“I’m the one who urged them to go younger.”
She clicks pause, bites her lip. Stares at me for a long, devastating moment.
“Does it get worse?” she whispers.
“He admits what he did,” I tell her. “To keep his product in line. The details the punishments he inflicted on them.”
“What did he do?”
“Nasty, evil things. And humiliating things. Depraved things. You don’t have to listen?—”
She clicks play and wraps her arms around her middle as her father’s voice fills the car. He talks about it all in detail, just like I told him to. Told him to leave the world with some truth, some decency, some dignity, instead of just a stain. I told him that this can stop with you. But I know the evil inside some. I doubt it can ever be stopped. But it must be accounted for. At the end, after listing his unforgivable sins, he says, “I always knew it was wrong, on some level. I always knew I should stop. But the life it afforded me, the life it afforded my daughter…”
Mara makes a choking noise and immediately clicks stop. I reach over, close my hand over hers.
“Why didn’t you just tell me this?” she hisses.
“I thought you deserved a good memory of your father, the memory you already had,” I tell her. “Rather than deserving … me. “ I look away at the derelict parts of the city flashing by. “A stranger who just wanted to fuck you more than I could ever understand. A stranger who has come to care about you, Mara, to deeply care. Just by watching you from afar.” I swallow hard and look straight ahead at the road. “Then, from speaking with you, hearing your passion, your kindness, your sincerity. And then by knowing you—intimately”
She wipes a tear from her eye and makes a quiet sniffling noise. “I never knew my dad, then, not really, shit!” she says quietly. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” She punches at the door. Undoes her seatbelt and collapses her head down into her lap. She cries with huge sobs. Her hair falls forward, hiding her eyes and her grief from my view. I drive and say nothing. Just give her time.
“But maybe…” She sits upright and clears her throat. Takes a tissue from her purse and dabs at her face. Pushes her hair back with splayed fingers. Sniffs and squeezes my hand. “Maybe I can get to know you, like, really know?” Yes, it is a question. A question to herself.
I lift her hand to my lips, kiss each knuckle. “Angel, that’s all I want. To get us out of here. To have the time and the freedom to explore this feeling that settled in me the first moment I saw you. This…”
“Belonging,” she finishes, kissing my hand now.
“Belonging,” I agree. “That’s the perfect word for it?—”
As we leave the bridge, a car pulls out from the opposite side of the road.
Drives directly into our path. I slam the brakes. Mara flies forward fast and thumps hard into the dashboard. She collapses to the floor. Both cars skid and stop facing each other. Headlight beams combined. Their doors open violently, and three men jump out, aiming their guns at us. I have a single second to think, holy shit, before the bullets start flying.
10
MARA
Iscream as I hear bullets clatter into the windscreen. I glance up from the floor and see a spider’s web pattern across it. But the glass doesn’t break. Beside me, Rad snarls and pushes down on the accelerator. The car surges forward, slamming into the men.
“Stay here!” Rad roars …As if there’s anything else I can do! I cringe, crumpled down under the dashboard. I stupidly crane my head up to take a peek.
Rad climbs out and slides a gun from his leather jacket pocket. My mind is already a conflicted battlefield, but as I glimpse the hazy vision of Rad through the shattered glass …
I hear three very loud and close gunshots. I see him execute three men. Three men who just tried to kill us. After the third gunshot—the third execution—a strange and beautiful sort of certainty settles in my chest. We’re not simple. We’re definitely not normal.
But what we have, what we’ve formed over magical hours spent together, is special. Why can’t I think straight? This is just toomuch for me. Panic crawls up my neck. Threatens to close my throat. I try to take slow breaths, but my mind still goes to Dad, even now. To all the evil he committed by his own confession.
Rad is doing bad things too … But for the right reasons.
I tell myself.
He climbs back into the car, blood-spattered. “We’re leaving. Now.”
“Who were they?” I gasp.
“Men who thought they could take what we have,” he growls. “Men who thought they could takeyou, angel. But that’s never happening. Never.”
He reaches over; his hand trembles. He cradles my face and talks in a husky, unflinching voice. “Most people would call us strangers. But the second I saw you—hell, just even in a damn photo—I knew you were the one for me. I knew you were my everything. Things will never be simple between us …”
