by Joelle Knox
He stares at me, silent, the smile slipping from his face. Then he nods. “All right. A little bad happens to be my specialty.”
I touch his lips this time, lightheaded at my own daring. I’m at Liberty Point with Sean Whitlow at sunset, and I’m about to kiss him. Or do more than kiss him. Because whatever he is, he’s not a little anything. “I trust you.”
“Good.” His mouth moves under my fingertips. “What do you want to do first?”
His lips are warm. Tempting. The way they brush my skin zings through me, and it’s like my body is waking up. This is what it feels like when the third drink hits my system and everything gets flushed and loose. But I’m not blurry this time, and that inner voice I use the liquor to silence is whispering now, getting louder and louder as I drop my hand.
Maybe he didn’t mean kissing. Maybe he doesn’t want this. You’ll look stupid. You are stupid. Make a joke. Make an excuse. Laugh. Run.
Nothing’s really changed. I’m not a bad girl. I’m not even a good girl. I’m fake, nothing but anxiety and false smiles and a hundred hard-learned lessons in being politely invisible.
Being in the moment, in my own skin, isn’t a good thing anymore. “Can we drive somewhere?” I ask instead, not meeting his eyes. “Fast? I want to feel the wind again.”
The keys jingle as he digs them out of his pocket. “It’s a four-speed. You know how to drive stick?”
“No.” I rally with a half-smile. “Probably not a good car to learn in.”
“No, probably not.” He tilts my face up with one finger under my chin. “If you really want to let those horses run, nothing beats a straightaway.”
I don’t know how in hell he makes that sound suggestive, but my stomach flips as I nervously wet my lips. “Show me.”
He hauls open the car door, and I’m still climbing in when he slides behind the wheel. The engine roars to life, but instead of heading for the highway, Sean drives in the opposite direction. There’s an old gravel road, worn down to nothing but earth and a little packed rock, leading down into the valley.
“This is where the real fun happens,” he tells me. “It’s an old air strip from the county’s crop-dusting days. Hell of a place for drag racing.”
The strip flattens out ahead of us, a long, straight stretch of cracked asphalt. My heart thumps a little faster, a nervous warning I ignore. The last thing I want is to be some creepy echo of my sister, because this situation is fucked up enough. But if I could steal one thing from her, it would be this.
I want to be fearless. “How fast can we go?”
Sean laughs, his forearm flexing as he grips the shifter. “You don’t want to know.”
The engine rumbles, and we shoot forward. In a matter of seconds, the wind is screaming through the open windows as the car picks up speed.
Strands of hair whip free of my braid, fluttering wildly across my face. I try to push them back, but it doesn’t help, and a laugh bubbles up. At this speed, nothing can be politely contained. I’m at the mercy of Sean’s strong hands and fast reflexes.
I should be sick with terror. My parents just wrecked their car and ended their lives—but it wasn’t the car that killed them, or the speed. It was the denial, their refusal to admit that they couldn’t micromanage the world or themselves. It was my father, so recklessly arrogant, so damn sure he could drink as much as he wanted because he was rich and successful and had earned the right to ignore the rules.
The rules didn’t punish him. Reality did.
Sean’s not in denial. He’s in control. Of the car, of my fate. I give up on my hair and lay my hand over his instead, and my anxiety vanishes in a wash of giddy adrenaline.
He doesn’t say anything. I wouldn’t be able to hear him, anyway. But his hand tenses under mine for a heartbeat before moving, guiding the car into a higher gear. He doesn’t force it, just eases it along, like he knows that’s where the car wants to be, and he’s only helping it happen.
Maybe he’ll be like that with me. Easing, guiding, coaxing me exactly where I want to go, even when I don’t know myself.
I should have kissed him.
The road isn’t endless, and Sean downshifts as the car slows. He spins the wheel, one hand sliding over the slick wood grain as he turns the car around and stops.
His other hand still rests beneath mine. He hasn’t moved it. He hasn’t moved at all, so I do, leaning across the space separating us. Fast, while my heart is racing and my body is tight with excitement. My lips find his cheek, an inch from the corner of his mouth, and I can laugh this off if he stiffens or pulls away.
Instead, he turns his head that last inch and kisses me. Open, searching. His tongue traces over my lower lip until I open, too. And then there are no more questions, because he’s kissing me. Serious, intense. Unapologetic. He knows what he’s doing in a way drunk college boys never seem to, and he makes my whole body throb with a few suggestive licks.
And then it’s over. He pulls back, his eyes dark, his breathing a little heavy. The moment hangs between us, brittle enough to shatter with a single word of regret.
But he only smiles. “Ready to go again?”
It’s perfect. He could have taken anything, and instead he’s giving me what I need most—a safe thrill, and the chance to fly. “Yes.”
»» sean ««
After a few more drags up and down the strip, Hannah’s looking dizzy—and not in the good way. So I point the Boss back up the hill and park at one end of the overlook. The moon is out now, and its light glints off the chrome on a single other car, parked far enough away to barely catch my attention as I pull a blanket from the trunk. Hannah and I spread it out on a clear patch of grass and sit, staring up at the stars slowly blinking into visibility above us.
If I lick my lips, I can still taste her mouth on mine. There’s an energy, a thread of heat stretched across the quiet space between us. We don’t talk, but it isn’t uneasy the way silence can be. It isn’t comfortable, not exactly, but the tension is more about that heat than awkwardness.
When Hannah finally speaks, it isn’t nervous babble, but a question. “Is that what you feel like when you’re racing?”
“That? Nah.” Her hair is a mess, tangled and windblown. I brush a bit of it away from her eyes. “The speed is good, but racing’s a little more complicated. Driving in a straight line all by yourself is nothing. Competing against other drivers is the high.”
She smiles, and I’m starting to recognize that one. The left side of her mouth goes up and her gaze jumps down and back. Mischievous but shy, like she’s used to hiding her sense of humor. “So you like being on top.”
“Dirty.” I nudge her shoulder with mine. “Everything has to come together. It’s skill, but it’s also luck. If you’re good enough, you can beat better cars. And if you suck, the best car in the world can’t win you checkered flags. Sometimes you have both, but something happens to fuck it all up—a guy spinning out on the back stretch right in front of you, or a caution that blows your giant lead on second place. When you have all three, though, it’s magical.”
“I don’t think I could handle driving.” She bumps her shoulder against mine again and doesn’t pull back, but she’s staring straight ahead now. “One wrong move and it’s all over. Doesn’t the pressure make you crazy?”
“Life is like that.” I know it’s a simplistic answer—it’s not like racing isn’t any more dangerous than walking your dog or making an omelet. But fear can only hold you back if you let it. “I don’t want to die. But I don’t want to get old, thinking about all the things I wanted but never even tried to get.”
She nods, pulling her knees toward her chest. When she wraps her arms around her legs, she looks small and defensive, but her voice doesn’t waver. “I’m failing out of school.”
The way she says it makes me think I must have misheard. She’s not freaked out or even sad. If anything, she sounds relieved. “You what?”
“I’m failing.” She shrugs, as if it isn�
��t a big deal, but she’s tense now. Not from the words, but like she’s braced for my reaction. “I’m a cliché, right? The sad little rich girl who’s fucking up her opportunities because her mom was mean to her.”
“Is that why?”
“No. I don’t know.” She glances at me. “I don’t know yet what I want to be. I only know I don’t want to be pre-law.”
“Hey.” I slide my arm around her shoulders. “You’re still looking, that’s all. When you find the thing you want to do, you’ll know it.”
Hannah curls into me. That’s the only way to describe the way she twists in my direction, pressing close with the same helpless hunger I saw the first night. She’s starved for affection, so neglected that a hug and a couple of nice words are a gift.
It’s a crying fucking shame.
My family’s not perfect. We lost my dad way too soon, but my mom is a rock, and my brothers and my sister have always been there for me. I’ve never spent a single moment of my life wondering if there was anyone who would care if I was hurting or broken. I know I have people who care. I’m surrounded by them.
Hannah has no one.
“Are you going back to Atlanta?” I ask softly.
She rests her cheek on my shoulder. “I’m on probation with my scholarships. I was going to lose them after this term, and then I wouldn’t have had a choice. But with my parents... I guess I could appeal. They might make an exception?”
I don’t know jack shit about scholarship procedures, but I nod anyway. “Seems reasonable to me.”
It doesn’t comfort her. Hell, it does the opposite. “I have to try, then, right? It would be stupid to just quit.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“That’s all I’ve ever done—what I have to do.”
I keep my voice gentle. My words are anything but. “And how does that work, when there’s no one left to tell you what that is?”
“I don’t know.” She’s so close that I can feel her breath on my throat as she exhales slowly. “That was the best part of the car ride. I have all these big, crazy decisions to make. But for a few minutes, everything was easy, because all I could do was close my eyes and hold on.”
Life should be like that, scary and exhilarating, but shot through with a solid core of control. Anything else isn’t worth it. “You’re gonna be okay, Hannah.”
“I know.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “I’m so scared I’ll go back out of guilt, because I hated my parents, and I feel so bad for hating them.”
Who wouldn’t? It’d be easy to brush that off—your parents were jerks, no wonder you hated them—but shit. That is a big deal. It’s not the way things are supposed to work. “If you know yourself well enough to be scared of that, then you can watch out for it.”
“Maybe.” She eases back just far enough to smile up at me. “I mean, I said it out loud, and the world didn’t end. That’s something.”
“That’s a lot.”
“You’re such a liar, you know that?” Her lips graze my cheek in a sweet, fleeting kiss, and then she’s gone, sprawling back on the blanket to stare up at the stars. “You are a nice guy, Sean. But don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”
“Good.” I hide my smile as I settle beside her. “I take enough crap from the guys at work.”
“Better hope Gibb never finds out.”
“Gibb has his own secrets.” She raises an eyebrow at that, and I shrug. “He gets these mysterious texts all the time, then he disappears for hours. Won’t tell anyone where he’s been.”
“Secret girlfriend? He seems like the type.”
“Not usually.”
She hesitates before looking away. “Is his dad still…?”
“Around? Barely.” It’s strange, discussing this with her, because everyone else knows. They’ve witnessed the worst of it. Gibb has had to call for rides because his dad picked him up drunk. He’s dragged the man out of bar fights and scraped together bail money—all with the whole town watching. “I think he’s living with some woman in Florida right now.”
Hannah’s hand closes around mine, clutching tight. “No wonder Gibb doesn’t want to look at me.”
For him, Hannah’s life is like a funhouse mirror. Underneath, it’s all the same, but the consequences have been distorted by circumstance. His dad has spent time locked up for driving drunk, despite Gibb’s best efforts to stop him. Hannah’s dad, if he had survived his car accident, might have skated without a DUI, much less a felony charge.
“It’s not exactly fair, is it?” I ask softly. “To you or to him.”
“To him,” she counters. “I’m spoiled.”
“Bullshit.”
“Sean…” She sighs. “I had it good, okay? It isn’t bad to acknowledge that. I was never hungry or in danger or anything. It could have been worse.”
“That makes you luckier than Gibb, that’s all.” I roll over onto my side to face her and prop my head up on my arm. “If you were spoiled, you’d be glad your dad got away with so much shit, because it made your life easier.”
“It did,” she says hesitantly, as if she’s not quite sure it’s the truth.
“In some ways,” I allow.
She pins her lower lip between her teeth, a gesture as uncertain as the look in her eyes. “I always wanted him to get caught. Not even for good reasons, like then maybe he’d stop drinking so much. I wanted him to get caught because then we could have stopped pretending.”
That was her whole life. No wonder she doesn’t want to go back to Emory and keep working toward a goal she never wanted. “So stop now. You don’t have to pretend anymore.”
“Cait couldn’t pretend. My mother shoved and pushed, but she could never get her into that box.” Hannah squeezes her eyes shut. “It was so easy for me. What if I stop pretending and there’s nothing there?”
It doesn’t seem likely, but there’s no denying the fear that vibrates off of her. “Then you figure it out, just like everything else.”
It takes a few long moments, but the words seem to work. She relaxes, and her eyes drift open. “I have options. I mean, that house has to be worth something. Maybe I have time to do that—figure things out.”
The stars are brighter now, and it’s easier to see the constellations. Orion’s Belt, the Big Dipper—all the formations, each with its own shifting place in the sky. “You’re young, Hannah. You’ve got your whole life to figure that shit out.”
It should be plenty of time. It isn’t always—one more thing that isn’t fair—but we keep going, because that’s all we can do.
7
»» hannah ««
I wake up with a clear head. No hangover, no lingering nightmares, just the funny sense of warmth and loss you get when something wakes you up from an awesome dream you can’t quite remember.
Maybe I was kissing Sean in my dreams. I hope so, because I didn’t kiss him good night when he dropped me off last night. Not because I didn’t want to—just the thought of his lips on mine again makes my knees wobble—but because I was raw from the jagged edges of hope slicing through me, and I didn’t want to be distracted from that.
Hope. What the hell does that even mean?
I don’t know. But it’s easier to roll out of bed this morning than it has been in months. All those decisions still weigh heavy on my shoulders. Hell, there are more of them now than there were yesterday. But it’s different this morning, because I no longer feel like I’m looking at two impossible choices.
I have options this morning, and options mean possibilities.
Unfortunately, moving toward the future means facing the past. My father’s lawyer offered to meet me at the house, but mostly out of a sense of obligation. He’s a busy man, and I’m not going back there if I can help it, so I pull into the parking lot of his law firm just before ten a.m., ready to hear all about those possibilities.
Half an hour later, I’m nothing less than overwhelmed.
Mr. Ewing is younger than my father was, but
his hair is already peppered with gray strands that catch the fluorescent lights as he bends his head over the paperwork on his desk. “The situation’s complicated,” he says, “because of your mother’s condition. Luckily, she had a springing power of attorney—do you know what that means?”
“No.”
“It grants someone the authority to handle financial matters and make certain decisions. In this case, because of your mother’s incapacitation.” He pulls a paper from the stack and hands it to me. “She gave power of attorney to Marcia Prescott.”
Marcia is my mother’s best friend, co-chair on all her committees and the co-host of all of her best parties. She’s probably at the hospital right now, putting in her daily obligatory show of grief. Marcia’s just like my mother—obsessed with appearances.
In that, she knows my mother better than I ever did. I stare at the paper and try to make sense of what I’m looking at. “Does this mean Marcia makes all the decisions?”
He shakes his head. “I’ve been working with Mrs. Prescott on things like the funeral arrangements and life insurance claims. She’s willing to help facilitate legal matters. But with regards to major decisions—like your mother’s health care—she’d rather defer to you.”
No, it couldn’t have been easy. I set the paper down with a nod. “Okay. What about the rest of it? Is there something I need to do?”
“The probate process can take a while. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. But...” He hands over another cluster of papers. “Insurance. The larger policies belong to your mother—insuring her life—” He clears his throat. “Your father did have one small, rather old policy, though, that will pay out directly to you.”
The policy is another block of text so dense and dry I’m not sure how I ever thought I could fake my way through law school. But my eyes slide straight to the lines where the beneficiaries are listed—me and Cait.
Just me, now. “Twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“Like I said, a small policy, but it’ll pay out immediately. As soon as you sign some paperwork.”