Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him glance at me again, and I could barely hear his voice when he spoke again. “I joke around outside of work,” he said softly.
I wasn’t going to overthink it.
Did that come out defensively, or was it my imagination? “That’s good.” I was such a sucker. I really was. He was trying, and I didn’t have it in me to brush him off. “You can joke around with me whenever you want,” I replied just as softly as he had. “I wouldn’t tell anybody. I know it doesn’t mean anything, and I’m really good at keeping secrets. It can be another one of ours.”
I doubted I would ever forget the way he turned his head to look at me, slowly, so slowly, those eyes like hot freaking coals, raking me over. Seeing me. His eyebrows were knit, like he was deep in thought, and he just—
“RIP!” I shouted the second I spotted the car pulling out in front of us all of a sudden.
The brakes he slammed wereinstant.So instant, so unexpected, so forceful, I barely had time to suck in a breath and throw my arms up over my face. I closed my eyes just as the seat belt jerked across my chest, and I felt something slap me right between my breasts as someone’s brakesscreamedin the background. But I knew I hadn’t made a peep.
I couldn’t have.
My entire brain just… shut down.
My upper body went forward…
And the truck made contact.
I wouldn’t be able to describe the sound of metal meeting metal. Of the truck careening into the car that had pulled out of what I would figure out later was a gas station. Even if someone had played me samples of crashes, I wouldn’t have been able to pick out what I had heard. It had just been noise.
But I felt my body jerk. Felt the seat belt dig into my shoulder. Felt what I didn’t know until seconds later was a big palm right in the middle of my collarbones.
Later, I would feel the painful fucking ache across my neck and shoulders.
And just likethat, it was over.
The truck had stopped moving, the brakes had stopped squealing, and nothing but panting filled my ears.
My panting.
It was mine.
“Rip?” I sucked in a breath as I opened my eyes and found a totally intact windshield in front of me.
The weight across my collarbones moved, making me look down to see it had been a hand—his hand—there. Holding me back. There. Just there.
Dragging my eyes up his wrist, to his elbow, to his shoulder and then his face, I noticed his cheeks were flushed. That not-thin but not-full mouth was parted. But it was the thin red slice across his upper eyebrow that held my gaze.
“Are you okay?” I panted, not sure if I’d even be able to hear him above the roaring of blood and adrenaline and who the hell knew what flooding my ear canals as my brain registered that the danger was over and I was pretty sure we were okay.
Rip blinked. Those curly black eyelashes just dropped, once and then twice to cover his eyes briefly. His nostrils flared.
“You okay?” I asked again, the hand closest to him—which I’d tucked into my body by reflex—reached out. I set my palms and fingers on his forearm, only briefly feeling the goose bumps under them. “You all right?”
He let out a sharp exhale and then nodded.
I squeezed his arm again, just barely noticing that it was shaking. “They just pulled out of nowhere.” I sucked in a breath, trying to slow down my heartbeat. “I didn’t see them until it was almost too late,” I admitted, hearing that shaking in my voice as my brain refused to slow down and instead saidyou were in a car wreck in case you didn’t know.
We had been in a car wreck.
Shit.
I sucked in a breath through my mouth and let my head fall back against the headrest, moving my eyes forward again to see that the truck’s front end was smashed up against the driver and rear side doors of a late model BMW. I’d detailed them enough over the years to recognize the body frame.
“Holy shit,” I hissed, everything about me starting to tremble. We had been in a freaking car wreck. My heart was going to beat right out of my damn chest, it felt like. “Holy fuck.”
I swallowed. Tried to take a deep breath. Then I swallowed again.
