by Doyle, Dawn
I tapped my fingers against the desktop, my hand jumping up and down so fast it was almost vibrating. “I’m not staying here to listen to your bullshit,” I ground out. I grabbed my things and stood, not taking any time to put them in my bag. “I don’t need this.” Mr. Stanson watched me leave, not saying anything as I marched out of there. The door closed behind me, and I ran through the hall and out into the parking lot.
My silver Prius was in a bay near the back of the parking lot, allowing me plenty of space to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible, and that’s just what I did.
“Who the hell does he think he is?” I grumbled to myself, gripping my steering wheel like it was my lifeline, moving my hands back and forth, rotating over the cool material. My throat caught as I tried to breathe steadily, coming out like a hiccup. My eyes stung as I stared out of the windshield at the red light ahead of me. “What gives him the right to say that shit to me?”
A roaring engine sounded, growing louder as it approached. A black motorcycle appeared next to me, the familiar silver flames stopping when I did.
Through my open driver-side window, I looked up at my reflection in the visor. The rider’s hand lifted from the handlebars and reached their helmet. They pushed it up, and all air left my lungs. Sapphire eyes stared back at me, unblinking, unmoving, just… Knowing. My gut lurched so fast I wanted to throw up. Quinn had been there when I was talking to my mom, he’d heard our conversations, he knew more about me than I wanted anybody at Broken Hollow to know.
“You,” I ground out, finally.
“Yeah.” His chuckle was muffled behind the guard. “Me.”
A horn blared behind me, Quinn winked, dropped his visor, and sped off through the green light and out of sight.
“You—” I gritted my teeth. “Asshole!” Frustrated tears flowed over my lids and down my cheeks, blurring my vision. I swiped angrily at them, trying to drive home without crashing my car.
Quasimodo had gone too far now, and I’d had all I could take. A feud that had started from nothing had escalated the moment he’d asked me to be his girlfriend.
I choked a dry laugh. “Girlfriend,” I muttered, my jaw tight, but my stomach had other ideas. It whirled around excitedly, doing the exact opposite of what it should feel—how I wanted it to feel. “Pretend girlfriend.” Saying it out loud didn’t make it any better.
Damn you, Quinn. You and your beautiful face.
***
“I’ll see you later, Mom, okay?” I said into my phone. I picked up my house keys, cash, and debit card, and stuffed them into my jacket pocket. “Miley’s outside, and I don’t want to be late for the movie to start.” I’d broken my promise of taking my own car, but with Miley driving me, I felt like I was in safe hands. That and that fact we were watching a movie, not staying out and partying.
“Remember to take enough money with you,” my mom said, her voice stern and authoritative. “You don’t know that part of town well, yet, and I don’t want you to be without in case something happens.”
“Mom,” I admonished with a light giggle. “What’s going to happen? We’re just going to the movies.”
“Yes, well, I worry about you when I’m not there or not able to come to get you right away. She sighed, her shoulders dropping. “I really wish you’d just take your car, honey.”
“Mom, stop worrying.” I checked my reflection in the brightly lit hallway mirror, fixing the collar of my black jacket, double-checking the silver zips were closed on the pockets. I combed my fingers through my hair and pushed it back away from my face. “I’m twenty-two, I’m not going off to sneak booze with my friends.” I grinned. “It’s perfectly legal for me to buy it myself now.”
“Kinsley!”
“Haha! Calm down, I’m kidding.” I slipped my feet into my favorite black boots and tied them while holding my phone between my shoulder and my ear. A car horn blared outside. “She’s here. Gotta go. Love you, Mom.”
“Love you too, honey.”
I ended the call, then shoved the phone into my pocket, zipping it up again. My mom always worried about me, no matter how old I was, and especially since the incident.
The horn sounded again, and I opened the front door, set the alarm, and locked up. It was when I got a few feet down the path that I saw it wasn’t Miley’s bug that was at the curb, but a red mini.
“Kinsley!” Phoebe called from her window. “Come on, girl, we don’t have all night!”
I approached her door. “Where’s Miley? She was supposed to pick me up,” I said, pulling out my phone to check my texts. Sure enough, the texts definitely read that Miley was coming to get me, so we didn’t have to take both cars. “She told me this morning.” I turned the phone around so Phoebe could see it, not that it mattered.
She rolled her long-lashed eyes and smiled. “Oh, she said she’d pick up Rachel instead as they live near each other.” Her elbow rested on the sill. “I offered to come to get you.” Her shoulder lifted quickly. “So, here I am. Get in, we’re going to miss the start. It’s already eight-fifty, and it takes at least ten minutes to get there before I even think of parking.”
“Uh, okay,” I replied, unsure about what to make of Phoebe’s strange kindness. I looked back at my car, wondering if I should just go by myself after all, but when I saw Phoebe tapping impatiently on the steering wheel, I got in her mini and buckled my seatbelt. “Is Miley meeting us there?”
She huffed out an irritated breath. “I just said that, didn’t I?” She gunned the gas and sped down the street, taking the corners way too fast. “Her and Rachel will be there when we get there.”
After the scariest ten minutes of my life, we pulled up outside the Astoria, and I wanted to kiss the ground after getting out of Phoebe’s death car.
“I’m going to park out back. Be back in two,” Phoebe said, then sped off again.
“There you are!” Miley said, bounding toward me. She pulled me in for a hug, then held me at arm's length. “Wow, girl, you look great. I love your hair out like that.”
“Thanks.” A blush rose up my neck at her compliment. My hair was long, and I hardly wore it out, but I took care of it. When Phoebe appeared from the corner, I turned to Miley again. “Should we go in?”
She threaded her arm through mine, her deep-red patterned sleeve contrasting with mine, kinda like the erotic lingerie I’d seen in the stores, all black, red, and lacy. “I can’t wait for this movie—I’ve been waiting for weeks to see it,” Miley sighed.
Rachel walked on my other side. “It’s supposed to be hilarious, but with lots of sex,” she said, pumping her brows. “I hope they don’t scrimp on the details—I need a little excitement.”
Phoebe laughed dryly. “What? Josh not doing you right?”
Josh? Quinn’s Josh?
Rachel’s head swiveled over her shoulder. “Hey, I haven’t slept with Josh.”
“Yet,” Miley purred. “But you so want to. I could see it in your eyes when you were flirting on Friday.”
We walked into the movie theater, and the girls lowered their voices while we stood in line for tickets. “Watch this space,” Rachel whispered.
“That’s what Josh’ll be doing,” Phoebe said, causing all three of them to giggle.
Me, not so much. I needed a day, even just a night, where Quinn, or anything relating to him, didn’t interrupt my thoughts.
“This is so boring,” Phoebe complained during one of the many unsexy moments in the movie. “Where’s the dirty sex? Where’s the ground shaking orgasms we were promised in the ads?”
“Yeah,” Rachel agreed. “I was expecting hot, sweaty sex, but this…” she held her hand toward the screen. “This is lame. Even if it were first-time cherry popping, it would still be boring as hell.”
After a few minutes, the main couple declared their love again, rolled around in the bed, and the screen faded to black. Credits appeared on the screen, and I’m pretty sure the entire auditorium let out a collective sigh of relief.
“Girls, I am so sorry,” Miley apologized. “That was my choice, and it sucked.”
“And not in the good way,” Phoebe said, lifting her hand, making a fist while moving it back and forth and poking her tongue in her cheek.
I let out a genuine laugh at that, but with her pursed lips and a tight smile, it seemed Phoebe wasn’t happy with me either way.
“I think we should get out of here while we still have the will to live,” she said, standing up. “Let’s go.”
Once outside, Miley and Rachel got into the bug and left, leaving me standing with Phoebe.
“I’ll just go get the car, okay? Back in two.”
“Don’t you want me to come with you? It’s pretty dark,” I offered, but she just smiled.
“No. You stay put. I’ll be right back.” With an insincere wink, she turned, her hair swishing behind her. Her heels clicked against the pavement until she turned the corner, her pale jeans and white blazer disappearing from sight.
I rubbed my hands together to warm them, the night air cold in the wide-open street. The corner offered no shelter from the wind, the chill growing colder with each passing minute. I checked my watch. Five minutes had gone by, and there was no sign of Phoebe.
Eight minutes.
Ten.
I looked around at the people slowly thinning out, leaving me almost alone on the street corner of Chavene and Smyth, an area I didn’t know. My heart pumped faster, my stomach fluttering inside, but they weren’t butterflies. It was the pulse of adrenaline, the hormone building faster and faster as people disappeared one by one. On quivering legs, I hurried to the parking lot at the rear of the theater and stopped dead.
Phoebe wasn’t there. Nobody was there. Not a single fucking car was there.
She’d left me.
I pulled out my phone and opened my contacts, calling Miley. It went straight to voicemail, her chirpy voice asking to do my thing after the beep.
“Miley, Phoebe’s deserted me,” I said quietly. “She fucking took off and left me here by myself. Please call me as soon as you get this.”
I hung up and dialed the only other person I had in my phone, hoping there was a chance it’d get through. “Please, Mom, be there.” The line was silent, the wait for the ringing tone to start feeling like minutes when it was only a few seconds until it started.
“This is Shelley Jensen, the lead prosecutor at D. S. Mahoney. I’m not available to take your call, so please leave your name, number, a short message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
I hung up before the beep and tried her cell, but I couldn’t get through. The office was in a bad signal area, and our phones were useless in there.
I have to call a cab.
I looked up from my phone to see that I was completely alone, only the lights of the movie theater and the street lamps my company. “Shit.” I had to keep my focus on my surroundings, find my way to somewhere where there were people, and then search the internet for a local cab number.
My hands quivered as I tried to put away my phone, my fingers slipping from the zip. “Fuck, fuck!” I whispered, fear creeping up my spine, making it harder for me to close it.
My throat tightened as I walked faster down the long street, cars passing by with people I’d never seen before glancing at me as they went on their way. My breaths became short, shallow, and harder as my chest constricted. My eyes grew wide as my heart sped, my survival instinct surging through my veins while the rest of me was on high alert for anybody coming out of the many shadows.
“Oh, God,” I squeaked, my eyes brimming when I couldn’t find another soul on the entire block. Stores and cafe’s were closed for the night, and there were some that had even closed permanently, shutters covered in graffiti over the windows; some boarded up. It was like a ghost town.
I checked my watch to see it was past eleven-thirty, and I was miles away from home. The sounds of my shaky breaths were deafening in the dark, empty night, but I couldn’t quiet them. Hard thumps pounded against my ribs from the inside, the galloping beats thundering in my ears. No matter how hard I tried to calm myself, to slow my heart and my breaths, they were amplified by the need to find somewhere I’d feel safe, somewhere I wasn’t about to burst into tears out of sheer panic.
The sound of an engine grew closer, coming up from the front, and I saw a single person riding toward me, the dark figure ascending at speed, covering too much ground in just a few seconds that if I even turned and ran, it’d be futile.
“Please go past, please go past,” I chanted, wishing that whoever they were, they’d just keep going wherever it is they were off too in the dead of night at—I rechecked my watch—midnight.
They flew past me, my body seizing up as the icy blast from their speed hit me, sending my hair flying about and covering my face. I sputtered, frantically pushing it back.
My chest burned with the cold air as I sucked in deep breaths, my legs going faster, my hands tight as I picked up my pace more and more, but even though the rider had gone by, I heard them turning around.
“Kinsley?” A voice yelled. I turned around when I heard my name. “Kinsley!” They shouted again.
I paused when I recognized the voice and the bike. “Quinn?”
He rode up beside me and cut his engine, his visor already up. His eyes were burning into me. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I-I went to the movies,” I stuttered, my voice frail like a frightened kid. “I got lost.”
“By your fucking self?” he yelled. He tugged off his helmet, his dark hair sticking up, but the wind blew it around, helping it to fall back into place. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“It’s not your concern.” My voice said otherwise, my tone barely audible.
He angled his head toward me, his face contorting into a rage I hadn’t seen on him before. “Like fuck it isn’t,” he growled. He set his bike on its stand and got off, rounding on me on the pavement. “You’re crying.”
I wiped my cheeks, stupidly trying to get rid of the evidence that he’d obviously seen. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.” He stood right up to me, his heat like a fire that I needed so much right then. “What happened? And don’t give me some bullshit that you came all the way out here on your own, because I know you have a car, remember?”
How could I forget?
“I came here with Miley and the girls,” I said. “Phoebe brought me.”
At the mention of her name, Quinn stiffened. “And?”
“She just left without me,” I said, explaining how that had come about. “I can’t get hold of anybody, and it’s not safe to be distracted on my phone to call a cab.”
Quinn scrubbed down his face, seeming unsure of what to do, but when I looked up, I saw his expression. Ticking jaw, nostrils flaring, and his hands shaking with suppressed emotion that I had no idea what he was feeling.
“I’m taking you home,” he said finally through gritted teeth. “Get on my bike.”
I looked at the bike then back to him. “I can’t.”
He froze, then turned slowly. “What?”
“I can’t get on a bike,” I repeated, shaking my head. “I promised my mom—”
“I bet you promised your mom you’d be safe, too, didn’t you?”
Fuck, he had me there. “I did.”
He handed me his helmet. “Put this on, and get the fuck on my bike, Kinsley. If you don’t, I’m gonna stand here with you all night until you do, even if it takes until sunrise.”
I blinked up at him. “You hate me, Quinn. Why would you help me?”
He snorted a laugh. “I never said I hated you, Kinsley. And even if I did, I still wouldn’t leave you out here on your own.” He pointed to the bike. “Get. On. I’m not asking.”
My shoulders sagged with resignation. I lifted the heavy helmet and slipped it over my head. I tried to fasten it, but Quinn’s large hands patted mine away while he worked them to fit me. I fo
cused on his eyes, concentration in his gaze as he adjusted the straps to fit me, his fingers working deftly until the clasp clicked into place.
“There,” he said, double-checking the fit. “Where do you live?” I rattled my address off quickly, and he nodded. He slid the visor down, sending his face into darkness. “I know the place. Put your arms around me and hold on tight,” he said over his shoulder once I got on the seat, already warm from his body. “I’ll go slow, okay?”
I nodded, then slipped my arms around him, his waist taut, firm, and flexing underneath me.
My thighs cradled his, our legs touching as he rode down the long road, the position feeling intimate. He slowed right down, then leaned into a corner, easing us around. I held tighter, gripping him to keep myself on the seat. There was no give in his torso when I clutched onto him, his body solid and so damn tight.
He straightened quickly, and I sucked in a breath, inhaling the same scent he gave off when he was next to me, fresh, clean, and…
Mouthwatering.
Fuck, I never wanted to think anything like that about Quinn, but I couldn’t deny that he did have a certain appeal about him. Not just his face, but the way he carried himself. Confident, assertive, and didn’t take crap from anybody.
If he was just a nicer person, I’d be crushing on him so bad like all the other girls I’d seen glancing his way, their eyes hopeful when he walked by.
“Hey, did you hear me?” he shouted over his shoulder.
I snapped my head up and opened my eyes. I couldn’t remember closing them. “What?” I shouted, my voice muffled through the helmet.
“I said we’re here. You can let go now.”
“Oh.” I looked around, and we were stopped right outside my house. My mom’s car was in the drive, and my gut sank. She was going to kill me. I swung my leg off the bike and hopped down, then took Quinn’s helmet off my head. “Here you go.”