Page 21

S ure enough, when the clock struck twelve, my chariot awaited.

My gut tumbled at the sight of Ryder’s truck sitting in line with the rest of the cars in the five-minute curbside pickup.

As I approached the passenger door, he lowered his chin, peering at me over round, metal-framed Ray-Bans.

“Miss me?”

With my cheeks flushed from the dash across campus, you’d think I did.

I rolled my eyes, my attention snagging on a box that had an image of an object in the shape of a semicircle with padded ends on top, sitting next to him on the leather cushion.

I stopped reaching for the handle.

My heart skipped a beat.

“W-what’s that?” I stammered.

I fully knew what it was.

Ryder dipped his head back and let out a deep, carefree laugh.

“It’s not going to bite you, River. Get in and see.” He winked and flashed a full smile that was equal parts rare and reckless.

Catching my ghost-white reflection in the side mirror as I opened the door, I did look like I was about to face a teratorn, not a gift.

I climbed in and tossed my bag—which thankfully was still in the classroom when I got there this morning after I’d left it mid-lecture the day prior—to the carpeted floor as he handed me the present.

“You lost yours during our little chase.” His words barely reached my ears as I opened the box and weighed the headphones in my hands.

They weren’t bent and worn in and covered in surf stickers, or even the color I’d pick.

But they…they were perfect.

I looped the black headband around my neck and my shoulders immediately relaxed, like they had missed the familiar imprint.

“Thank you,” I breathed.

I’d been bummed when I’d dropped mine yesterday, but with everything that had happened, aside from pouting and scanning the mountain road for a flash of their deep teal, I hadn’t even had time to reconcile their loss.

It was such a sweet and thoughtful gesture, and I could’ve just…

kissed him .

“You’re welcome.” Ryder’s eyes brightened as he took me in.

“I have one more surprise for you. Hopefully you’ll still be thanking me.”

I put the headphones next to me and reclined against the padded leather seat.

“Oh great, what does that mean?”

“You’ll see.” He nodded to my seatbelt.

“Buckle up. You know, that’s a very bad habit of yours.” Yeah, then why did he make it sound so good?

I tugged the clip, snapped it into place, and teased back, “With you behind the wheel, no kidding.”

He shifted into drive with a closemouthed smile that squinted his eyes.

The fog from that morning had me in my favorite sweatshirt, but now I was overheating.

I shed the extra layer to a peach racerback tank, the wind fanning the flush from my cheeks and whipping my hair in my face.

A small stretch of eucalyptus and oaks passed by in a flurry between off-white weatherworn buildings.

We stopped at an intersection that led to the highway.

My brows furrowed in curiosity.

Sensing my confusion, he said, “We’re not going far,” and turned inland instead.

“Good, ’cause I have a little under an hour until therapy.” My doctor’s office was about ten minutes away, but I had no idea where he was taking me—or what we’d be doing.

Only a quick recollection of last night’s activities had my mind, and my pulse, racing.

Before I could ask any more questions, or get any more ideas, he turned onto a residential street, slowed to the curb, and parked.

I crossed my arms, suspicious at the nervous stroke of his thumb against the braided steering wheel, the slow unfurling of his spine.

“Spit it out. What are we doing here?”

He answered with a hint of a smile.

“Welcome to driver’s ed.”

“You’re not serious.” My jaw fell open.

“You want to teach me how to drive?”

“If you’re going to be running from demons, you need to learn how to get away.” He leaned in, chin almost grazing mine.

“Your lack of driver’s education almost killed us last time.”

I shot back against my seat.

“That wasn’t all there was to blame!”

He crooked an eyebrow.

I sighed. Indeed, with a dash of luck and a bit of fool’s hope, we had narrowly escaped the teratorn.

Realistically, I should’ve been the one driving us to safety and he should’ve been the one driving the arrows into its heart.

I’d done neither.

And yet somehow, I’d been able to channel Source, and I had landed the kill shot.

I had met the monster’s jaundiced stare, had watched its ruptured blood vessels spurt…

Reading my bewildered expression, he added, “Don’t worry, we’ll get to target practice.” A breeze kissed my burning chest as he cracked open the door, and it fluttered in the hair tucked behind his ear.

“But first you need to learn the basics. So, take the wheel, baby.”

My fingers trembled as I scooched into his seat and placed them at ten and two.

He was right. Even if a part of me died of embarrassment…

I needed to be prepared.

No more running. No more hiding.

No more defecting from the truth.

“You’re so stiff.” He strummed my shoulders through the open window.

“Loosen up a bit. It’s not like you have a demon behind you. Yet.”

My raised middle finger volleyed his wink.

“Thanks, that helps a lot.”

“Alright, check your mirrors.” He hovered just outside the door, resting his forearms on the window’s base.

My eyes, more gray than blue today, darted from the way his muscles flexed against the metal and across the three reflective surfaces.

“Put your left foot on the clutch and your right foot on the brake,” he continued.

“You do know which pedal the brake is, right?”

I hoped my glare made it obvious I did.

“Good girl.” It came with an explorative gaze that started with the pedals and followed my bare legs, ending at the waistband of my shorts.

“Turn the ignition.”

I did.

He left my side and walked around the hood, the truck dipping as he slid onto the passenger seat.

The heat in my cheeks flared despite the fresh air circulating throughout the cab.

“Shift to first and release the brake.” Ryder’s coarse palm cradled mine, and together we moved the gearshift.

His callouses scraped my knuckles, and every single hair, every part of my body responded to that touch.

“You still with me?” That damn unrelenting smirk—and why did it have to highlight the two lone freckles marked beautifully across his jaw?

I nodded, the knob already slipping beneath my sweaty palm.

As I went to remove my foot from the brake, his next question stopped me.

“What happened to your fingers?”

“Oh…” Tensing, I peeked at my irritated cuticles and the jagged edges of my nails.

I was so used to picking and chewing until the anxiety faded, the gnarly state of them didn’t ever really bother me.

But now all I could think about was how raw and ugly they were.

How obsessive it looked.

“I…uh…I bite them.”

“Down to the very nub,” he murmured, bringing my hand towards his mouth.

I sucked in a breath as he pressed his lips to my thumbnail.

A bolt of awareness shot through me.

“It’s—it’s a nervous habit.” I tried to remain steady as his lips slowly caressed my pointer, gently melting into every bit of uneven skin.

His words were now muffled against my middle finger.

“What are you nervous about?”

Right now?

That once his lips were done with my fingers, they’d trail to my mouth, and I’d be totally okay with that.

In fact, I’d say fuck it and ditch my appointment just so I could see what other parts of my body they’d like to explore.

I gulped, but it did nothing to clear my hoarse throat.

“Um, I have these episodes—I mean, I used to. I haven’t had a full-blown one in a while. They take over my senses and I…” My voice trembled at his mouth parting on my ring finger, a brush of hot moisture submerging the skin.

“I guess this is just one of my coping mechanisms.”

He took my marred pinky into his mouth, suckling the tip.

When he withdrew, our gazes locked.

He didn’t release my hand, not until he leaned in so close his jaw grazed the baby hairs around my hairline.

The move shattered my inhibitions, and I was seconds away from grabbing the front of his shirt and redirecting his face to mine.

His voice was a torrid whisper against my ear.

“Ease up on the clutch and slowly press on the gas.”

At that point he could have told me to get out of the car and dance like a chicken and I’d probably have done it.

Without thinking, I did as he said, and the truck lurched forward, making such a god-awful screech it might as well have been a piece of metal dragging over my skull.

A searing blush hit my cheeks, not just from almost hurling him through the windshield.

His laugh reverberated in my belly with the revs of the engine, as he drew back into his seat and buckled in.

“Slow and steady, River.” He draped my name with a velvety coax, gentle and beseeching.

A tone I’d never heard out of him before, but one I now craved.

My foot tapped the pedal again.

“That’s it,” he murmured encouragingly.

“You got it.”

Soaring down the street at a whopping five miles per hour, I did it.

I was driving. Despite myself, I relaxed a bit.

“Javi would be stoked to see me right now.”

“Javi.” There was no obvious bitterness when he repeated his name, but there was a tinge of something, like…

sympathy. “He’s in love with you, you know.”

I blew through the stop sign, fully expecting middle fingers and angry honks.

Once free of the intersection, I slammed on the brakes.

“What? Javi’s my best friend. He doesn’t love me. I mean he loves me, but not like…not like that.”

He chuckled.

“Keep telling yourself that.”

I glowered at him, uninterested in debating what he’d stated—so matter-of-factly.

And so smug . He was wrong, of course.

Attempting to retain my focus, I stared ahead at the road, the trees’ silhouettes breaking the bursts of light as I drove us through the quiet neighborhood.

Each time the sun cleared the shadows over the dashboard, it illuminated an unbidden memory of Javi.

Simple ones, at first: dances and holidays and matinee movies.

But those quickly snowballed into ones that stole the air from my lungs.

Holding me the night of homecoming, after the incident with Chet.

Never saying no to a surf sesh, even on days when the rain and unruly waves pummeled our skin and our vision.

My birthday gift, the photo he took of me simply in my element.

All his photography, really, that seemed to center on one subject—me.

I shook my head. No.

I wouldn’t twist these pure, harmless moments to fit Ryder’s very false narrative.

We were friends. Best friends.

Nothing more, I reassured myself, as I slowed for a crosswalk, my heart ramming against my rib cage.

“Since you’re basically ready for Formula One…” Ryder’s drawl unwound me, just a tad—my fingers still curled around the wheel in a death grip.

He dipped his head towards the odometer.

It read fifteen miles per hour.

“I’m going to start calling shotgun from now on.”

My attention veered from the road as he stretched his arms behind his head, to the cut of his taut, inked biceps—gaze lingering on the tattoos protruding from his short black sleeves that snaked all the way down to his fingers: an urn, an evil eye, a kettle pouring skulls, a runic cross, the serpent’s head entwined with the Celtic N and S.

After my eyes darted to the road to make sure we weren’t about to crash, they instantly flicked back to a flash of color that flickered just beneath his shirt cuff and wrapped around his muscle.

It was the only mark not drawn in monochrome, hints of white and vivid blues sticking out with specks of pewter droplets bursting from the flowy aquamarine outline of a traced-on body of water.

“Is that—” I began to ask, until the engine sputtered viciously, and the entire car started to shake.

“Clutch and foot on the brake.” He quickly maneuvered us into neutral, the tattoo falling behind his t-shirt again.

If he sensed my curiosity, he ignored it and soon, I forgot about it too, as he directed me into the flow of traffic.