The car I’d hit was a sleek black monument to obscene wealth.
Low and predatory, all sharp lines and tinted windows—the kind of car that purred when it started and was more expensive than anything my entire bloodline had earned across three generations.
Fantastic. Wonderful. Excellent start to the weekend, Pauline. Really outdoing yourself.
I approached the driver’s side door, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Exchange insurance information. Be polite. Do not cry. Do not have a breakdown in the middle of a grocery store parking lot.
That was reserved for Tuesdays.
I raised my fist to knock on the window. It wound down at the same moment.
And Jack Specter’s eyes were staring back at me.
My brain stopped functioning.Just—Loss of signal. Technical difficulties. Please stand by.
CHAPTER 3
Pauline
Every thoughtin my head dissolved like sugar in hot water.
The door swung open and a leg emerged, then another, and then Jack Specter unfolded himself from the driver’s seat, rising to his full height like some kind of parking-lot deity. I had to tilt my head back to look at him properly. God, he was tall.
Had he always been this tall?
Six-two, six-three—something absurd and entirely unnecessary. White t-shirt stretching across shoulders that had no business being that broad, gray sweatpants slung low on his hips, hair mussed like he’d just rolled out of bed.
As if he hadn’t even bothered to check a mirror before leaving the house, because why would he—the world rearranged itself for men like him.
He looked down at me. I looked up at him. My stomach dropped straight through the pavement.
“You hit my car,” he said.
I forced my shoulders back. “You parked like a person who’s never been told no.”
His eyebrows rose and one corner of his mouth twitched. “The parking was fine.”
“The parking was diagonal.”
“It was well within the lines.”
“It was so far outside the lines...”
He laughed—a short laugh. The sound burrowed under my skin and settled somewhere warm, and I hated it. I remembered that laugh, and would die before admitting that some part of me had been straining to hear it again without my permission.
“You know,” he said, and there it was, that slow knowing smile I used to love, “I could’ve sworn I taught you how to drive.”
Memories surfaced without warning with those words.
It happened during freshman year.
His old Mustang. My hands shaking on the wheel while he sat in the passenger seat, calm as anything, talking me through every turn. “Ease off the brake. That’s it. You’re doing great.” The crunch of metal when I’d scraped against a mailbox backing out of a parking spot. The horror on my face, the way he’d looked at the dent and then looked at me and just laughed, like it was nothing, like I was more important than any car could ever be.
“It’s fine, Pauline. It’s just metal. You can dent it anytime you want.”
I’d felt so guilty I couldn’t sleep, and he’d stayed up with me all night watching true crime documentaries on his laptop, his arm around my shoulders, my head against his chest. Somewhere around three in the morning he’d kissed me, slow and soft, and we hadn’t watched anything after that.
