He stopped, his back to me. Then he slowly turned around. “What?” he snapped.
“It can’t be the sedan,” I told him, my throat working. I rolled my shoulders back and shoved my hands into the pockets of the leather jacket. I ducked my head a little, unable to hold the intensity of his eyes. “Please. I need to prove I’m more than a Doll. Maybe if I do, Viktor will let Leah and I go out together.”
I remember him being so quiet, how there was an entire city of sounds surrounding us but all I seemed to be able to hear was the creak of his own leather jacketand the scuff of his boots as he took a few steps back toward me.
“After that crash? You’re crazy if you think I’d let you take on anything worth more than a sedan, Doll.”
The words seared into me, and I snapped my glare up to his. “Don’t call me that. Out here, I’m Arden. Call me Doll in front of Viktor, but not here. Ican’tbe that here.”
Thorne tilted his head, the corner of his mouth twitching like I’d surprised him. He didn’t answer right away. He just stood there, studying me in the half-light, letting the silence work like a knife.
His eyes were green, but they were silted with black, the kind of green that belonged to deep water where bodies stayed hidden. He had a scar at the corner of his lip where it had split at fifteen and never fully healed. His hair was long enough to brush his collar, strands sticking to the line of his throat.
My hands fisted inside my pockets, but I kept my chin lifted. He noticed. He noticed everything.
“You think putting on some different clothes makes you something more?” His voice was rough, threaded with disdain, but I caught something else under it, too—interest, maybe, or the sharp edge ofrecognition. He stopped in front of me, close enough that the heat of him blocked out the night air, close enough that I had to force myself not to back away.
“You want me to call you Arden,” he said at last, drawing the name out like he was testing the taste of it. Then, his faint smirk flattening, “No.” He pivoted, turning his back to me once again. “You want better than the sedan, then prove to me you can actuallysteal the sedan, Doll. Until then, you can fuck off.”
I stood rooted, fury and shame twisting together in my chest until I could hardly breathe. I made myself swallow it down. I wasn’t going to give Thorne the satisfaction of seeing me crack. I tugged my lighter from my pocket and flicked its flame to life, my eyes narrowing on its dance. It brought me comfort, seeing its consistent warmth.
“Fuck,” I whispered into the empty street to no one but myself, “you.”
I brought him a Mercedes. The week after that, a Corvette. By the end of the month, when Thorne gave me my assignment, a cigarette lit between my mouth and my thumb aimlessly lighting and unlighting my lighter, I smirked in victory.
“Arden,” he called, our eyes locking, everyone in our crew of thieves falling eerily silent. “You’re with me tonight.”
The crew broke apart at that, as if all of them could see the challenge in Thorne’s gaze and had no intention of getting sucked into whatever rivalry the two of us had. Their boots crunched gravel as they mounted their bikes or disappeared into the city in twos and threes. Engines coughed to life, one after another, until the lot vibrated with sound and then thinned to silence.
When the last headlight vanished down the road, it was only me and Thorne.
He stalked closer, his eyes narrowing as he snatched the cig from my mouth and lifted it to his. He lifted a brow in warning when I opened my mouth to curse him out for stealing my last one. Slowly, I pressed my lips together and folded my arms, the leather of my jacketcreaking. He took a long drag, smoke billowing out in thick whirls between us before he finally spoke.
“You know these things will kill you,” he said, voice low, almost bored. His eyes held mine in the dark, unrelenting, and I felt the air around us shift heavier. When I didn't back away, Thorne crushed the cigarette with his boot, my head tilting back to glare up at him.
He let go of a long breath, his gaze never breaking from mine. Then he took my chin in his hand with a rough, slow chuckle and lifted his thumb to my bottom lip. “I wonder though, if Big Pharma tested cigarette deaths against Viktor Shaw’s estate—who would win?”
I wrenched my face from his grip, nostrils flaring. “Why am I with you tonight? I’m perfectly capable of going out on my own, or did you forget the haul I've brought you?”
He stared for an unnervingly long minute. Then he said, "There's nothing you do that I forget, Arden." He sighed, adjusting his jacket, “Let’s go.” He turned and strode toward his bike without another glance. I followed, clutching my lighter so hard the engraving dug crescents into my palm. I didn't know what tomake of what he said, whether I should be flattered or concerned.
Thorne swung onto his bike, the movement fluid, practiced. He looked back once, chin lifting, and I caught the glint of his eyes through the dark. “Well?”
I swallowed my pride and climbed onto the seat behind him. The second my hands brushed his sides, he revved the engine, the roar drowning my panicked heartbeat.
Then we were gone—the bike zipping into the streets.
The city blurred past in streaks of light and shadow, every bump in the road jolting me forward. I kept my hands braced on the seat, stubborn even as the bike rattled beneath us. Finally, Thorne’s arm shot back, his fingers clamping around my wrist. He tugged me hard against him, my chest colliding with his back.
“Where are we going?” I shouted over the engine, breath catching in my throat.
His head tilted slightly, but his eyes never left the road. “Somewhere we can talk.”
My fingers curled into the folds of his jacket, knuckles white. “We aren’t stealing a car?”
The only reply was the growl of the bike as he opened the throttle wider, the engine screaming as if it meant to carry us straight off the edge of the world.
We tore out past the last of the city lights, the neon bleeding into nothing, replaced by empty stretches of road and the glow of the moon on cracked asphalt. The bike ate the distance, carrying us farther than I’d ever been allowed to go. Wind clawed at my hair, whipped it into my face, but I barely noticed. All I could think about was the solid weight of Thorne in front of me, the way every turn threw me tighter against him.
