Cora
Cora’s BMW Z4 Roadster barely shuddered as she hit a hundred going down the highway. It did very little to cool her anger. In the past few weeks, breaking the speed limit laws hadn’t given her quite the thrill of relaxation it used to. When she got back home she was going to have a spa weekend and then bury herself in work for the next seven years. That was where she belonged and what she ought to be doing.
She certainly wasn’t going to sit at home while the man took care of everything. If Finn thought she was the kind of woman who would just listen whenever some biker boy gave her some instruction, he was sorely mistaken. Oliver was her brother. Finn might have been some kind of surrogate, but what good had he really done? Her brother was heading down the road of drug use, and she wasn’t just going to let that go.
“How dare he,” she snarled as her knuckles turned white on the stick shift. Her anger was a ball of molten iron stoked by all the demands he had made of her. That damnable biker who hadn’t taken no for an answer. The one who had pushed, and in a moment of weakness she had given in. Oh, sure he had sides to him, but one of those sides was being a grade A jerk. She’d show him.
A cold trickle went down her throat as she realized Oliver was going to be alone with him. Would he show Finn the pictures? Would her little brother try to blackmail her…current boy toy? What if he figured out the reason she hadn’t had a choice in her brother going to this stupid concert? The flaming ball of anger turned into a sick, heavy filling in the very pit of her stomach.
“Damn!” she cursed, thumping a hand against the wheel of the car. She added more pressure to the gas and surged forward to a hundred and ten. “Damn him. Damn Oliver. Damn this whole state and everyone in it.”
He had lied and she knew it. Worse, he was trying to keep her away from Oliver so he could cover it up. She had nearly believed it. Cora had sat there and listened to him talk about how drugs had ruined communities, and she had almost believed he had some scruples.
She followed the big signs for the amphitheater. The several acres’ worth of packed-earth parking lot was full to the breaking point. Cars of every make and model, most with band stickers sprinkled across the back, were lined up so closely that Cora was having a hard time picturing how anyone actually got out of their vehicles. Whatever, she thought as she found a tiny space toward the back of the lot. She was slender enough that she could make this work.
Two rows later she was beginning to regret her choice in shoes. Pinprick heels were not meant for angry parking-lot struts. She was storming near the entrance gate, where a large sign said Security was glaring down with big neon yellow lighting, when she saw Finn’s bike parked alongside several other motorcycles. Just seeing it sitting there made the miasma of her stomach roll over on herself. She wasn’t sure now if she was anxious or angry or some wild culmination of the two.
She stormed past the row of bikes, her heels making tiny divots in her wake, and to the security office. She was just about to charge in when the door swung open. Finn and Oliver stood surrounded in the humming lights of the office behind them.
Finn looked like some kind of angel of retribution. The light made a play of shadows across his angular face so all she could see was the glimmer of her cerulean eyes. His obsidian hair fell in a flat sheet behind his head. Her heart went still in her chest. He was so damn beautiful. For a moment, she forgot why she was here and that she was mad.
Then his lips curled into a sneer of disgust. “You just can’t keep your nose out of anything, can you?” he demanded. “You can’t just sit back and let people handle anything, no matter how small or easy it might be to deal with.”
“What the hell is your problem?” She threw her hands up in the air. Why couldn’t he understand that she had to handle this? “This isn’t small, this isn’t easy. This is my little brother with drug charges.”
“Hey!” Oliver snapped.
“Hush,” Finn and Cora said in tandem.
Oliver rolled his eyes in teen frustration. “You guys aren’t my parents.”
“No,” Cora said, “we aren’t. You are, however, temporarily in my custody. What you do directly impacts me.”
“I didn’t ask for that!” His eyes, so very like her own, were filled with the self-assured anger only teenagers could have. “I never asked for you to do any of this!”
She was so taken aback by his fury that she couldn’t think of anything to say. She stood there while her brother glared at her like she was the worst person who had ever existed. He was right: he hadn’t asked for any of this. She had walked into his life and made a bunch of demands, the same way her mother did or Finn tried to do. Guilt mixed with the cocktail of emotions currently swirling inside of her. Cora’s head felt suddenly light.
“No,” she said finally. “You didn’t ask. But here is the problem. You broke the law. You decided what you wanted to do was more important than the lives you could have affected with your choices. You did this as a minor. In doing so you gave up the right to get angry when people step in and tell you what to do with your life.”
“Right,” Finn put in. “Because the worst thing you can do is break the law.”
“Stay out of this,” Cora said, holding up a hand. “I don’t need your help with this. You’ve done plenty. Oliver, get in the car.”
“I said I’d take care of this.” Finn put his hand on Oliver’s shoulder. “He doesn’t have to go there with you.”
Oliver jerked his shoulder out from Finn’s grip and stomped up to Cora. “I’m not a kid.”
“You’re sixteen. By the very definition of the law, you are.” Cora crossed her arms over her chest, afraid that if she didn’t she’d start flailing around like a madwoman. Never had she been more frustrated in all of her life.
Oliver snorted and shook his head so hard that his hair made a fan around his too-thin face. “I can take care of myself. Everything was just fine before you showed up.”
“Yeah, your record proves that.”
Finn rolled his eyes. “Yeah, because shoving his failures in his face is the best way to deal with this. Jesus, Cora, are you even human? Come on, Oliver.”
“I’m not going with you either.” Oliver stepped away from both of them. “You are both screwing everything up. I’m old enough to handle this. Just get away from me.”
Cora and Finn started talking over one another. She couldn’t fully understand what he was saying, but she knew they agreed on the fact that Oliver wasn’t ready to take care of himself. If only they could agree on basically anything else.
“Goddammit, Finn,” she finally said, slapping her hands on her hips. “You aren’t his family. I am.”
“And where have you been?” His eyes glittered down at her. His fury was almost palpable. “Off getting your black credit card and your damn fancy car. You haven’t been here. I’ve been helping him. I’ve been taking care of things.”
What exactly did he have the right to be so angry about? This was his fault. Oliver would never be here if Finn hadn’t made criminal life seem normal. “Yeah, and you’ve done a hell of a job.”
“Stop it! Both of you!” Oliver stepped between them. Cora hadn’t realized how close she and Finn had gotten during their screaming match. “You are both being stupid. I’ve got this.”
“No, you don’t,” Finn said. “You got caught doing this. You were stupid.”
“Cora, you better make him leave me alone.” Oliver jerked his phone out of his pocket. “Or I send the pictures to every last person you work with.”
Cora’s face felt hot, and she was almost positive it had turned every shade of tomato imaginable. This was not how this night was supposed to go.
“What pictures?” Finn asked.
Oliver tilted his phone. Cora couldn’t quite see it, but she caught a flash of skin as her blackmailing brother showed her temporary lover exactly what pictures he was talking about. She had never been more embarrassed. She clapped both hands over her face and made an inarticulate sound. This was definitely not the night she imagined for herself. This wasn’t even the month she imagined for herself.
“You took pictures of us making out? Are you serious?”
Oliver shrugged and started to put the phone back into his pocket. Finn swept the phone out of Oliver’s grip. Cora saw a little trashcan symbol pop up as Finn began to delete one picture after the next.
“Hey! You can’t do that.”
“Can’t do what?” Finn demanded. His moonlit eyes were hard as stone as he got rid of the evidence. “Get rid of your crappy attempt at blackmailing one of the few people who has tried to help you?”
“That’s my phone.” Oliver tried to reach for it. Finn didn’t even try to block him. He just tightened his grip on the phone until his bronze fingers turned pale yellow. “Give it back.”
“Yeah, it is. And you’ll be getting it back because that’s the right thing to do.”
“You’re a Brawler.” Oliver spread his arms wide. “You break the law all the time.”
“Yeah, I am. And yeah, I’ve broken the law on many occasions. So what? There is a big difference between following the law and doing the right thing. You think this patch means I go around trying to get the people who care about me to do whatever I want them to do? No, I don’t. Because it’s wrong. It’s not even kind of wrong. You want to know how many laws you broke by doing this? Not just blackmail, which is an epically shit thing to do. You know you could end up on a sex offenders list by taking these pictures and distributing them without permission? Does that sound like a great idea?”
“No, I—”
“You didn’t think. You just decided that what you wanted was more important than your sister’s happiness.”
“What the hell, man, you’re mad at her, too.”
Finn shoved the phone into Oliver’s hands hard enough to make the younger man take a few steps back. “Yeah, I am. But just because you’re mad at someone doesn’t mean you should treat them like crap. That’s part of being an adult.”
Cora was shocked to the point of muteness. Over the past few days she had imagined how Finn would handle finding out about the pictures her brother had taken. Her mental scenes had covered everything from fierce anger to a cold shoulder of divine proportions. It had not covered the possibility of righteous indignation.
“What the hell, Finn?” Oliver said, shoving his phone back into his pocket.
“No, Oliver, I’m tired of defending you to everyone if you are going to pull something like this. It’s time to grow up. Go get in your sister’s car. We will talk about the rest of this later.”
Oliver scoffed and started down the parking lot. Cora heard him mutter something under his breath. She didn’t hear all of the words, but it was something to the effect of there being nothing left to talk about. This was bound to be a great ride home. She watched the long line of Oliver’s dark back as he hunched his way toward her car, far away as it was.
The sick feeling in her body had turned into a solid stone weighing her down. Her mind was busily trying to pinpoint just where everything had gone wrong. “Hey,” she said. “I’m sorry about all of this.”
She turned around. Finn’s arms had resumed a position across his chest. His hands were still dark with motor oil and car grease. They left smudges across his shirt. “Is this why you’ve been avoiding me? Why you let him come to this concert?”
The weight in her belly jumped to a place in her throat. “I…yes. Yes, it is.”
“Why?”
It should have been a simple question, but it wasn’t. There were a thousand reasons why she hadn’t wanted those pictures to get out. She took a deep breath and shrugged. “Because, I like keeping my private life private.”
“I can’t believe you. Don’t feed me one of your boardroom answers. You were embarrassed by this. By me. By us.”
The breeze from the concert carried with it some heavy-metal music, ripe with heavy bass and thrumming drums. Her hair danced around her face as she stared up into Finn’s face. “There is no us.”
“Damn you, Cora Anderson.”
His voice shook when he said the words, and Cora began to regret having spoken. He raked a dark hand through his darker hair, and it fell around his face. His cowboy boots sent puffs of dust into the air as he paced in a short little circle.
“Finn, I—” She didn’t know what she wanted to say. A part of her wanted to apologize, but another part of her thought she shouldn’t have to. It wasn’t a crime to want to have secrets. Even so, she knew privacy was not the only reason she hadn’t wanted anyone to know.
“You’ve done everything to keep distance between us. Why?”
“I—”
His hands wrapped around her shoulders, and he hauled her close. His mouth tasted like fire as he kissed her hard. She couldn’t pull away, and she didn’t want to. Her hands went up of their own volition, disappearing into the midnight of his hair. He pulled her away as quickly as he swept her up. “What is wrong with you, damn it? Why are you denying that there is something between us?”
“We aren’t dating. We are…” She trailed off, struggling for the right words. “We are enjoying one another.”
“Does it look like I’m just enjoying you? Do you know what I did today?”
His hands were tight around her arms, holding here there as if he were the anchor to her wayward ship. She was almost afraid of him letting go. “No, I don’t.”
“I told the boss of my club I wanted out. Do you know why?”
“I…I don’t.”
“Because I love you. I don’t know why. You are the most difficult person I have ever met. You always have to be right. You rarely listen to anyone or anything else. You stick your nose where it shouldn’t belong, and you judge people before you even know them. I should hate you.”
She tried to swallow, but she couldn’t. The lump in her throat was too large. Cora opened her mouth to speak, but nothing would come out. What had she done?
“I should hate you,” he continued, “but I don’t. I see your face everywhere. I see cars and wonder what you would look like behind the wheel. It drives me crazy. You drive me crazy.”
“Finn, I’m sorry.” She meant it. Tears, hot as magma, sprang into her eyes. “Please, I—”
“No, Cora. Just no.”
He dropped his hands suddenly, freeing her. She was a ship and she was floating on a sea of confusion, and she had no clue what to do. Her hands were shaking as she reached out to him, but he stepped out of the way. Her chest felt too tight beneath the crushing weight of her own guilt.
“Do you hate me that much?” he scoffed. “I spent this whole day planning how I could change my life, change myself to be a man who fit with you. Have you even thought about bending one of your ideals to give this a chance? No…don’t answer. You won’t even admit that there’s something between us.”
“Finn, that’s not fair. That’s not fair at all.”
“Why not? Because it’s true? You want to find some guy who fits into your perfect little world. Fine. How exactly has that gone?”
Terribly. Every man she had dated hadn’t made her feel anything. Finn had. She had been denying it for days, maybe longer, but there was something about the way he held her that just made her feel good. The way his eyes lit up when he talked about cars or books. The way he looked when he was making food. The smell of him against her sheets.
Oh no, she realized, Cora was falling for him, too. She wasn’t sure when it had happened, or even why. A part of her wanted to pick it apart, make it all line up, write out some pro-con list about what could possibly have happened to make her feel anything but lust and consternation where Finn Marks was concerned, but it wouldn’t have helped. She cared about him, and there was little she could do about it.
“Finn, I’m sorry I didn’t—”
Before she was even finished talking, he had turned his back on her. In a swirl of denim and dark hair, he made his way toward his bike. A cold Nevada wind rushed across her cheeks, making her aware of the tears that were carving a path across her skin.
“Where are you going?”
“Away from you,” he said. “I’m going to go get drunk. I’m going to bury myself in women until I forget you ever existed. Stay out of my life, Cora Anderson. I’m done with you.”
The sound of his bike roaring to life masked the sound of her tears as she realized she had lost him just as she began to understand how much she needed him.