Ignoring the burning in my ribs, I slam my crutches down against the lock. I’m so done with being this helpless.
“Open the door, Ronald!”
I pause to listen—he’s definitely in there.
“You’re not supposed to be here, Amy.”
“Let me in! I’ve learned my lesson!”
“No.”
“The plasma cutter? The fuckingplasma cutter?”
“Get your ass back in bed.”
His footsteps fall back, and I can picture him walking away, laughing at me begging like that.
I managed to play the good girl for a week, but this has dragged on long enough. I get it—I messed up; message received loud andclear. But if I have to spend a second longer stuffed up in the apartment listening to the world spin on without me, I’m going to lose it.
I sneak around the back of the building, returning with bolt cutters tucked under my arm, dropping my crutches to the ground. I lean against the door for support and get to work. Two tries later, and I’m cutting the lock free.
I toss the cutters and chain to the side, and yank open the door.
“You have got to be fuckingkiddingme!” RJ yells.
I brace my crutches back under my arms and stagger into the shop with a victory cry. And when I see what he’s working on, I freeze. It’s my Pontiac—or what’s left of it, anyway. I haven’t seen my car since the crash, and it’s way worse than I imagined.
“Iknewa chain wouldn’t be enough to keep you out!” RJ looks pissed as he swaggers over to me.
My mouth falls open. My car.My baby.Completely caved in. The Firebird is officially a wreck—I don’t even understand why RJ is wasting his precious time trying to fix it. It reminds me of my dad’s Mustang, and my heart lurches. Whenever I was lost, he always showed me the way. Not this time, though.
RJ reaches a hand to my face and brushes away a tear. “We didn’t want you to see this. If you’d just done what you were told…”
“So, I was never ‘grounded,’ then?”
“Oh, you weredefinitelygrounded, too.”
“Wait a minute… ‘We’?”
My eyes drift across the shop. Esteban is sitting there on a pile of tires, and the disappointment knocks the wind out of me. For the smallest sliver of a second, I thought it’d be Lewis.Don’t be upset. There’s nothing to be upset about.
“I thought you’d gone back to New York.”
He came to say goodbye to me at the hospital. He apologized for leading me off the straight and narrow when I was vulnerable. He was too proud to come out and say it, but I understood what he was trying to say—Ohio is my home now. Nothing he said was news tome, and I’m not mad at him for doing what he did. I used him, too. That makes us even.
“That was the plan,” Esteban rasps. “But I got called in for one last favor.”
I turn to RJ. “He tug on your heartstrings, or something?”
“Hey, don’t look at me!”
“I asked him to stay.”
I recognize that voice. My heart is in my throat as I turn this way and that, following the sound, until I see Lewis getting to his feet behind the Pontiac, his face smeared with grease.Looking hot as hell.I hate what he still does to me, despite it all.
“You…”
My mouth isn’t working properly; I can’t get the words out. It’s been two weeks since I last saw him, and nothing has changed for me.
