Brooke

I shouldn’t cry in front of him. Nobody loves you when you cry, but I can’t help it, because I don’t know what the new life would be like. “I don’t know,” I say again, so pathetic.

“How would you want it to be?”

I shake my head. Stone is so free and wild, he can never understand. I get this intense rush of jealousy of him. It’s crazy, because he’s clearly in trouble. He’s a criminal. He’s beat up bad. But at least he knows what he wants. At least he’s free.

“You can’t just not know.”

“I can,” I say in a small voice.

“You don’t imagine it? Where you’d go? How it would be?” He sounds like he doesn’t believe me. I don’t know how to explain, and I want to explain. I want him to understand. I feel like he could. Crazy that, of all people, he could understand.

I decide to tell him the picture in my mind—it’s all I have for him. The most honest I can be.

“There was this plant in my room. A vine type of plant,” I say. “I was cleaning one day, and I put it in this box, and then I stuck something on top of the box and forgot about it. And then a while later, I found it again. It was mostly dead. It had grown all around, up and down the inside of the box, looking for light.”

Stone doesn’t interrupt me. He doesn’t complain that I’m off the subject like Mom would, or even Chelsea. It makes me feel good. He makes me feel good.

I continue, “It was trapped, and all it could find was the sides of the box. It didn’t know which way to grow. All it knew was the sides of the box.”

My life is the box. My parents. School. The friends who are picked out for me. I can’t imagine what I want outside of the box, can’t even imagine a garden.

He’s looking at me so strangely. “What happened?”

I put it in the sun, but it was too late. What leaves there were turned brown and then shriveled. “It died.”

He says nothing, but I feel turmoil in the air of the car.

“Maybe it’s stupid, but sometimes I feel like that plant,” I say. “I’m growing inside this box, growing in this completely wrong shape plants aren’t supposed to be in, because I can’t see the sun. It’s like I don’t know anything of what I want. I think I would know what I wanted if I was out of the box.”

“Because you feel trapped.”

“Yes,” I say, blood racing. “And sometimes I think, just drive. No more appearances to keep up. No more pressure. No more Detective Rivera asking questions.”

He squeezes my thigh, sending waves of feeling all through me. His fingers are so near the spot between my legs, it makes it feel hot, like I want him to touch me there. “Brooke.”

“What?” I turn to him.

His green eyes are soft and beautiful, even in that dark, scowling, beat-up face. And I get the sense that this is something important, something private he’s sharing. “You can’t do that,” he says. “You can’t drive away. You need to finish high school. Trust me—you want to be like a normal kid. You really, really do.”

“I kind of can’t believe you’re telling me that.” He’s a criminal. He doesn’t follow the rules. I can’t imagine him worrying about what some piece of paper, some diploma says. “You, of all people. I mean…”

“What?” he says roughly. “The outlaw with the busted lip?”

“You have a lot more than a busted lip, Stone.” I grin, but he doesn’t crack a smile. My amusement fades. “Did you not finish high school? Is that why you’re saying that? Do you regret it?”

He doesn’t want to answer. I can tell—I don’t know how. It’s as though I feel him, feel the current coming off him. Negative to my positive, repelling me.

“My box didn’t include high school,” he says. “Let’s put it like that.”

“You dropped out?”

He shifts his fingers, making me throb between my thighs. “I never went.”

I blink, almost distracted from the ache in my body. “How can you not go? There are laws about that.”

“Do I look like laws apply to me?” he growls, shifting his fingers again, sliding up his hand.

The car is going the speed limit, but my heart is racing a zillion miles an hour. I’m watching the road, but all my attention is on his hand. My breath feels ragged. I really want to push myself into his hand, but it doesn’t seem polite.

Classes start back up in less than an hour, but I feel like I’ve entered a different time zone where classes don’t matter. When I’m with Stone, I’m out of that box. I’m driving to nowhere and everywhere.

With Stone, I really am free.

I look down at his hand, swallow past the dryness in my mouth.

“You don’t want me to touch you?” he asks, low. There’s a challenge in his voice, as if he’s daring me to make him stop. And somehow I know he would stop, if I wanted that.

“No!” I say. “I mean, I do.”

“But not right there?”

“I don’t know,” I say, face flushed.

“Yeah, you do. I think you know.”

I look helplessly over at him.

“Say it, birthday girl,” he says. “Where do you want me to touch you?”

I swallow. “You can move your hand up.”

He lifts his hand off my thigh.

“That’s not what I meant!” I look over, and he’s giving me this half-smile that’s devilish and sexy, a man instead of all the boys I know, a five-o’clock shadow instead of pimples.

“No?” he asks, almost a drawl. “You said up. Isn’t that up?”

“Stop teasing. You know what I mean.” I take a deep breath because he’s going to make me spell it out. He’s going to keep pushing me and pushing me. “You can touch me.”

He puts his hand back where it was.

“Between the legs,” I whisper.

He inches his hand closer. Not at all close enough. “Like that?”

“You’re evil.”

“I am,” he says, kind of seriously. It makes me shudder—a good shudder.

“More.” I swallow, force myself to say it. “Touch my clit. Do what I did to myself on the phone.”

“Yeah?” He presses his fingers to the outside of my panties, and I let out a shallow breath.

“More,” I plead.

He curls his hand around me, grasping me between the legs. It’s a starburst of feeling. “Oh my God. Stone,” I gust out.

“You’re so wet, little bird. So wet.” He slides closer, whispering in my ear. “And you know how much I love hearing you say my name?” He begins to massage slightly.

I move with his magic hand. “How much?”

“A fuck of a lot.” He grabs the wheel with his other hand. “A whole fuck of a lot.”

“That’s a lot,” I breathe, made dumb by his touch.

His whisper in my ear is velvet. “You have no idea.” He pushes his fingers under my panties now, under that panel. I suck in air as he touches my clit. “I’m your fingers right here,” he says, sliding two fingers in small circles.

“Stone…” I say. “I’m trying to drive…”

“I’m your eyes on the road.” He reaches across me and puts the car on cruise control. “Remember what I said? I got you.” He pushes his fingers into me. “You ever have a cock in here?”

I squirm in the seat, shocked by the strange sensation of having him there. “No.”

“What about a toy?”

A squeak escapes me. Visions of Barbies and Tonka trunks flash through my mind. That’s not the kind of toy he means. “No!”

“Not even a vegetable?” he asks, his voice low with a casual curiosity. “Maybe a nice, thick zucchini. You could have put it back in the fridge before anyone noticed, no one knowing what you’d done with it.”

“I’ve never,” I say, breathless with my denial.

“You must have fucked yourself. Put one finger inside. Two. Three. How many can you fit?”

“No, I—” Embarrassment turns my cheeks hot.

“You just touch your clit?”

God, how can he just say those words? None of the boys I’ve known talked like that to me. All the boys I’ve ever talked to go to Saint Matthew’s, the boys’ school we have dances and events with. Those boys ask to kiss me. They lean in from three feet away for a peck on the lips. They probably blush as much as I do during health class.

“Do you?” he asks again.

“Only that one time.” On the phone with him.

“Then what?” he demands softly.

“The pillow,” I choke out.

His fingers still, and he makes a sound, almost a groan. I’m starting to realize I can affect him as much as he’s affecting me. When he speaks, his voice has gone pure gravel. “That’s what you do, sweetheart? You put a pillow between your legs?”

I swear my face is going up in flames. It’s a good thing we’re on cruise control, because my legs are useless. My entire body is focused on what’s happening where his hand touches me. “And I just move my hips. Press my legs together.”

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Rub yourself until you come.”

My hips are already moving, like I’m in bed under the covers. Like it’s dark in my bedroom, the entire house asleep. Like I’m not in broad daylight behind the wheel of a moving vehicle with a man’s hand between my legs. “I can’t. Not here. Not like this.”

“Yes, here. Exactly like this.” His thumb brushes the sensitive place on me, as if to prove his point. And I can’t deny what’s happening. I’m sparking on the inside, light turned into sensation, the rest of my life a dark sky as the backdrop for this moment.

“Wait,” I say, almost afraid of what will happen next.

Afraid of what’s outside the box.

“No waiting,” he growls. “Look at the sign. Exit four twenty. You have one mile to come. By the time we reach four twenty-one, you’re going to be spilling your cum all over my fingers.”

I shiver at his words, making a soft sound of surrender. The cruise control is set to sixty. My brain moves sluggishly, all the blood rushing elsewhere. One minute to come. One minute. Sixty seconds. “It’s too soon.”

“How long have you thought about me?” he murmurs, pressing his fingers deeper, rubbing his thumb faster. “How long have you been afraid of me, dreamed of me? Imagined me coming to you like this?”

“Forever,” I say, almost a sob.

“That’s right. You’ve been waiting for this. Now I’m here. I’m in charge. I have you.”

My body moves on its own, pulled along by his knowing touch, his dark words. The scent of sex in the air.

The highway is mostly empty. Reflective stripes on the pavement flash by like blinking lights. From far away I can see the big green sign overhead proclaiming the next exit. Almost there.

“And I’ve been waiting,” he murmurs. “Waiting to feel how soft you are, how wet. How much you want me. Do you know how incredible your cunt feels? Like fucking heaven. Like nothing that came before matters. Like I’ve never seen hell.”

Before I can even process that, my climax rushes over me like an eclipse. It’s an explosion of pleasure, blinding and yet dark. It blocks out everything but the sensation of his fingers on my clit. It’s as if I can feel every ridge on his finger pad, as if I’m attuned to him in some permanent, inexorable way.

He rubs me softer and softer, pushing the climax on longer than anything I’ve ever felt. Every muscle in my body feels wrung out. I hear a whimpering sound and realize it’s me. I’m collapsed on the seat, the insides of my thighs damp from my orgasm, his touch soothing now.

“There you are,” he says with one last whisper of his fingers through my slit. “You’re beautiful, sweetheart. You’re perfect like this.”

Something nags the back of my mind, something important he said to me in the final moments, but I can barely think. I can barely hold my head up as we speed along. His hand is still on the wheel, cruise control still keeping us steady. Even so it’s a miracle we haven’t crashed.

Slowly my hands fall onto the steering wheel. I turn on the blinker for the exit. Tap the brake to disconnect cruise control. I don’t feel completely steady, but it’s safer this way. I should be the one driving. “That was dangerous,” I say, my voice shaky.

Stone leans back in his seat, his expression suddenly tense and brooding. “Yeah. It was.”

And I know he doesn’t mean the fact that we were driving.

I don’t really mean that either.

He’s dangerous to me because he opens the lid of the box, because he lets me see what’s outside. He’s the sun, a burning ball so bright it can blind me, and I don’t even care. I want more. I’ll do anything to feel more, even if it means I burn.

I take the exit and stop at the top of the ramp. From up here on the overpass, you can see the highway stretching out into the distance, going for miles. I grip the wheel hard, reeling still—from the climax, from the freedom, from Stone’s wild beauty. I always thought of the world as a kind of lush garden I was being kept secluded from, but it’s more like a jungle—dangerous, wild, and fiercely beautiful.

He makes me feel wild, like I could go anywhere. I turn to him, pulse racing. “Where should we go now?”

He regards me strangely. He doesn’t seem happy. Doesn’t he see that I would go anywhere with him? That I’d give him anything?

“Left,” he says.

I flip on the blinker. “What’s left?”

He’s silent.

I take the turn. “Now what?”

“Left again. Back on the highway.”

“What? You want to go back?”

“Of course I want to go back. And so do you.”

He’s wrong. For one magical moment back there, I wanted to never go back. It felt good to imagine it. Good the way Stone feels good. I stop the car, right on the overpass, and turn on the blinker, but I keep my foot on the brake. “Us,” I say.

“What?” he says. “Go on. Turn.”

“Us. Far away from here,” I say. “In a cabin in the middle of nowhere. And there are pretty things strung on the walls. Colorful rocks that we find in a river. And we eat the fish we catch. And we lie under the stars at night on this giant rock that’s cool underneath us.”

“What are you talking about?”

I swallow. “It’s what I imagine. It’s how it could be. The other life.”

He’s silent a moment. “Did you just come up with that?”

Does he like it? Butterflies flutter inside my belly, trapped and frantic. I need him to like it. To not say it’s silly. Childish. Idiotic. Selfish.

He reaches out and touches my hair, slides a strand between calloused fingers—the same two fingers that were touching me in my most private part just a few minutes ago. But his eyes look sad.

Please don’t say it’s silly, I beg him in my head. I’ve never needed anything more. A car stops behind us and honks, but I don’t care. I’m gasping for air, for light, holding on by a fragile thread.

He watches me wordlessly, soft green eyes rimmed with the sooty lashes. He repeats the motion, running that strand of hair through his fingers once again. “And your hair would turn light from the sun. It would turn the pale yellow of the moon. And you would be even more beautiful.”

Tears crowd my eyes, thick and bittersweet.

“And we would take walks,” he says. “We would collect wood to make a fire with every night. Sit outside and watch the sparks rise into the sky.”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“It’s beautiful,” he says.

I watch him, suspended in midair.

He nods his head at the highway. The road back home. “Come on. Your class starts soon.”

“You said it was beautiful.”

“It is, but we can’t do it. We can’t just drive south. That’s not how it works.”

“How, then?” I’m suddenly angry. Angry that he went along with me even in daydreams. “How does it work?”

“Right now, it works with you getting back on that highway.”

I wait, trembling, my heart beating a rapid pulse against my ribs.

“Come on, Brooke.”

I take my foot off the brake and turn. I head back, merging, putting on the speed.

“You know that’s how it works,” he says. “I shouldn’t’ve—”

“You shouldn’t’ve what? Given me ideas? A taste of something I can never have?” I grip the wheel so tightly, I think it might break. It’s not like me, talking back like this.

He says nothing.

“Is that what you mean?” I ask, all twisted up in my chest, because I’ll never have that life. He might have it, with some woman from his life. A beautiful streetwise woman to sit with him next to a fire in the forest.

“Come on, Brooke.”

I shake my head because I know the answer. He thinks he shouldn’t have done any of it. The certainty is a cold feeling in my chest. “Because I have to finish high school and be this person I’m supposed to be.”

“You have to finish high school, that’s for sure.”

I stiffen my spine. “You give me things just to take them away. You’re toying with me.”

“I’m protecting you.”

“I think I’ve been protected enough, thank you very much. My mother. My father. Even Detective Rivera. I’ve been protected practically to death.” So much that I’m suffocating, like the plant in the box.

“Look at me,” he says.

I shake my head.

He lowers his voice. “Look at me. Take a good fucking look. You think this would be a pretty look on you?”

Because I have to obey him, I look—hard. But I’m looking past the bruise on his cheekbone, past his fat lip and his puffy eye, nearly swollen shut now. I look past the carved lines of his face, the way he’s made from rocks barely smoothed. Rough, unforgiving rocks in the shape of a human, more object than person.

I see his green eyes, soft and beautiful. I still feel his warm touch on my skin.

He frowns as if he senses my small disobedience. “The people I’m dealing with,” he growls, “this isn’t what they’d do to you. Or at least, not all they’d do. Do I want to protect you? Fuck yeah. Was it fucked up that I came to you? Seriously fucked up.”

“No, it’s not.”

He makes a rough sound, as though it’s impossible to quantify how fucked up it is that he came to me. Like even numbers can’t express it. Not even formulas from Sister Aggie’s third-hour trig class. “I shouldn’t’ve.”

“Then why did you?”

He glares over at me, and my heart does a flip-flop. He knew he shouldn’t come to me, and he did anyway. Because he couldn’t stay away.

He couldn’t stay away.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “I shouldn’t’ve. I have things to do, and they can’t involve you.”

“What things?”

“Things.”

Doesn’t he see how free he is? “You don’t have to do anything.”

“You’re wrong there, little bird. There are things that need to be done that only I can do. I have people counting on me, same as you.”

The Franklin City exits loom ahead. “Maybe I can help you.”

“Yeah? You know how to kill the monsters that come after your friends in their nightmares? Do you know how to glue somebody’s world together when it was shattered into a thousand pieces?”

I grip the steering wheel more tightly, wishing I did, wishing I could help him.

“You know how to break a guy out of prison? When you can’t even communicate with him?”

I look at him wide-eyed.

“Oh, don’t worry, he’s not actually guilty. He was framed—very expertly framed for a crime he didn’t commit. That’s the power of our enemies.”

“Why are you fighting them?”

He shifts in his seat and rests his head against the headrest. It comes to me that he’s tired and probably in a lot of pain. “Something that happened…you don’t want to know.”

“Yes, I do.” I frown. “I’m not a child.”

He looks at me a long time. Says nothing.

Hopelessness washes through me. I thought we had a connection that rose above age and every other difference between us. Does he see me as nothing but a schoolgirl after all?

I could drive for miles with a gun to my head, with his hand between my legs. But I can’t keep driving with this awful hopelessness. A sign for a rest stop appears ahead, and I take the exit with a sudden pull of the wheel.

“What are you doing?” he asks, his voice harsh.

“I’m stopping at this rest stop.”

He glowers. “Get back on the freeway.”

His voice is gravelly with threat, but I know he won’t hurt me. I pull into one of the empty parking spaces and turn the key.

There’s no one around. A couple of half-empty vending machines stand next to the doorway to the restroom area. A few broken picnic tables off to the side, scrubby weeds all around. A line of 18-wheelers are parked along the far end of the lot, but I don’t see any drivers.

The car quiets, making expectation loud between us. I get out.

Stone gets out his side, glaring at me over the hood of the vehicle. “What the fuck are you doing?” He slams the door.

“You can trust me. I won’t tell Detective Rivera.”

“Fuck Detective Rivera,” he says with a hard glint. It feels like a threat.

“Why won’t you tell me?” I ask softly. “Maybe I can help. You won’t know unless you try.”

He snorts.

“Why is that so ludicrous? Because I’m too young? Not strong enough? Because you’re wrong.” I circle the hood, strangely exhilarated. “I think you want to tell me. I think you could use an ally. Somebody you can talk to. Somebody who cares.”

A scoff. “And you’re that person?”

I feel like my breathing is larger than my body. He has a hundred pounds of pure muscle on me, but I have this wild idea that I could fight him, and I could win. “Yeah, I’m that person. Tell me I’m wrong. Tie up my hands and shove me in the trunk. Do everything awful.”

His eyes flash. “Don’t tempt me, sweetheart.”

My heart swells wide and bright like I’m the sun, too. That’s how I feel right now. Not a plant that can live or die by someone else’s whim. I’m burning all on my own. There’s a way in which I feel Stone brings out the best in me. I want to do that for him—more than anything I’ve ever wanted. “I’m tempting you, Stone. I’m in your face right now, challenging you to let me in.”

He wants me to be afraid of him. It would be so simple. A slap in the face. A twist of my wrist. He could hurt me so easily, but he won’t. He’ll stand there, looking fierce and unholy in the bright midday sun, completely at my mercy.

That’s when I realize that he’s the plant. The one denied light too long.

He’s the one dying.

“Get in the car,” he says. He makes his voice hard, but I hear need. Desperation. “Now,” he growls loudly. His words seem to echo back from the brick structure and the 18-wheelers and the line of trees far away. They bounce around us, fierce and pained.

I put my hand on his arm, feeling the tremors in him. “Tell me what happened,” I whisper. “You said you take care of your guys, but who takes care of you? I think you want to tell me.”

Something shifts in him. I have the sense of gears in his head turning, a decision being made. His voice, when it comes, is pure threat. “You think you know what I want?”

Instinct sends me back a step. Another. I wasn’t afraid of him in the car, despite his threats. Wasn’t afraid when I challenged him in a deserted parking lot. When he was made of marble, I was safe.

Not anymore.

He’s all man, flesh and blood, fury and heartbreak. “I—I—” I stammer.

“News flash—you don’t.” He takes a step toward me, fire in his eyes. “Now you know what’s going to happen here? We’re going to get back in that car, and you’re going to go back to your school uniforms and your ridiculous little-girl dreams. This was a mistake, and this—” He points from him to me to him to me. “This is not happening again. Not ever.”

I ball my fists so tightly my fingernails dig into my palms. My fists are the only part of me not trembling.

“Get. In.” He points at my car.

The world seems to tilt. I shake my head—that’s as much as I can talk right now. I could drive while I was orgasming, dangerous as it was, but now? I’m turned inside out by the ferocity of his words, the cruelty of his regard. I barely know which way is up.

I straighten my spine, compose myself. If there’s one thing I’ve learned how to do over the years, it’s appear perfectly polished when I’m crumbling inside. “Fine,” I say. “After a stop in the ladies’ room. If that’s okay with you.”

“Sure. You go ahead. You go on to the ladies’ room.” He says it with disdain, like he really hates me. Maybe he does. He doesn’t want to see me ever again.

I turn and head across the walkway toward the shabby rest building, her patent black leather shoes smashing over the clumps of ugly weeds that strain up through the cracks in the cement.

What was I thinking? Trying to connect with someone like Stone. He’s so much older than me, and worlds different. How could I presume to be able to understand him or help him, much less have him want me in any real way? To imagine I’m anything more than a distraction. Insubstantial. One of the hors d'oeuvres passed around at my parents’ parties. Instantly forgotten.

My eyes are bleary with tears when I finally step behind the cinder-block wall that marks the entrance to the ladies’ room. Half the lights are smashed out, making the row of metal restroom doors look ominous, some shrouded in near darkness. There’s one window high up, the screen clogged with leaves and dead bugs, probably.

My imagination conjures pictures of tired mothers with hyper daughters. Do they mind how run-down the place is? Or does it seem like part of the road-trip experience? My mother would lose her mind before ever stepping one foot inside. The only family vacations we had were to five-star resorts. First-class seats and private suites. More about proving a point than enjoying each other’s company.

Water drips from the ceiling to a gray puddle on the floor. I step around it and go to the sink, run the water and splash some on my face. I don’t actually have to pee; I just need to pull my head together. Will I be late to class? I don’t know. I can’t even think about it.

I grab a towel from the crooked dispenser, telling myself it’s better this way. Better than sparkling bathrooms with luxury seating and perfect tile, potted palms thriving under skylights. More real.

There’s a creak from the direction of the door.

I ignore it. I know it’s not Stone. Coming after me to apologize or whatever is the last thing he’d do. And I’m hardly in the mood to fake-smile at another traveler.

Probably just a female driver from one of those trucks outside. I splash more water onto my face and gaze up into the mirror.

And freeze.

There’s a huge man looming behind me, whiskery cheeks and a grizzly brown beard under a seed cap. His jeans jacket is cut off at the sleeves to reveal a torn T-shirt over massive tattooed arms. “Fifty bucks,” he says. “For five minutes of those pretty lips.” He’s on me in a flash, hands on my hips.

I jerk away from his grip, moving sideways. “No, I’m not…”

He thinks I’m a prostitute.

“Didn’t anyone tell you that little whores can’t be choosers?” He grabs my hair and pulls me back and shoves me down in front of him. My knees smash into the cold hard floor. I try to scream for Stone, but the man is squeezing my cheeks with his fingers so hard that I feel every ridge of my teeth, cutting into the sides of my mouth, and all I can do is grunt and cry.

Wet seeps into the thin fabric covering my knees. I try to scream, try to push him away.

“Fifty bucks. That’s some six hundred bucks an hour. More than a little bitch like you deserves.”

He has his zipper down. The musky, moldy smell is suffocating. I push against his tree-trunk-like legs as he fumbles with himself.

“Don’t like the looks of me? I’ll teach you not to like the looks of me. I’ll stuff your little lips so full my cock’ll be coming out your ass—”

That’s the last word he gets out before he’s jerked backward. The motion is hard. Furious.

Stone. He crashes the man headfirst into the hard cinder-block wall. There’s a yell. A crack.

I fall to my hands and knees, panting, reeling from what almost happened. From what did happen. A stranger had his hands on me. The dark, shadowy vision of him looms in my mind.

“You okay, baby?” Stone’s touching my hair, touching my face—gently, as if I’m made of spun glass. Light as his touches are, I can feel him trembling. “Tell me you’re okay,” he gusts frantically. “Say you’re okay.”

“I’m okay.” I don’t know whether that’s true or not. Am I okay? All I know is that Stone looks sick with worry, and I don’t want him to worry. He shouldn’t ever have to be afraid.

The trucker is up, though. And coming for Stone.

Before I can even utter a warning, Stone is whirling on him. The trucker is bigger than Stone by far, but Stone goes at him with explosive fury like I’ve never seen. He drives the trucker back into the wall. The trucker’s body jolts from the impact. But he recovers fast enough to slam a fist into Stone’s jaw.

I back up, looking around for a weapon, some way to help Stone, because the trucker is so huge and scary, and he’s hitting Stone again and again, but Stone slips the next hit and drives his knuckles into the man’s jaw, and then he punches hard, right into the man’s neck.

The man starts coughing and staggering, holding his neck.

“You think you can touch her like that? Her?” Stone’s voice sounds funny. Like a demon got into him. “Make her cry?”

Stone is merciless now, hitting and punching.

No longer bothering even to protect himself, the trucker falls to his knees, clutching at his neck. I know with a weird certainty that something inside that man is broken, and I mean, really broken. He might die. One hand flies up in surrender.

Stone kicks him in the face. The man’s head hits the floor.

“Stone!” I scream.

Stone is on his knees, wild, raining down hits on the guy. He sees nothing. Hears nothing. “You would hurt her?” Craaack. “Hurt her?” Craaack. “Make her cry?” Craaack. Craaack.

The puddles on the floor are turning pink.

I scream because I think the man might be dead.

“Stone! Stop!” I grab him by the shirt. “Please! Don’t kill him.”

“He deserves it,” he growls, pulling his arm back for another blow. I latch onto his arms from behind, holding him with all the strength in me.

My toes brush the ground as he lifts me. That’s how intensely he’s fighting right now—he can turn, and my whole body lifts. I’m riding him instead of pulling him away.

It must register, though, because he twists to look at me. His brows are low, eyes glowing with fury. He looks like a demon, something that rises from hell to drag men down.

“Please,” I say softly.

For a long moment we remain frozen, and I think I’m going to watch this man die. Then Stone’s fist unclenches. He releases the man, who falls in an unmoving heap onto the floor.

Stone straightens, but I stay with him. I won’t let go.

“He deserves it,” Stone says again, quieter this time.

“I know, but you don’t deserve to do it.”

He looks bemused. “It doesn’t hurt me.”

It does hurt him, but I don’t only mean physically. I press my hand to his chest, feel the ragged rise and fall. I wish I could calm him, soothe him. “It hurts you here.”

“Ah, sweetheart.” He covers my small, pale hand with his big rough one, knuckles dark with blood. “There’s nothing in there. Nothing at all.”

I won’t believe it. I rise up on tiptoes, reaching for him. I’m not tall enough, not strong enough, but he meets me halfway, his lips impossibly soft in contrast to the hardness of his body. Our kiss isn’t one that moves, not with lips or tongue, only a press of mouths—something moves inside me instead. I know he feels it too, in that heart he claims not to have.

It’s dirty and dangerous that we’re kissing in this dark rest-stop bathroom, a man’s blood drawing a pink trail toward the drain in the floor. This is the life Stone has led, and I can’t flinch away from it any more than I can turn away from him.

When I pull away, his eyes search mine. “Did he touch you?”

My shoulders still ache from his harsh touch, the skin on my face crawls from when he pried my mouth open. I want to tell him no, to lie to him, but a shudder works its way through me, revealing the truth.