“And?”
I lift my head to look at him. “And what?”
“There’s something else.”
I scowl at him. “What makes you think there’s something else?”
“No one spills all their secrets just like that, and especially not to the person who was responsible for them getting hurt.”
My smile feels stretched thin. More of a grimace than true amusement.
“Getting hurt,” I echo quietly, the wind catching my soft words and cradling them between us.
Getting hurt doesn’t come close to what happened to me.
To what he did to me.
I reach for the helmet beside his bike's front wheel. “I want to go back now.”
“No.”
One word delivered so casually, I assume I misheard him.
But no. I couldn’t have. It’s one word. Two letters. He absolutely said what I thought he did.
I abandon reaching for the helmet to put it on. My eyes return to him, eyebrows practically at my forehead. “No?”
“We are going to talk, you and me.” He closes the distance between us and sinks into a crouch in front of me.Close. “I’m not taking you back until we do. And there’s no retreating inside your head. Not here. I won’t let you.”
“You won’tlet me?” I was slightly cold before, more my head without hair to keep my scalp warm from the cool wind blowing down the road. Those two insulting, controlling, manipulative words blast even theideaof being cold away.
“No.” He smirks as he repeats, even louder, “I won’t let you.”
I wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been this close and smirking at me.
I shove him. Both hands against his chest.Hard. He grunts as his back smacks against the dusty graveled side of the road. It sounds like it hurts.
Good.
“You’re an asshole.”
A bigger asshole than Reginald and I thought a cat that demanded attention only to turn around and swipe you for it couldn’t be beat.
I twist in my seat and start looking for the keys to his bike. I practically taught myself to drive a carandhow to play the piano. Riding a motorcycle can’t be that hard, can it? His keys aren’t in the ignition or near it, and there are no secret compartments he could have tucked them in without me seeing him do it.
“Where are the keys?” Still searching, I keep half my attention fixed on him in case he shoves me on my back as payback.
Chuckling, Makhi gets to his feet and dusts himself off. “In my back pocket.”
I don’t believe him until he fishes the very keys I was looking for out of the pocket, waves them about in what can only be a way to irritate me some more. My molars grind together, and I feel like a bull he’s flashing a red flag at.
Grinning, he returns the keys to his back pocket and crosses his arms.
“Give them to me.” I hold my palm out.
“No.”
“Fine.” I start walking down the hill. “I’m walking back.”
