Page 11 of Keeping Her Under (Deranged Highway, #1)

Eleven

“Fuck, cuz, you need to show me a recent pic of this chick,” my cousin says. We’re sitting in the front seat of his patrol car, the night air buzzing with insects just outside our windows. My blood is pulsing hot and fast through my veins as I think about what I’ve just asked of him.

Though ‘ask’ is a pointless word; we both know he’ll do it.

He’d go to jail for me, as I would for him.

And this favor will be a cakewalk compared to what the Blood Fangs, his gang, asks of him.

“No,” I say, watching the traffic rush past the windshield. Many of the cars slam on their brakes as they spot us sitting on the edge of the highway, but Asher lets them all go. My eyes track a blue Honda, its tires squealing, before shifting to a red Toyota.

“Oh, come on,” he says, but I shake my head.

I know Ash’s type of woman – big rack, skinny, blonde, and if he sees a picture of Summer, he’ll say the generic, polite shit he thinks I’ll want to hear, but it won’t be honest. And it needs to be honest. He’s the only family I have in this world, a man I would sell my soul to the devil for.

A man who I have killed for; I ended his father’s life when I caught him doing to him what mother’s boyfriends did to me.

So I can’t show him a picture of her because pictures won’t do her justice. It wasn’t just her looks that drew me to her when she was wheeled in by the EMTs. It was the flutter of her eyes as they landed on me. Almost in a silent plea.

I don’t know if they were asking me to save her or let her die, and it was that ambiguity that drew me in. Normally, my patients are clear. Even those that are brought in after having attempted suicide. Those that were saved but didn’t want to be. Those that were saved as they’d cried out for help.

But Summer… Summer looked at me in a brief moment that stretched for aeons. Stretched right down into my soul.

She was giving me the choice.

Trusting in me completely.

When I put her into a coma, the thought of fucking her wasn’t just a primal need. It was a desire to get closer to that raw, utter dependency she had on me.

And that Asher would approve of. It’s what he chases when he finds his own people to fuck.

But I can’t show him that in a picture.

“I’ll introduce you when she wakes,” I say.

He whistles. “Getting that serious so soon is pretty gay, cuz.”

“Being pan is pretty gay,” I say pointedly.

A devilish smile flashes through his red beard. “You’re just jealous because of all the ass I’m getting. There’s so many people to fuck if you just let yourself be free.”

Given my childhood, I rarely indulge in sex.

A hand or a toy is my usual preference, but Asher went the other way after being raped by his father.

He fucks more than he breathes. Personally, I don’t get it.

I can’t see how he can possibly bear to have someone touch him however they want to.

But how he handles his shit is his own business. None of us cope the same.

“And oh, look, at that” he says, nodding at a car on the horizon that’s whipping from one lane to another. It’s still too far away to make out any of its details, but its swerving headlights paint a clear enough picture of either drunkenness or lunacy.

“Come with me on this one,” he says.

“I’m good,” I reply. “Just be ready for tonight.” I start to open the car door, wanting to be out of here if he decides to give chase.

“Of course, darling,” he says. “Pick you up at one.”

“Don’t say it like that,” I scoff.

“Homophobia is so last century,” he teases as he keeps his eyes on his potential target.

“The issue is incest, dipshit. We’re related.”

He shrugs as he starts the engine. The swerving car is a red convertible with its top down – and there are two people in the front seat.

“Only cousins,” he says, “and incest is only bad if you can reproduce.” He cocks his head to the side.

“Though they did make two male mice do that recently, didn’t they? ”

I shake my head as I step out. “They still used a female’s oocyte.

They merely removed the nuclei, then reprogrammed a male’s skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells, deleted the Y-chromosome, added an X-chromosome from another cell, and fertilized the egg with another’s sperm.

Though interestingly, that also led to the eradication of trisomy 16 –”

“So… fucking a dude is or isn’t going to get me pregnant?” my cousin says slowly as the flashy red convertible whips past us. It has a male driver, with a female passenger – blonde with a big perky rack, whose top is also down. And they’re young, college kids maybe. Fucking catnip for him.

Shaking my head in exasperation, I say, “Isn’t.”

“Cool. Then I’ll pick you up at one, sunshine.”

“Fuck off,” I say, but he’s already gone, his lights flashing. Off to chase his own pleasure.