Nope. I’m in heaven, Ryder my welcoming angel.
“Where are we?” I ask, liquor dominating my confused thoughts as I press a featherlight palm to my cheekbone. Shooting pain—the kind that makes the heavens burst into star-spangled colors behind your eyes—jerks me back to life. “Ahh, God! And who or what hit me with a brick?”
“You, my sweet peach, are in the backseat of my car.” Winking a baby blue at me, he tackles my heart to the ground by placing a soft, lingering kiss on my lips. The heavenly copper taste of his blood stains my tongue, my heart pouncing from my chest as I try to pull myself from the euphoric fog his touch has draped me in. “That shit was some of the best . . . straight-up . . . animalistic fucking we’ve ever done.” He pauses, a smirk lifting his mouth. “Tell me it was as good for you as it was me.”
“I, uh, we,” I stutter, watching him raise a wounded, disapproving brow. “I don’t remem—”
“Just kidding,” he says flatly as he lifts my head from his lap. He climbs over into the front seat, his voice not so sexually merry as he guns the car to life. “Well, I wasn’t kidding about the backseat part. Hopefully you’re sober enough now to realize you are, indeed, in the backseat of my car.” He shoots me a look from the rearview mirror. “Wanna know where we are? What really fucking happened?”
“Yes!” I blurt, equally as hurt as he apparently is, but growing pissed off about him withholding information from me. Who does he think he is? A goddamn FBI agent? “Of course I wanna know where we are and what really happened, you asshole!”
He chuckles, I think. It could’ve been a growl. I’m not sure. Either way, I’d welcome anything at this heated stage. “We’re in the back parking lot of Ram’s Head because you and I got kicked the fuck out after getting into a fistfight. You stole some guy’s drink, he tried to beat the shit out of me after I threatened him about touching you, then you decided the girl sitting on my lap was Hailey. The chick had no idea what was going on when you attacked her.”
It all comes rushing back to me, less the part where I romped on Hailey.
Madeline’s pom-pom-driven speech about going after him.
The desperate escape from my dorm.
The agonizing pain of seeing Ryder suck face with that bitch.
I sober some as anger possesses every cell in my body.
Switching gears, my hand connects with Ryder’s dimpled cheek—whack!—as I climb over into the passenger seat.
“You asshole!” I hiss, vexed. “I’ve been calling you, texting you, leaving you message after message, and I catch you helping yourself to that whore?”
Whack!
“That . . . that, sorry excuse for wasted oxygen?” I cry, growing angrier.
Whack!
“You left me hanging to go back to her?”
“Goddamnit, peach! That girl wasn’t Hailey!” Before I know it, the bastard pulls me over the console and into his lap, my heart whipping out of control as his eyes flare wider. “So help me, Amber, if you try to fucking move or smack me again, I’m gonna—”
“You’re gonna what?” I lift my chin in defiance as the first half of his statement, the one he revealed before he so eloquently pulled me into his lap, finally hits me.
Wasn’t Hailey . . .
Wasn’t Hailey . . .
Wasn’t Hailey . . .
I can tell he sees the realization smeared across my face, because a slow grin consumes his. “Are you ready to listen?” he whispers, the tension hardening his shoulders easing some as he presses his lips to the wound, continuing to hammer nails of unforgettable pain into my cheekbone. “Because, if so, I’m ready to talk.”
Whack!
My right hand snags the corner of his bloodied lip in an Oscar-worthy smack, the back of my skull pouncing off the driver’s-side window as I squirm out of his hold. I blink, my shock mirroring his, as fear sets in. Reacting like any normal, drunk, underage college freshman would, I catapult to the passenger side, where I swing open the door, landing face-first into a heap of snow as I dive out of the vehicle.
The sounds of Ryder opening his door, his trunk being popped ajar, and his footsteps crunching toward me have me convinced that my final smack pushed him a little too far. Just a guess, but I’m pretty sure he’s about to tie me up and toss me into his trunk, a double layer of duct tape sealed across my mouth ensuring my screams go unheard as he dumps me into the icy waters of the Chesapeake Bay.
On that note, I decide getting to my feet is my best form of escape from Ryder’s wrath. As I attempt to stand, alcohol hindering the usually simple act, Ryder’s footsteps become heavier, faster.
Shit. This is it. Death by love.
Again, the deadliest disease to the human race.
Before I can flip onto my back, I’m lifted from the ground and wrapped in a wool blanket that reeks of gasoline and cherry-flavored cigars as Ryder spins me in his direction. I crane my head back, my eyes roving over his beautifully bruised face as he lets out a sigh.
“Now, why would you go do that?” He cups my cheeks, the warmth of his hands a reprieve to my frozen flesh. A grin flitters across his mouth, his head ticking back and forth in mock disappointment as he adjusts my snow cap. “I had ya pinned for being slightly smarter than what you’ve displayed tonight. Guess I was wrong, eh?”
“I did it because I needed to get away from you, asshole,” I scoff, my heart shredding into tiny puzzle-sized pieces. “Because I . . . I hate you.”
“No, you don’t,” he insists through a growl, his hands coming around the small of my back.