by Anne Hansen
Maybe I was wrong and the desperation isn’t good-bye…maybe it’s the beginning of Vin breaking down his walls and finally giving in to what we have completely.
Even as I’m thinking it, I hear a voice calling his name from what seems like a hundred miles away. As he pulls his mouth from mine, I focus on his eyes. They’re narrowed with shame and bright with fury.
“Vin?” I ask, but I look up and see the girl, the blond girl from our English class.
The one who follows Vin around school, who keeps an eye on him whenever they’re in the same vicinity. The one who was his serious girlfriend, who Leo told me once broke his heart.
“I’m sorry,” he says in a strangled whisper. “You have no idea how goddamn sorry I am. You don’t deserve this. You’re better than this. You need to stay away from me. I need to stay away from you.” He runs his hands through his hair and backs up. “She’s who I deserve. She lies and she’s hard-hearted. She’s from this place, understands the bad, understands the kind of life I’m tied up in. She’s the kind of person I should be with.”
“What?” The word echoes off the walls around us.
“Vin?” The girl—Faline, her name is Faline—calls to Vin again.
He never takes his eyes off me. His words roll out, quick and desperate, and my brain can’t quite process what he’s trying to tell me.
“I know how you love, Keira. I don’t deserve that kind of love, do you hear me? I’ve tried a thousand ways to tell you, I swear I have. I know how loyal you are. So I’m showing you, now, that I belong—” He gestures to the girl waiting there in a tight black dress, looking very sexy and very bewildered. “To that life. To the people who are in that life. That’s all I’m good for and—”
I push past him and head down the hall to the outer door.
I need air.
I need to escape whatever the hell is happening here, on this night that was supposed to be so magical. I run in my heels, but I nearly trip, so I kick them off and keep running, away from the sound of Vin calling my name, past Faline, who stares at me. I run as fast as I can, barefoot, until I hit the cold, clean air outside. I gulp down lungfuls and press those sobs back.
I will not cry. I will not cry over Vin again, not a single damn tear.
And I don’t.
But whether or not the tears run down my face, I can’t stop the way my heart cracks and crumbles inside my chest.
I run after Keira, stopping for a second to scoop up the silver heels she kicked off.
I’ve been sick to my stomach over my stupid, cowardly plan since the second it popped into my head. After trying to talk her out of being with me over and over¸ I realized the only way to push someone as loyal as Keira away was to betray her. So I turned to the one person I knew who was a master of betrayal.
Faline fell all over herself when I told her I needed her to go with me to the winter formal.
I tried to tell Keira a thousand different ways, a hundred different times. When I never managed to come up with the words, I realized that having her see it with her own eyes would be the only way to get her to truly grasp it.
I never hated myself more than I did standing in that hall while I watched her face register the truth.
I catch her in my arms when I get out the door. “Keira, wait, please, I screwed up. I should have just told you, I should have just—”
“Oh my God.” She pushes back off my chest and shoves her hands into all that dark curling hair I want to bury my face in. “How could I have been so stupid?” Her voice shakes. “I need to get the hell out of here. I need to get the hell away from you!”
She starts to dart into the parking lot where a few people are pulling in late. I grab her arm.
“You don’t even have your shoes on, you idiot!” I yell.
She snatches them from my hand and drops them onto the gravel, shoving one foot, then the other into them. “You made your point, Vin. And I’m ready to go home.”
“I’ll take you,” I say, fishing in my pocket for my keys.
Her sharp laugh sends a chill down my spine. “Are you kidding me? I’ll walk home first. I’ll hitchhike! I don’t want to see your face again!”
I reach for her. “Baby, listen to me. Don’t do this—”
“Don’t you dare,” she snarls, yanking her wrist away from me and looking at Faline, who has her hip popped against the hood of my car.
“Get off my car!” I yell at her. She stands hurriedly and Keira steps forward, pokes a finger hard at my chest.
“Don’t you talk to her that way,” she snaps. “What the hell do you think you are? Some kind of caveman gigolo?”
I stare at her. “I’ve been called a lot of shitty things in my life, but never that,” I say, trying not to smile.
“Wipe that smile off your face, Vin Moretti,” Keira demands. She runs her hands over the silver fabric of that dress, that dress that made my jaw drop when she walked out in it, the dress I want to peel off her slowly, sweetly in my room—damn. I need to stop thinking that way. Bile rises in my throat when I realize what I’ve done. She isn’t mine anymore. “I’m...I’m leaving,” she says, marching away.
“You know damn well it isn’t safe to walk around this town alone,” I remind her. Her face burns bright red, I’m sure because she’s remembering that scary as fuck night in the park. “I’ll take you home,” I insist.
I’m praying for a miracle, hoping beyond all reasonable hope that she’ll come to my car quietly and let me drive her back. Maybe we can talk. Maybe I can explain how this all got so screwed up.
“I told you, no,” she says, shaking her head so hard her dark curls bounce all around her shoulders and neck. “Anyway, you need to take Faline home. She’s your date, and you should treat her better.”
“Why the hell does it matter to you how I treat Faline?” I demand, stalking so close, I can see the way her blue eyes pick up the silver of her dress.
I wish I could slide the zipper down and strip it off her. I wish I could rewind time and take us back to a place where things were a hell of a lot simpler than they are right now.
“I’m not some pawn, Vin,” she says, her voice pure fury. “And neither is Faline. If you don’t have the guts to stand up for me, for us, fine! Fine. No problem, no issue. But the fact that…I just can’t believe you would think you could…” She waves her hands around in front of her, like my mother does when she’s searching for an English word but can only think of the Italian version. “Have your cake and eat it too!”
“Have my cake and eat it too?” I give a dry laugh. “Really? That’s how you see it?”
She gets right in my face, stretching up high on those ridiculous heels. “That’s exactly how I see it. I’m what you can’t have because of your precious secret life. Faline fits in with your past perfectly. So there’s me over here and Faline over there, and if you can just do what you want with each one of us separately, you have it made, don’t you?” She shakes her head with disgust. “Having your cake and eating it too, Vin. That’s what you’re doing, and it makes me sick.”
“You’ve never been more wrong, Keira. I did this to protect you, because you’re not taking any steps to protect yourself.” I pull her closer, waiting for her to smack me, spit in my face, something, anything.
But she just looks at me with disgust. “Right. Protecting me. By never making a choice. By playing pretend and refusing to face what’s in front of you. So stop saying you’re ‘protecting me’ when the only thing you’re doing is lying to yourself!”
“I’m lying to myself?” I snort. “Fine. What the hell are you doing then?” I ask, my face so close to hers we might as well kiss.
Damn, I wish we were kissing instead of screaming at each other in the gravel parking lot of our high school.
“Me?” she gasps. “What the hell do you mean?”
I grab her shoulders, smooth and hot in the cold of the night air and say what’s been running through my brain for months now.
“You want me. But only the way I was this summer, Keira. Only the scrubbed clean version of Vin Moretti. All the good, none of the flaws. Well guess what, sweetheart? You can’t just ignore the bad and make it all go away.” I snap my fingers and she jumps back. “I am who I am, a little bit of good and a whole hell of a lot of bad.”
“Right,” she sneers. “You’re so damn badass, aren’t you? So mysterious, so fucking tortured! Well, guess what, Vin? I don’t buy it! I think it’s a cop out. I think it’s a way for you to do whatever the hell you want, but never hold yourself accountable. I think you’re scared.” She ropes her fingers around my wrists, but she doesn’t push my hands away from her shoulders.
“Scared?” I laugh. “Of what?”
She backs down. It’s like she shrinks, and her face goes from fiery and pissed as hell to soft. Pitying. She looks at Faline, who’s standing next to my car in her too tight black lace dress like she’s not sure what the hell to do with herself.
“I think,” she says, her voice low enough that only I can hear, “you’re afraid of everything, Vin. Every damn thing. And I think that fear is going to be the one thing that ruins any chance you ever had of being truly happy.”
This time she does pull my hands away. The second I’m not touching her skin anymore, I feel a gaping rip in my heart, like a black hole sucking every miserable emotion away and filling me with chaos.
“Good-bye. For real this time. We paid our debt to each other, Vin. And I’m not remotely interested in getting used by you again.”
She turns, and I watch as the most beautiful, perfect thing I’ve ever had in my shitty life walks away.
Just when I decide I should follow, a sleek muscle car pulls up alongside her. It’s David Lombardi. He jumps out and runs to the passenger side, puts his arm around her shoulders and leads her to the passenger door.
“Are you taking me home, Vin?” Faline’s voice is cautious, like it always is with me.
I look at the face of the one girl I would have considered my serious girlfriend before Keira. Faline was always nice enough when she wasn’t screwing around behind my back. She never pushed me, never challenged me. If I was pissed and pushed her away, she stayed away. If I crooked my finger, she came running. When I was upset, she let me have it out, if I wanted comfort, she opened herself up to me.
I treated her like a doormat, and the fact that she went to someone else to find some physical comfort makes a ton of sense to me now. All the rage and contempt I felt for her is completely gone now.
No. Not gone.
Just turned inward. Where it belongs.
“I’m not gonna leave you freezing in the parking lot. Where the hell is your coat?” I ask, trying not to take my shitty temper out on her, but failing pretty miserably.
“I didn’t wear one,” she says. She opens her own door and sits in the car, waiting patiently for me.
I stand next to the car and think about what Keira said. Much as I hate to admit it, it makes sense. I have been living a double life.
On one hand, I’m Vin Moretti, car thief, delinquent, badass Eastside heartbreaker who can barely stand the idea of monogamy because it means risking opening up and being vulnerable. With Faline at my side and an attitude no one dares to poke at, I reign like a dark prince in this shithoule.
On the other hand I’m Vin Moretti, blue collar guy with a heart of gold under all the rust and dings, working hard to make things better, my heart completely dedicated to the one girl who won’t put up with my shit for a single second. With Keira a whole brave new world is just ahead of me, and I want it just as much as I’m terrified by it.
Neither version of me feels right, and I’m not sure where I belong yet.
I don’t like it much, but I have to admit to myself that the version I am with Faline is the one that fits like a second skin. I know this Vin backward and forward, have been him for so long, I’m comfortable slipping into him. So I do, and I do it with hardly a second thought.
The problem is, I used to be totally happy with this version of myself. Now, I can’t stand this guy. I’m just not sure I’m brave enough to get rid of him for good and face the complete unknown where I might turn into the one thing I can’t stomach.
A loser.
***
I realize immediately just how badly I fucked up, but, unfortunately, my idiotic plan worked way too well. Just like that, all communication with Keira is shredded.
She doesn’t answer my calls or texts. When I try to approach her by her locker, David and Lily rear up like vicious guard dogs. Which is especially weird, since the two of them always seemed a little afraid of me, a little intimidated. I’m started to realize that having Keira around changes people, makes them braver and better than they were before they knew her.
I can’t even get a grasp on how much I regret realizing that fact a little too late.
***
I stare at my final assignment.
The one that will free my father from Gio’s games and treachery. I finish this, my family becomes legitimate, we don’t live in the shadows and operate under codes of secrecy.
We become the kind of family Keira could be proud to be a part of, the kind of family her father would be relieved to have his daughter marry into. That’s nothing but a distant, probably completely unattainable goal, but I’ve been thinking a lot since I screwed things up with her.
I want what we had to mean something. So I’m trying hard not to let the life I’m leading this second taint all hope for my future. I try to see my life the way Keira always saw it, as full of possibility and success.
I just need to get through these last few hurdles.
I didn’t expect it to be easy, but this isn’t just a challenge.
This is impossible.
The last car on the list is the one that shocks me and leaves me defeated before I start.
Gio usually goes for higher-end models with excellent resale, which makes sense for a last minute chop or to sell whole overseas. It’s just good business. The list is pretty cut and dry, even elementary, until I get to the last item, which pings in the back of my brain like I should recognize it, but I can’t place it.
It’s like having a word on the tip of your tongue, but not being able to spit it out.
The last car listed is suspicious because it’s older and so particular, right down to the cherry red paint color. It makes me think Gio’s chasing this for personal reasons, or that he’s getting arrogant enough to just see a car on the street and decide he needs it, no matter what the risk might be.
It comes with an address, which makes it even more disgusting, because the neighborhood is right in my own backyard.
Stealing off the richies was never too much of a moral dilemma for me. Sure, I get it, stealing is stealing. It’s never a noble thing, and I’d rather not do it at all. Period.
But…if I have to do it to make my living, stealing off people who have so much extra, who’ve got law teams on retainer and policies that insure what they own will be replaced, doesn’t really sting.
With my world collapsing around me, this little leap into murkier waters shouldn’t really be a big deal, but I feel like so much of my soul has already been sold, I want to hold onto the last few scraps.
“Unce Gio?” I rap my knuckles on the doorframe and he looks up, irritated.
“What do you need? Quickly, Vin, I have a full plate.”
He gestures to the paperwork on his desk, all contracts for the cars I boosted. Those thefts took me a step closer to granting my father’s freedom, but also ripped Keira out of my arms for good. A dark, hard fury rises up inside me.
“I can’t do this.” I slam my assignment report on the desk and point to the car that’s giving me a doomed feeling I can’t shake.
Gio sneers at me. “I don’t know why the hell you suddenly think you can start calling the shots, but you’re out of your mind if you imagine anyone’s taking you seriously. You do what I say. Period.”
He s
lams his fist on the desk, but I’m not about to be intimidated by his bullshit huffing and puffing.
He can scream, yell, sock me in the face again, I don’t give a shit.
I’m done.
“I’ve put my neck out for you. I’ve lost…” I grit my teeth, set my jaw, and let the fury spill out. “I’ve lost what was most important to me. For you, for your business. But this is too far, too big a risk. This is stealing from my own backyard.”
“You think there aren’t weasels worth stealing from in your own backyard? I can tell you right now, this car belongs to someone who crossed our family. Sometimes you boost for the money, sometimes you do it to show your strength.” He leans back and looks down his nose at me.
The same way he always looks my brother, my father. And I’m sick as hell of it.
“It was never about that,” I argue. “We did this for profit. Why would we want bad blood? Why would we want to draw attention to ourselves? It’s a stupid business move.”
Gio’s face turns eggplant purple. “A stupid move? What the fuck would you know about business, you little prick? The talk around the neighborhood is you can’t even read! You know what you’ve good for? You’re good for following orders and being a fucking criminal! Leave the thinking to the people with the brains!” he screams, jabbing a finger against his temple. “Now get the hell out of my face, Vin. I’m serious. You’re a soldier. You follow orders or you wind up in a body bag. Out! Now!”
I back out of his office, my temper about to snap, my heart pounding, and I wonder why I bothered to take a stand now, when I’m so close to being finished with all of this. I’ve done so many things I’m not proud of, what’s one more shady deal?
Especially since this could be the end of what we owe Gio.
I walk down the labyrinth of hallways until I finally reach my car in the lower garage. I open the driver’s door and sit, not moving, trying to figure out my own racing thoughts.