Page 19 of Vile Bastards
Lemon was squandered.
My chest tightens up again, and I squeeze my hand in my shirt, struggling to breathe through a throat that feels about as wide as a straw. Air is getting to my lungs. Logically, I know that. But the urge to panic is there.
I don’t remember much after the Lambo went flying—RIP to the Miura, I’ll shed a tear—but then we hit the water and everything went black. But you loved the feeling of being in the air, didn’t you? Because you almost died, you love the memory of it even more.
That scares me, too, how attracted I am to terrible things. Like jumping a classic car off a cliff in the middle of a police chase. Like Kellin Bohnes.
“Breathe.” His voice is a dark command, his hand warm on my back. When he touches me, my mind is able to break away briefly from the pain. I think about rutting with him in the woods beside the track, sleeping curled in his arms at the warehouse, the pleasure I felt when he fell to his knees before me as if I were a true queen.
That’s why I want to sleep with him so badly, because I like him. More than that, because sex is the most basic, primal, mammalian thing I could possibly do right now, something to wake me up and remind me that I truly am still alive.
Unlike Lemon, I didn’t succumb to the darkness; I fell into it and then climbed right back out.
I defied death. Me. Scarlett Force.
I struggle to hang onto that emotion, that feeling of triumph, that haughty hubris that’s carried me through eighteen years of life. It slips through my fingers like so much sand, and then I’m staring down at my empty palms and there are tears falling there.
That feeling, the one of drifting, of falling out of my body, of seeing colors and then faces, of seeing Lemon and Aspen … I didn’t have to follow it through to the other side. She did. As I held her in my arms in the backseat of the Chevelle, she made that crossing that I fought so hard against.
I want desperately to see Alexei all of a sudden.
Actually, I’ve been wanting to see Alexei since I woke up and heard the full story of what happened from Bohnes and Widow. My chest seizes again, and I end up sitting down on the end of the bed, pulling in air, trying and failing to push aside a memory that isn’t even fully there. Underwater, freezing cold, burning lungs. I may not have been fully conscious, but the sense memory is stuck somewhere inside my lizard brain.
True, primal fear.
“Can you take me to see Alexei?” I ask, and even though Bohnes’ face shuts down, he nods. I look over at Basti and Nisha. The former is worried about me, his hands shaking as he fiddles around in his lap. Nisha is upset, and rightfully so.
“It’s the middle of the night, Scarlett, and you’ve been through so much …” She trails off and sighs, reaching up to rub at her forehead. “But I know you’re going to do it anyway. So go. We’ll be here when you get back.”
“You’ll cover my family for me?” I ask, because even though my mom, aunt, and Alexis generally pay little to no attention to me, they’ve been clingy since I came home. I only hope that behavior doesn’t last long. My grandmother’s worried about me, but then she actually cares on a regular basis, so it’s not a surprise.
“Go.” Nisha nods with her chin in the direction of my bedroom door, and I scoot over to her on my knees to give her a kiss on the cheek. Bastian gets one, too, and then I’m snatching a coat to throw over my hoodie and sweatpants.
I just want to be warm, so maybe it’s a bit overkill, but … death is cold. I don’t want to be cold right now.
Because of that, I wear something I would never normally be seen dead in (haha, LOL, dead): UGG boots. Eeecchh.
I lead Bohnes downstairs, gesturing silently for him to avoid the creaky stair two up from the bottom. He hops over it, landing soundlessly in his boots, and then opens the front door for me.
Nisha comes down the stairs so that she can lock it behind us, watching out the door in typical Prescott fashion to ensure we make it to the Chevelle without being jumped.
Once we’re in, and the doors are shut, Nisha retreats back into the house.
“I can’t believe I’m having panic attacks,” I say with a small scoff, leaning back in the seat and putting a foot up on the dash. Bohnes doesn’t respond at first, taking us in the direction of the safe house. Coincidentally, it’s the same direction as the McKenzie River.
