His lungs released a huge gulp of oxygen.
Okay, this was all right. There was only a small scratch on Heather’s van. He could buff that right out. No one ever had to know.
His grandmother hit the gas, the bumper of her car crunching against the side of pink paint and vinyl cookie decals.
Shit.
The Buick? It was fine.
The van. Not so much.
The metal crumpled like it’d been hit with twenty pounds of bang.
That would not buff out.
“What the hell is she doing?” Ethan huffed as he jogged up beside him.
He had to yell, because Babushka hadn’t let off the gas. The rubber of the Buick’s tires burned against the asphalt as the wheels spun, the van skidded and tilted, and, holy fuck…
Jase’s heart thudded, but he couldn’t figure out what it was doing because it obviously wasn’t pumping blood, given that his entire body had turned to ice. He couldn’t get himself to move. “I think she’s getting revenge.”
“What the hell did the van do to her?” Ethan asked, dumbfounded.
Jase got his feet unstuck. He fell against his grandmother’s window and pounded with his fists. She had a one-track mind, or she didn’t hear him, because she didn’t acknowledge he was there. Hands at ten and two, she stared straight ahead at the vinyl cookies attached to the crumpled metal of what had been Heather’s delivery van.
“Should we call someone?” he heard Ethan ask.
Someone would be great right now. They should do that.
But a vortex of what-the-fuckage had sucked him in. He yanked on his grandmother’s locked driver’s side door as she put the car in reverse again. It moved back. Jase jumped away. He preferred his toes on his feet and not crushed under the rubber tires of his grandmother’s cookie-van-destroying machine.
The Buick slammed against the already crumpled metal of the van, and the whole vehicle tilted. The giant plastic cookie on top of the van creaked, broke loose, and crashed to the pavement.
“Stop,” he shouted. His desperation wasn’t lost on him. He threw his body against the side of the car, banging on the roof.
His grandmother finally glanced to him, his entire body plastered against the side of her door, his fingertips gripping into the roof of her tank-of-a-Buick.
The wheels stopped spinning. She tossed the car in park, grabbed her purse from the passenger seat, and pushed open the door.
Jase stumbled back, right into Ethan.
Babushka stepped from her tank as though nothing had happened. “I think I tapped it.”
Jase pressed his hands against his temples as he took in the damage. “What were you doing?”
Babushka inspected the crumpled pink metal. “Moving my car. I probably should’ve vaited for my driver.”
“Yeah, probably.” If he had to guess, his eyes were likely bugging out right about now. “How the hell did you get the keys?”
“I asked for them.” Babushka licked at her thumb and buffed at a scrape on her bumper. “My driver, he says okay.”
And that driver was officially fired.
Jase blew a breath between his lips. “Why were you moving your car, anyway?”
“I didn’t like the spot it vas in.” Babushka shuffled around the damage. “This belongs to the horrible voman who broke your heart?”
He did some heavy nose breathing. “Yeah.” And Heather was gonna kill him.
