Page 74 of House Rules

“Where are we going, Storm?”

I don’t answer.

“Storm?”

Three more flights go past.

“You asshole! Put me down!” She kicks out, her heels clanging against the metal walls of the elevator box.

When I continue to ignore her, she calls me names polite Southern mamas would be appalled by. I let them land, unperturbed. The doors open and the parking garage exhales a blast of hot air into our faces. Concrete. Oil. The faraway echo of a jazz band from somewhere in the hotel.

“I’m going to tell you one more time…put-me-down,” she spits, writhing.

I set her on her feet long enough to open the passenger side door of the SUV. She tries to pivot and bolt. My hand closes around her wrist again—gentle, for me. “Don’t,” I say. “Please. Just get in.”

The word surprises both of us.

She stares, defiant and shaken, then climbs in. “You’d better not be taking me somewhere to murder me,” she mutters.

I buckle her in myself, fingers quick, then take her face in both my hands. “I am not going to murder you, Phoenix. You have my solemn oath. I may cut you a little, but only if you ask. Okay?”

She stares at me a long time, eyes wide pools of hazel shadows. “O-okay.”

I nod, then walk around and climb behind the wheel.

We pull out. Night swallows the city one streetlight at a time. Ten minutes in, her breath evens. She still has her jaw locked like a trap. The chain-link dress glints under the seatbelt. I want to be the kind of man who reaches and fixes the twist where the belt bites her collarbone, but I grip the wheel tighter.

We’re not there yet.

“You think we’re killers,” I say finally. Technically I am not supposed to know about what was discovered in her room, but her statement earlier—you’d better not be taking me somewhere to murder me—sort of opened the door for this conversation.

She jerks her head in my direction. “Is that supposed to be a question?”

“It’s supposed to be true or not true.”

She doesn’t answer. The streetlights slide over her profile like a metronome. Soft. Harsh. Soft again.

“Why would you say such a thing?” I press. “What have you been hearing?”

Her laugh is a small, wrecked thing. “You think this is about gossip?”

I lift my shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t know what to think. I just know you don’t trust me. Or the others.”

“Does that matter?”

“It does to me.”

“Why?” A sharp cut of a word. “Why would it matter to you, Storm? You don’t even like me unless I’m performing for your entertainment.”

Now that lands. “I like you more than you think. I like that you don’t scare easy.” I glance at her. “I like that you don’t only see the worst in me and use it to get off.”

Her breath hitches, and then she goes quiet. The city thins to outskirts. Buildings flatten into warehouses, then memory. Road hum shivers up through the wheel into my hands.

I’ve said more tonight than I usually do in a week, and I ought to stop talking. But I don’t. “You want to know a secret?”

“No.”

I tell her anyway, because I’m not doing this for a win. I’m doing it because there’s something I can give her that doesn’t owe anything to a bet. “I’ve known you longer than you think.”