Combing my hair away from my burning face, I finally get my hand back and instinctively start pulling at the fraying of my shorts. “Razor, if that, uh, is what, you know, you…” My shoulders bump, awkwardly looking away from his intense gaze.
“No.” He cups underneath my jaw, pulling my focus back to him. “Look at me when you’re talkin’ to me.”
He’s destructive in the sun. His pools of mahogany are too warm for how often I feel cold, and his smattering of dark moles humanizes how ungodly the strength of his face is.
Unable to calm the swelling emotional reaction to him, my eyes start to roam away again. But Razor wants what he wants. And right now, he wants my attention.
His fingers lock to my face, enough to jerk my eyes to his one last time in an unspoken warning. “If I what?” He cocks his head, sliding his arm over the door to comb his fingers through my hair.
“Razor?! Can I use the phone?!” Aries shouts behind me.
He huffs, breaking our forced contact and lowering his hand from my face. “You don’t have to ask me anymore.”
“Cool! Thanks!”
The back door starts squealing closed, but screeches back open, and I don’t know why, but the flatline of his lips as he registers Aries popping back out makes me laugh.
“You should probably get some condoms! Bunnies breed like crazy!”
As quick as the bubbles of glee fizzed my chest, they’re shooting down my throat and making me sick.
Not, like, a throw up, feverish sick. It’s an illness that’s beginning to root deep within my being. It starts with a nauseating ache that thrums high up my waist. My tongue gets flooded with saliva, and each swallow to correct it has me shifting and tensing my thighs, wondering how good punishment would feel when carnal need is the reason I’m misbehaving.
Not because I want to leave.
I can’t say that to him. I don’t think I ever will. Unless one day I wake up with actual ovaries that give me more power than a demanding reproductive system.
This is insane. I’m acting hysterical. I need to break whatever compulsion I’ve fallen under with him and focus on the things that matter.
Clearing the nerves from my throat, I scratch my face and help myself up into the torn cloth seat he’s been barricading. “Why doesn’t she need to ask?” I shift my quizzical brows to him, robotically hooking my fingers around the seatbelt. “I thought the phone was off limits unless you sat with us? And why do you get so much responsibility?”
Taking in his subtle surprise, my mind rewinds on what I just said, and I grow self-conscious that I over spoke.
“I’m not sure, Bun,” he says softly, running his thumb down the edge of the door. “Maybe Carl knows I wouldn’t take off.”
“Because you’re happy here?”
“God, fuck no,” he shakes his head, huffing out a sardonic laugh and inching the door closed. “It’s complicated.”
Everything is.
Turning to the fractured chip in the windshield, my stomach knots, and him shutting down the conversation by closing the door—sinks me further into the hard seat.
It’s caustic. Constantly tiptoeing around the truth. I don’t know why I thought Razor would be any different than everyone else. Really, I don’t know why I got confident in asking him any of that in the first place.
Everyone lies. Everyone sugarcoats how brainwashed we are, how sick the reality of putting on top of the line performances for spare change and degradation is.
The only one that’s given it to me straight is Aries. And even she knows more than she leads me to believe.
CHAPTER SIX
RAZOR
I’ve been lying. Okay, well, I guess not necessarily lying. But keeping secrets, yes. I’ve been secretive toward Bunny.
You probably know that, though. She’s probably already told you what she’s sniffing out.
Did she? What did she say?
