the center well digging into my skin as he adds another finger.
My orgasm builds quickly, sparking like a wildfire as it consumes everything inside me.
I grasp at his hair and dig my fingers into his arm looped around my thigh desperate to ground myself.
Riggs groans deeply as I come. I squeeze around his fingers tightly as my mouth drops open in relief.
He keeps sucking and flicking his tongue until I’m completely wrung out and breathless before he pulls back slowly, licking his lips and looking up at me with dark, hungry eyes.
He cleans off his fingers, licking them clean without breaking eye contact.
He backs up and turns me back into the passenger seat before jogging back to his seat and dives inside, still soaking wet.
“What was that for?” I ask, out of breath and shivering from the cold.
“Hands are good for more than just murder.” He rolls his head to look at me with a smug expression on his face but it’s forced, and I can tell he did it just to fill the gaps tonight’s violence created between us.