Page 154 of Lessons in Cruelty

This feels like entrapment.

Like I’ll owe him…owe him big.

And everyone I’ve ever known has always collected their debts.

“In case there’s a terrorist attack,” he mutters, as though he doesn’t actually want me to hear his answer.

A laugh bursts out of me so fast, I clap a hand over my mouth in embarrassment.

He narrows his eyes at me. “An EMP can disable anything with a circuit board. That includes my Tesla. If there’s a strike, I want to get the hell out of the state.” He slaps the Land Rover’s boxy frame. “Post apocalypse? It’ll be this guy, the cockroaches, and Keith Richards.”

“Who’s Keith Richards?”

“Jesus Christ.” He stares at me like I’ve lost my mind, and then goes to his Tesla, shaking his head the whole way. He pauses by his door to point a finger at me. “Stop reminding me how old I am!”

I point one right back at him. “Just keeping you humble, Sir!”

He faces away, laughing as he climbs into his car.

I bounce the keys on my palm, then stare over at him as he reverses. When he sees me just standing there, he rolls down his window and sticks his head out of the car.

It’s a surreal moment. Another one of those snapshots, right on the cusp of something new.

Good? Bad? I don’t know yet.

He changed into a black t-shirt and dark-wash jeans. I guess he was going for casual, but now the contrast between his pale skin and dark hair is that much starker.

That much sexier.

He doesn’t seem to feel the chill in the early evening air. The clouds will start building up again soon. And then comes the rain. Days and days without end, until the Agony River floods and washes away all the bullshit that’s collected over the past year.

I used to wish it would wash me away, too. Shouldn’t even have been out of the house by myself at that age, definitely not that close to a speeding river, but even my young, tender mind had accepted the fact that no one gave a shit about me. I’d throw sticks into the river and watch them being swept away, giggling when they disappeared under the frothy waves.

Even put my foot in a few times, amazed at how hard the water tugged at my leg. A swell. One misplaced step. That’s all it would have taken. And little Haven Lee would have washed up on the shore a few days later, grey-skinned and blue-lipped, a broken doll no one had wanted to play with anymore.

But then I met Kai.

I never went back to those white-flecked waters.

He made me feel special. He made me feel wanted. Even though it sometimes hurt when he played with me.

Feeling something was better than feeling nothing.

And now here I am again, standing at the edge of another dangerous current. Only this time, the river has dark eyes and calls me ‘sweet girl.’

This time, I might not want to be saved.

“Are you coming?”

I kick a stone lying on the ground near my foot. “Could’ve let me drive the Tesla.”

He chuckles, but there’s something predatory in it. “We’re definitely not there yet, sweet girl.” His eyes rake over me. “You haven’t earned it.”

“How do I earn it?”

His smile turns wolfish. “I’m still deciding. Now get in the truck.”

I slide into the driver’s seat, adjusting mirrors that haven’t been touched in God knows how long. He leads me down the winding road to his house, and I catch him watching me in the rearview mirror more than once.