“You just passed my apartment.” My hand went to my purse. “Quest. You just passed my street.”
“I know.”
“Turn around.”
“No.”
The gun was out of my purse and in my lap before he could say another word. My finger was on the side of the barrel and my heart was slamming against my ribs because this was it, this was what men did, they gained your trust and then they took you somewhere you didn’t want to go and I had promised myself I would never let that happen again.
Quest glanced at the gun and then back at the road. He stayed still. He didn’t swerve or even change his breathing.
“Put that away, Mehar.”
“Turn the car around.”
“I’m not taking you anywhere dangerous. I’m taking you somewhere fun. You look like you haven’t had fun in about five years and it’s starting to worry me.”
“Fun?” I stared at him. “You passed my apartment without telling me and you want me to believe we’re going somewhere fun?”
“I should’ve told you first. That’s on me. But yes—we’re going somewhere fun. And you’re going to put that gun away because you don’t actually want to shoot me and we both know it.”
He was right. I didn’t want to shoot him. I wanted to shoot whatever part of my brain kept putting me in cars with men I didn’t fully trust. But the way he said it—calm, steady, almost gentle underneath the cockiness—made something in my chest loosen the same way it had in that parking lot when his arms weren’t hurting me.
I put the gun back in my purse. But I kept my hand on it.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“You’ll see.”
“I hate surprises.”
“I know. That’s why this is going to be good for you.”
15
MEHAR
He pulled into the parking lot of a roller skating rink off Route 1 in College Park and I sat there for a full ten seconds trying to decide if this man was serious.
“A roller rink.”
“A roller rink.”
“Quest, I am a grown woman. I am not roller skating.”
“Yes yo’ angry ass is.” He turned off the engine and looked at me with that expression he used when he’d already decided something and was just waiting for me to catch up. “When’s the last time you did something just because it was fun? Not productive, not strategic, not a means to an end. Just fun.”
I opened my mouth to answer and nothing came out because the honest answer was that I couldn’t remember. Everything I did had a purpose—school was for the medspa, the dungeon was for money, therapy was for survival, the range was for safety. Even dinner with Bryce had been partly about reconnecting for information. I didn’t do things for fun. Fun was a luxury that belonged to people who weren’t running from something.
“That silence is exactly why we’re here,” he said. “Come on.”
The rink was called Stardust and it had clearly been there since the eighties. Neon lights on the outside, a parking lot thatneeded repaving, and a sign with two bulbs burned out so it read “S ard st.” Inside it smelled like popcorn and floor wax and something nostalgic that I couldn’t name because I had no nostalgia for a place I’d never been. I’d seen enough skating rinks on social media to know what they looked like. The carpet was that wild geometric pattern that all skating rinks seemed to share, and there were about thirty people inside, mostly teenagers and a few couples and a group of women who looked like they came every week.
Quest walked up to the rental counter and asked for two pairs of skates like he did this regularly. The kid behind the counter recognized him—I could tell by the way his eyes got wide—but Quest just shook his head slightly and the kid kept it moving. Money and power bought a lot of things, but the thing Quest seemed to value most was discretion.
“Size?” he asked me.
“I’m not doing this.”
