by Emilia Finn
Bryan kills his engine, and tugs the keys out of the ignition, then he slides out of the low-riding car and starts to come around to my door when I remain frozen in place.
Not just frozen in the car. But frozen with my arms wrapped around my knees. My seatbelt in place. My hands shaking from adrenaline.
My eyes remain shadowed from the hat I managed to keep hold of all night, but from beneath the brim, I’m able to watch as Bryan walks around the hood of his car. His jeans hang a little lower than they did when I first saw him tonight. His hair is completely mussed under the hat. His shirt is torn, and blood spatters make him all the more terrifying.
But he opens my door anyway. Crouches down beside me. And when I refuse to move, he reaches up to place a finger under my jaw.
He turns my face, and stares into my eyes so I see his sparkle beneath the streetlights twenty or so feet away. He was smiling. But that turns to a frown as he swipes a thumb beneath my eye. “Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know.” My voice breaks on a pathetic squeak. “It’s just… I’m one of those people. I’m feeling a tad overwhelmed right now. You don’t have to worry.”
“Can I undo your seatbelt?” He lifts a hand. Allows me a moment to prepare. “I promise I’m only, like, twenty percent, copping a feel. The other eighty percent is being honorable.”
I let out a watery laugh. But instead of telling him yes, I unbuckle myself, and try to unfold my legs.
I whimper as my knees protest, grunt when the denim scrapes against my torn skin.
“Why are your knees bleeding, Maddi?” He takes my hands when I finally straighten my legs. Then I bend them again to climb out of the car. “Did you fall down?”
I clear my throat and keep my eyes anywhere but on him. “Got knocked down while a couple buffoons were fighting in the dirt. It’s okay.”
His eyes snap to mine and force me to look up. “I knocked you down?”
“Shoved, I think would be the correct description.”
I shake my head when his cheeks turn white. “It’s okay,” I tell him. “I was actually half a second from an elbow to the face, so this was better.”
I say nothing when he wraps an arm around my hips. When he takes most of my weight, like I have a broken leg, and not scraped knees. And when he walks to a house – not the one our driveway belongs to – I say nothing as he helps me up the steps and onto the porch.
“Come inside,” he murmurs with a rough voice. “Let me help you clean up your knees so you don’t get an infection.”
I vow not to tell him about my smarting elbows. Instead, I nod and walk through the front door when he unlocks it and swings it open.
The house is dark, though many others in this estate are not. It’s not that late, considering it’s a Saturday night. Ten o’clock.
We lasted less than an hour at the tracks. It felt like days, weeks, even. But it was less than an hour.
And now I’m walking into Bryan Kincaid’s home.
Fucking hell.
“You can walk on your own?” he asks.
When I look up to catch his eyes, I realize we’re barely an inch apart. His breath feathers over my lips. The brim of his hat hugs mine.
“Maddi?”
“Huh?”
He smiles. “Can you walk on your own? Let me go get some ice and stuff.”
“Oh. Sure.” I bounce out of his arms, a nervous, twitching movement that makes me look like a fool. “I scraped my knees. I didn’t get hit by a car.”
His lips flatten. My joke, the same.
“That man you call your boyfriend,” he seethes. “He nearly hit you with his fucking car. Think about that when you decide to go home to him.”
Digging his hands into his pockets, he shakes his head and walks away, leaving me all alone in the darkness.
The living room is to my left, and a massive floor-to-ceiling window lets light in from outside, so I wander through the shadows, pass a large couch, and stop.
“Do you want a drink?” he calls from the kitchen. “I’ve got basically everything.”
“Just water. Please.”
“Yup.”
He’s not quiet as he moves around in the dark. He slams cupboards, crashes what sounds like an ice tray against the counter. Some, he audibly drops into a glass of water. Others land with a deep thud that make me think he’s placing them in a towel.
He’s making a homemade ice-pack.
I wander closer to the window, and stare into the little street outside. At the house across from us, with the colorful shutters. And the one two doors up from that, with a kid’s trike in the yard.
I’m in what my family would call the lion’s den. I’m deep inside the Kincaid family estate. Everyone in town knows who lives out here. Everyone that I socialize with considers this a compound for a family that considers themselves elite.
But the trike in the yard makes me think of something else.
It makes me consider that they want their privacy. Their safety. And maybe it’s not so much about elitism.
“Who lives across the street?”
“Blue shutters?” he asks from far away.
“No, the trike.”
He chuckles. “My uncle Jack. My mom’s brother. He and my Aunt Britt have like…” He pauses. “Sixty-seven kids now.”
“What?” I turn as his voice comes closer. Then his shadow fills a large doorway, and sends a bolt of electricity through my stomach.
He flips a switch until lights illuminate the living room. He goes for a minimalist look: couch, TV, a few kid’s toys that I’m certain don’t belong to him or children he’s made.
That means he has his family over often. It means he’s not lying when he speaks of his loyalty and love.
“Jack and Britt,” he continues on a laugh. “They had a little boy ages ago. Charlie’s nine now. Then they had a bit of a break, right?”
“Uh…” I accept a glass of water when he crosses the room. “Okay.”
“Right. But then it’s like they forgot how not to make babies, because Aunt Britt has been pregnant basically since their second kid. Like, constantly. Honestly?” He places a finger under my glass to encourage me to drink. “I feel bad for her at this point.”
I lower my drink, and barely stop short of groaning as the cool liquid slides along my throat. “How many kids do they have? Sixty-seven may be an exaggeration.”
He snickers. “They have four. But they’re wild, so it feels like there’s a hundred of them. Also, be prepared for when you turn around.”
“Huh?”
He sweeps the glass out of my hand as I turn, then I scream when I’m faced with a six-foot tall plastic statue with weird, penetrating eyes that promise it’ll hack me up in my sleep.
He’s an ice cream shape, has a waffle cone for a body, and weird size-sixteen feet. He flashes a thumbs-up and will forevermore live in my nightmares.
“Don’t scream,” he chuckles. “I warned you to be ready.”
“That’s Miss Dixie’s!” I hiss. “Oh my god, Bry! It was you!”
“What was me?” He passes the glass back and shows off a sexy smirk that is the topping on this crazy as hell night. “I didn’t do shit.”
“It was on the news,” I whisper-yell. “It’s been on the news for years. Every Christmas, she launches a new appeal and begs for his return.”
Laughing, Bry circles away to the couch and sets his supplies on the coffee table. “If you snitch, I might have to kill you. Just so you know.” He shrugs. “He’s part of the family now. Don’t ruin this for us.”
“You stole…” I frown, then shake my head. “No. He’s been missing since we were kids. You were way too young to be the one who stole him.”
He scoffs. “I assure you, Madilyn. I was a resourceful child. If I wanted to steal him, I could have.” He pats the couch beside him. “Having said that… no, it wasn’t me. I’m simply the person who is holding onto him for this year.”
“So, you…” I wan
der to the couch and try to ignore the pain my jeans create as they scrape my knees. “I don’t get it.”
“You remember that poor, pitiful, perpetually pregnant aunt I just told you about?”
I sit on the very edge of the couch and nod.
“It was her. She’s a thieving wench, and now we all have to help cover her crimes. It was all fun and games until she got the kids involved. Now I’m an accessory to a crime. Brooke had him last year. Mac, the year before, and Smalls, the year before that. Basically, we’re all going to prison. If I was a cynical man, I’d wonder if Aunt Britt did it on purpose. She’s trying to get us all locked up, because, I assure you, she may have stolen the stupid thing, but she has never had it in her home.”
He stops. His eyes widen. “Holy shit, she’s setting us up to go to prison for life.”
Finally, I’m able to laugh. And because I’m brave, I pat his knee. “Even if you’re caught, I doubt you’ll be sentenced to life for the theft of a statue. Unless, of course, it was Rocky’s statue from Philly. Pretty sure he’s a national treasure and protected under some law. But for the ice cream man?” I sip my water and consider. “I don’t know. Five to seven years, with a chance of parole after four?”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
He begins poking through a small first aid kit, selecting alcohol wipes and a large bottle of disinfectant. His eyes remain hidden in shadow, since his hat is pulled low, but it’s like he realizes that after a moment. He squints as he works, moves to get more light, then finally, he tosses his hat to the coffee table and goes back to work with clearer eyesight.
“Do you want ibuprofen or something?” he asks.
He looks up when I don’t answer, busy staring at his bloodied hands, the bottle of disinfectant, and focusing on how much that’s going to hurt.
“Hey?” He fingers the brim of my hat and lifts it a little higher. “Did you get a knock to the head tonight?”
I shake my head.
He lifts a brow. “No?”
“I didn’t hurt my head. And no, I don’t need ibuprofen. But thanks.”
He nods to an overflowing pile of laundry stacked in the corner as he goes to work setting out his things. Gauze. Tape. Disinfecting cream. “See that pair of sweats on the top of the pile?” He lifts his chin in that direction, like I’m completely blind and need his help. “Black, with purple logos?”
Nodding, I set my glass of water on the table and stand.
“Can you get them for me?”
“Sure.”
I move around the table, step over a child’s toy, and slow to peek at a little notebook laid out on the floor. It’s open, and a sparkle pen sits in the fold.
“Don’t read that,” he murmurs, bringing my eyes back to his. He grins. “She doesn’t like people reading her first drafts.”
“First drafts?” Despite his orders, I look back to the notepad. “What?”
“My niece writes books.” He tears open an alcohol wipe and slams it to his bleeding knuckles without remorse. He lets out a hiss, scrunches his eyes closed to fight the pain, and through his teeth, he grits out, “She trusts me not to read her first drafts. So for me to retain that trust, I’m gonna have to insist you also don’t read.”
I move to the pile of laundry and snag the sweats as ordered, then I dart back to the couch. “Stop.” I toss the pants into his lap, and snatch his hand before he makes it worse. “Have you no tact? Jesus, Bry. With the number of fights you’ve been in, I’d expect you to do this with a little more finesse.”
He watches as I pull his hand onto my leg. As I spread his fingers wide and lay his hand out flat. Then, because I’m an idiot, my heart skips when he closes his fingers around my thigh.
He makes me feel tiny. Weak. But not afraid.
Swallowing my nerves, I draw in a long breath, let it out again, and reach for the antiseptic and a cotton wipe. “So, your niece, who is, what? Six years–”
“She’s seven,” he grunts as I work over his split skin. “She’ll be eight in a little while.”
“So this seven-year-old writes books? Just like that? So easily?”
He shrugs. “I doubt it’s easy. But sure, she writes. She’s penned a bunch of them, and my sister helps her illustrate and publish them.”
“Wow.” I can’t help the way my brows lift with surprise. “I’m impressed. So your niece leaves her notepad laid out like that, and you simply… don’t look?”
“Nope.” He hisses when I squirt a little cream onto his knuckle. “She asked me not to. I promised I wouldn’t. That’s that.”
“You’re not even curious?” My eyes flick back to the book on the floor. “I’m dying of curiosity over here, and you’re telling me you walk around her notes all the damn time and never look?”
He shrugs. “She always reads it to me when she’s done. So it’s not like I never see. I just don’t look until she’s comfortable enough to show me.”
“That’s…” I consider him. “Honorable.”
He scoffs and looks down into my eyes. “Surprised?”
I look back to his hand, but I nod too. Because it’s truth. “In my family, the Kincaids are not spoken of highly. It’s not fair, I get that now. But I was raised on the foundations of disliking those Kincaids.” I smile. “That’s how they say it. Those Kincaids.”
He scowls and works hard on relaxing his hand when it tenses around my thigh. “What did my family ever do to yours? From the moment I met Jackson, he’s been a pain in my ass. He set out to annoy me as often as he could, but no one ever explained why.”
“You have no clue, do you?” I laugh and continue to clean his hand. “You’re oblivious?”
“I often am.” He chuckles. “I don’t go out of my way to learn other people’s business. I can’t say I give your family much thought, except when y’all piss me off.”
“Which, lately, seems to be pretty damn often.”
All he does is scoff in answer.
“My family is old money, right? Old, pre-Civil-War money. We’re what you’d call ‘real’ money,” I explain.
“And my family?”
I grit my teeth. “You’re known as trailer trash that happened to get lucky and fall into money.”
Instead of the anger I expect, he only throws his head back and laughs. “Ouch!”
“It gets worse,” I continue. “Because your money could have come from a lucky lottery ticket, or a lucky discovery of gold. It could have come from an insurance claim. Or maybe someone married the right person, and that’s how it came to be.”
“Fighting.” His lips twitch with fun.
“Yeah. Your family made money from fighting. And that, in my world, is basically offensive.”
“How dare we train and excel in a sport,” he chuckles. “How dare my father take the lessons he learned from his father, and do something great?” His eyes come to me. “My father was a world fucking champion title holder.”
I look back to his hand. “I know.”
“Multiple years,” he continues. “Multiple titles.”
Again, I nod.
“Two of my uncles held a world title too.” He lifts his chin back to the yard with the trike. “My Uncle Jack was a world champion. He did what my dad did. They took a name they were proud of, even though everyone with that name was broke as an ugly hooker. He worked hard, trained to be the best, became the best, then he saved his money and created a family.”
For the third time, I nod.
“And somehow, their hard work is looked down upon by a family who rode the coattails of their family before them?”
Finally, I press a hand to my heart and snicker. “Ouch.”
“It should be us looking down on you people. At least we worked for it. At least we risked everything on our dreams and made our names worth something. Your family just…”
“Sits in our homes with a fancy cup of tea balancing on our knees, while we bitch about everyone else?”
“Exactly!”
<
br /> “Your family doesn’t bitch?” I ask. “Never?”
He shakes his head. “Not about outsiders. We bitch at each other, about each other. We tear family to shreds, because roasting each other is fun.” He looks toward the window in contemplation. “Can’t say we ever sit around gossiping about other people though. We don’t have time for that, and it’s not as much fun if they’re not sitting right there with us to feel the heat of our burns.”
I finish cleaning his left hand, then switch it out for the right. The worst one. “That all sounds so logical. Almost honorable.”
“And that still surprises you.”
I shrug, and grit my teeth when I lay the first dollop of antibacterial on his knuckles.
“Ah!”
“I’m sorry,” I apologize when he hisses. “And I’m only relaying what I know. I’m not saying I sit around bitching about you or your family.”
I stop as heat rushes to my cheeks. “Well, there was one time. But it didn’t feel good. I was drunk, I got caught up in the moment, then I passed out in Jenna’s bed.” And woke with Jackson’s arm flung over my hip. “But I think you miss the reason behind my family’s pettiness.”
He relaxes his jaw, turns, and looks down into my eyes. “There’s a reason other than how we make a living?”
“Your family really doesn’t gossip.” I laugh. “If they did, you’d know this.”
“Know what?”
“My surname is Tosky.” I speak slowly, and work on picking gravel and dirt out of his cuts. “Maybe we named our company Monaco, but our surname is Tosky. A long time ago…” I grin. “Two generations, to be exact, my grandfather was going to school with this girl. They were set to marry.” I scoff. “Back then, I guess it was okay to discuss marriage between teens. Anyway, his parents, and her parents had worked out a deal that the teens would be married, and a family would be merged.”
I look up, and stop on his smirk. “What?”
“I love storytime. Keep going.”
I roll my eyes when he laughs. “So this chick and this guy are basically betrothed, and the whole town knows about it. They’re just waiting for her to turn eighteen so they can tie it all up and make it legal.”