Very Wicked Things
Page 22

But then she got her revenge, knowing exactly how to get to me.
Her eyes caressed the Porsche. “Fine. I’m driving.”
“Cuba was part of the beautiful people. I wasn’t.”
–Dovey
“DON’T GRIND THE gears,” he reminded me as we approached his Porsche.
I bit back a grin. Cuba loved his car and someone else driving killed him. “I know how to drive a stick. And I’ve driven it before. Remember?”
He stopped in his tracks, his eyes burning into mine. “Oh, I remember.”
My body clenched at the images that tumbled into my head. Of me straddling him in the front seat, my tongue tracing the curves of his tattoo…
I slapped that memory away.
He opened the driver’s door for me, and I got behind the wheel and even though I’d had a crappy day, I swooned. Because it was a freaking Porsche. A 911 Carrera Turbo with a seven-speed manual transmission, bucket sport seats, black leather interior, a slamming audio system, and matching silver alloy wheels with the Porsche crest.
It was sex-on-wheels. And I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit his car made me horny every time I got in it.
I settled into the soft leather. “Am I the only girl to drive your car?”
He tightened his lips. “Yep.”
“Huh.”
“You know, my dad gave me this car for helping him run his charity basketball camp. It took me eight summers of volunteering to get it.” He shrugged. “But I loved working with him and those kids.”
“Oh,” I said, a bit surprised at his talkativeness. It seemed strange and surreal for us to be on easy terms, but I went with it. We were in a small car for the next forty-five minutes. “So your ride means a lot to you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “That and a few other things.” And then I felt him staring at me, but I didn’t check to see. Because he was crazy gorgeous with his yellow eyes and broad shoulders. And, he was right there, making my palms sweat. Plus, the last time I’d been in this car, we’d made love. Oh, wait, correction: we’d fucked.
We headed out of the stop-and-go-traffic of Highland Park and got to the open road. The Silver Bullet—as I liked to call her—ate up the interstate, getting closer and closer to Ratcliffe.
A few miles in, I glanced in the rearview mirror. A grey Mercedes had been tailing us since we’d left, and I hadn’t missed that it had made every turn I had. I sped up and so did they.
I squirmed a little in my seat. The only people who drove expensive imports were people like Cuba or the wrong kind from my neighborhood. I doubted anyone in Cuba’s life would follow us, which led me to believe it might be Barinsky’s men. My stomach twisted at that thought, wondering if they’d been in Highland Park looking for me.
I checked the mirror again, relived when I saw that the car had fallen back a few lengths. It was probably just a coincidence.
A few minutes later, I took the ramp and turned onto 54th Street, trying to imagine my part of town through Cuba’s eyes. Masked by darkness, much of the underbelly was hidden beneath the night, but there was no misconstruing the hookers on the corners or the homeless with their cardboard boxes. As we drove by, neon signs from the stores flashed, from the red lights of the liquor store to the blinking yellow sign above the Chinese diner.
It almost looked pretty, but it wasn’t.
Soon, we’d be out of here.
“I live in Ratcliffe,” I announced. “You got a problem with that?”
“I know where you’re from,” he replied. “It isn’t where you live, but how you live that matters.”
“Easy to say when you’re rich.”
He grunted. “I never judged you for being poor, so don’t judge me for being rich. And maybe you have more important things than money.”
I remembered his mother again and softened. “Cuba, I know what today is. I’m sorry about your mom.”
He winced but gave me a short nod as he scratched at the leather seats. “I—I never mentioned it when we were together, but I had a sister once. Cara. She died five years ago when she was six. I was thirteen.”
I blinked. A sister?
“I had no idea,” I said, shooting him a quick glance. The moment between us felt big, maybe because he was opening up to me, and I don’t think he talked about his feelings much to anyone.
He stared out at the night. “It happened before you came to BA.”
“What happened? If you want to talk about it?”
He fidgeted, his hands clutching his knees. “I watched her die right in front of me. Her death was the worst thing I’d ever seen.”
Horrible scenarios flashed in my head, but I kept silent, waiting.
His head turned to me, and our eyes clung for a moment until I had to look back at the road. The intensity of the emotion I read on his face made me want to pull over and give him my full attention. It made me want to comfort him, hold him.
But I couldn’t do that. He hadn’t wanted my sympathy at lunch.
Yet, I was tempted to reach across the space that divided us and maybe grasp his hand. My heart had been walled up when it came to him this morning, but somehow in the space of a few minutes…
No. I clutched the gearshift instead.
“I’m sorry, Cuba. That must have been tough.”
“Yeah.” His voice was raw, his pain a visceral thing.
We were silent for the next ten minutes, each in our own thoughts. I kept thinking about him and his sister, picturing Cuba holding a dying little girl with soft curls like his. What had happened to her? Was it some awful disease like cancer?