by Emilia Finn
“And I told you that we were safe.” He flips up the visor on the helmet to reveal my eyes. “I’m the most competent person in town. If you wanna ride a bike, I’ve got your back. If you wanna ride with someone, that someone is me. If you wanna learn how to ride on your own, your teacher is gonna be me.”
“On my own?” My heart races with adrenaline. “No way. No effing chance.”
He studies me like he thinks my denials are cute. “Someday you might get a bug in your butt and wanna try, in which case, you’ll know where to find me. Now come on.” He turns and swings a leg over his bike, only to look back and peek at me over his shoulder. “Climb on, snuggle in.” He grins. “Make your clit touch the seat.”
Heat floods through my body at his crass words. Molten lava, potent like a drug, so when I climb up and actually do move in a way that makes the seam of my jeans press against sensitive nerves between my legs, I have to bite down my moan before he considers that a victory.
I refuse to let him win so easily. I refuse to let him brag.
Chuck
Daring
“Nora! Nora, Nora!” I’m a monster, but I slam my fist on her door over and over again. “Nora! Open up. Nora! Nora!”
Galileo stands on the other side of the door and growls.
I’m a horrible human being, terrifying this beautiful woman at eight o’clock on a work night, but still…
“Nora! Open. The. Fuck. Up!”
“What?” She opens the door, but only a few inches, and studies me with terrified eyes. “Tell me fast.”
“I need you to come outside real quick.”
Her eyes flare. “Are you serious? No!”
“Quick!” I snag her hand and drag her into the hall. “Just come quick.”
“Tucker!” Her voice breaks. “No, just… wait. Oh my god.”
I pull her along the landing of the fourth floor, and then onto the stairs.
“Tucker!”
“You’re with me. You’re safe.”
Except for the bit where we both might die of a broken neck if we trip on these stairs.
“We have to hurry!”
“Tucker!” she cries out. She’s terrified, but her hand remains in mine. She’s running with me, not away. “I’m in my pyjamas!”
“So am I!” I laugh when Galileo overtakes us, and skids down an entire flight on his ass. “It’s gonna be okay, just run!”
“Tucker. Oh my god. Tucker!”
“Quick, quick, quick!” I slingshot her around the landing on the second floor, and sprint along the stairs that take us to the first. “We’re gonna miss it.”
“God, we’re gonna die. We’re gonna die!”
“I will never let you die. Close your eyes.”
“Tucker Morris, you have lost your damn mind!”
I scoop her up with one arm around her stomach, then slap my other hand over her eyes while she squeals and kicks at the air.
“Shhhh.” I giggle like a fucking girl, but I press a kiss to her ear and carry her through the glass doors at the front of our building.
Then I set her on the ground, angle her head up, and… release my hand.
“Oh god.”
We stand in the darkness and watch stars shoot across the sky and stab their way through the clouds. Not just one or two, but dozens – hundreds? Thousands, perhaps? – put on a show for us.
“They’re like fireballs,” she whispers and leans back against me.
She takes my hand, pulls it over her shoulder, then rests the flat of my palm over her pounding heart. She’s terrified, but she’s here with me anyway while the universe shows us its magic.
“Look.” She points at a ball of light that slams through the sky and illuminates a cloud from the inside. “It’s so pretty.”
“They’re probably meteors coming to kill us,” I tease. “I told you we’d die in the parking lot.”
“Shut up,” she laughs quietly. “What’s going on? I didn’t see this on the news or anything.”
“It can’t be on the news yet, silly. We’re watching it live, and we’re the only people on the planet that know it’s happening.”
It’s cold out, she’s in sleep shorts and a tank. Her hair is wet, and her teeth audibly chatter. Neither of us have shoes on, and I have no shirt. But we stand in the darkness, borrow each other’s warmth, and we watch the stars fall from the sky.
“It’s cool, huh?”
“So cool,” she whispers. “I would have missed this if you didn’t bring me out.”
“I’m glad you opened the door.” I bend my neck and pepper kisses along her skin. “I’m glad you trusted me enough to leave your gun inside.”
She tilts her head to the side and gives me room to work. “I trust you. I don’t have a great track record for good decision-making, so that’s not necessarily a good thing, but alas…”
“Best compliment I’ve received all day,” I snort. “You smell amazing, by the way. New shampoo?”
She warms under my touch. Melts. And nods. “Yeah, new shampoo. Thank you for tricking me outside.”
“I was willing to hog-tie and drag you down the stairs.”
She snorts. “I believe you.”
Winding her arms up and around the back of my neck, she tugs me close, impossibly close, and leaves her chest wide open for a man with explorative hands.
I was going for romantic. For once-in-a-lifetime stuff with whatever is going on in the sky – stars? Meteors? Fuck knows. Instead, I let her watch the balls of fire, and I focus on her fevered skin. The fragrant spots behind her ear. The pulse in her throat, and the sound she makes when she swallows her nerves.
I slide my hand over her stomach, her ribs. I feel her desire pulse in the air around us, a literal throb that leaves me almost breathless. But I’m a romantic at heart, so I don’t grab her where I so desperately want to. Instead, I bypass her chest, slide my hands up to her throat, her hair, then I spin her, and dive in until her sigh slides into my lungs, and her whimpers send me halfway to crazy.
“I’ve never gone so slow for a woman before,” I rasp. “I’m not proud to admit that I don’t have practice being a gentleman.”
“I’ve never gone so fast,” she admits on a croak. “But I guess we’re both trying, and that’s special, right?”
“Right.”
I slide my tongue over her lips, inside her mouth, and moan when she meets me stroke for stroke.
“We’re both better people when we’re together,” I murmur. “And that’s something I would never have known about myself if I’d never met you.”
“Nora! Nora! Nora!” I slam my fist on her door on Wednesday night. Over and over again, I desensitize her to the things she’s terrified of. “Nora! Open up. Nora! Nora!”
“Tucker!” She opens her door and glowers. “It was cute the first time.”
“And you’re not even shaking this time. Come on!”
I snag her hand and tug her into the hall.
“Galileo,” I block his way out, “sit.”
He sits with a heavy thump and a smile.
“Good boy.” I lean through the doorway and scratch his ears. “You’re the goodest boy. Go to bed, and I’ll have Mom home soon.”
“Tucker,” Nora whines. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Yes you are.” I look at her feet. “You have shoes on already. Great! Let’s go.”
“I’m not going anywhere!”
“Yes, you are.” I pull her through the hall and down the stairs, and let my laughter echo off the concrete walls. “I’ve still got the hog-tying option if you don’t do as you’re told.” I wrap my hand around hers, and tap her nose with mine. “Be brave.”
“I hate being brave. It’s so…” She huffs as we skip down the stairs. “Inconvenient.”
“You didn’t seem all that put out two nights ago, when we made out in the parking lot.” I wink and slingshot her around from the second floor to the stairs.
It’s our thing, I guess
, slingshotting her into the unknown.
“I want an hour of your time, then you can go back to pretending you don’t have a crush on your hot neighbor.”
“I don’t have a crush on my neighbor,” she grumbles.
Funny, considering she cuddles into my arm as we skip through the building doors, how she snuggles in close to my back when she climbs behind me onto my bike, and then wraps her body around mine when we stop at the lake and climb off again.
She places herself under my arm as we wander toward the water, wraps her arms around my stomach as we walk, and presses a kiss to my chest when I look up to the sky and grin at the stars.
None are shooting tonight, but they’re pretty all the same. Not something I grew up seeing, living in a big city.
“Did you like growing up in a small town?” I ask.
“Mm.” She considers. “I guess. I don’t have anything to compare it to, but yeah, I suppose. Living in a small town means I’ve known everyone since kindergarten, which is a perk, I suppose, because it’s not like I enjoy meeting new people. But on the flipside, knowing everyone since infancy means we all come with these preconceived ideas of each other. So the girl that pulled my hair in first grade was always a bully in my mind, even ten years later, even if that wasn’t really her anymore. I was always the shy girl, the quiet mouse, so even though, by ninth grade, I was trying to get out and do more, my classmates had already categorized me. They had long since stopped inviting me to parties and such. Which…” She shrugs. “I guess is how Lisa and I ended up at Infernos that night.” She looks up. “You lived in the city?”
I nod. “Which means I met new people all the time, we had kids rotating in and out of our classes often. My parents worked hard, they worked a lot of hours while they built their business up, so my sister and I were fairly independent by a young age.” He smiles. “We were friends. Even though she was older, and even though siblings often fight, we were friends. We were two little fish in a massive ocean.”
“How did you learn to fix engines and stuff?”
I lead her toward the pier and remember back to my teenage years. “I took classes in high school. Math and science weren’t really my thing, but I seemed to have a gift with my hands.” I look into her eyes and smile with arrogance. “I aced cooking classes, by the way.”
“Shut up.”
I laugh. “True story. I can cook a feast that’ll make you wet.”
“It’s always about sex,” she scowls. “You’re so disgusting.”
“I learned how to sew.”
“You did not!”
“I did. But once I got to auto shop, I found my calling. I dropped the other classes, went to the garage as often as I was allowed, and here we are.”
“How’d you learn to race?”
We wander along the rickety wooden pier as the moonlight shimmers and reflects off the water. It’s breezy tonight, cool, but kinda perfect when wrapped around another person.
“I feel like you should know this about me by now,” I tease. “If I know how to build an engine, then I’m sure as shit gonna test it out. I’m not exactly the meek type that’s gonna sit down and let everyone else have all the fun.”
“So you just got onto a contraption you built with your own hands, willingly added gasoline and a spark, and assumed it would all be fine?”
I slow at the end of the pier, and, pulling her around, I wrap my arms around her shoulders and breathe warm air against the top of her head. “I mean, yeah, I guess, if you wanna break it right down to basics. Sure, I took a spark, added gas, and prayed my ass wouldn’t catch fire.”
Her chest bounces with muted laughter. “How’d you get into racing here, in this town? Piper’s Lane isn’t exactly in the Welcome to Town brochure.”
“Working at the garage gives me a clear in to most of the cars that roll through Main Street. I met Mac when he started working there, and with Mac came Bry.”
“Bryan Kincaid?”
I nod. “Bry races. Or, well,” I shrug. “He used to. I’d heard rumors about drag races being held not so far out of town, so I wandered out, hung back and watched for a while, then I saw Bry pull up to the line.”
I let my grin grow. “It was all over for me after that. I had a friend, an in, and a bike I knew could outstrip every other racer out there. So I put it on the line, bet cash and pink slips, and I lost neither.”
“You won?”
“I’ve actually never lost a race,” I chuckle. “I’m an arrogant son of a bitch, just so you’re aware. I’m confident on a bike, confident with speed, and I’m a quick thinker. I’m also pretty sexy.”
I’m wearing her down. I swear I am. Because instead of whacking me in the ribs, she only rolls her eyes and sighs. “Of course you are.”
“I’ve never lost a race, and I’ve never not turned up on a Friday or Saturday night. Not since the first time.”
“Except last weekend,” she murmurs.
“Except last weekend, and just so you know, my absence was kind of a big deal. I’ve been fielding phone calls ever since. People are legit wondering if I died or something.”
“Ugh. Not funny,” she grumbles, but then her brows come together in a frown. “Why didn’t you go? Why didn’t you do the thing you so obviously love?”
I pull back to catch her eyes, stare into the light brown orbs like I might be able to see myself in them. “I had something more important I wanted to do. Someone more important I wanted to spend time with. A chick-flick I really wanted to see.”
She scoffs, she tries to brush me off, but her cheeks warm with happiness. “You did not want to see that movie.”
“Neither did you,” I challenge. “We watched a minute here, a minute there, then you wrapped yourself around me like a boa, and slept like you’ve been desperate for a little peace.”
“I have been,” she admits quietly. Turning back to the view, she brings my arms around her stomach and stares up at the sky. “I don’t sleep very well.”
“Lately?”
“Ever,” she sighs. “I’m not sure I’ve slept a full eight hours since Lisa was alive. But then you tricked me into a fort, and somehow I got my first full night of sleep in years.”
“How’d you sleep after we watched the stars the other night?”
She pauses for a moment, tenses, then relaxes. “Better, I guess. It wasn’t nine hours straight or anything, but it wasn’t terrible.”
“That makes me happy. Do you think it’s my presence helping, or the fact you’re getting braver?”
“Um…” Her voice cracks. “I don’t know. The second, I guess. I’ve been so scared for so long, that stepping out of my comfort zone has been helping me. Even if I hate you while you’re dragging me away from my home.”
I bury my nose in her hair and nibble on the sensitive skin behind her ear. “Are you scared now?”
“Right this second?” She makes a pleasure-filled noise in the back of her throat. “It’s not a yes or no answer. I’m a little scared,” she adds. “The water is pitch-black, and the trees are kind of terrifying. But you’re here, so it makes it better.”
“You don’t ever have to be scared when I’m around.” My lips brush over her warm skin. “I’ve got your back always.”
“I know. I have no clue why, considering we’re not even friends, but stranger things have happened, I suppose.”
“Do you have your phone on you?”
She shakes her head. “You dragged me out of my apartment without letting me grab anything.”
“Your pockets are empty?”
She nods.
“Good. Hold your breath.”
“What?”
She screams when I shove her forward and toss her off the end of the pier into the freezing water.
It’s only cruel if I was going to stay on the outside and watch, so I peel my shirt off, toss it to the wooden platform beneath my feet, then I dive in just as she surfaces with a banshee roar.
“You asshole! You fucki
ng prick!”
I slice through the black water, eyes open and a smile on my face, until I catch a glimpse of her white sneakers. I wrap a hand around her ankle, feel mildly guilty when she jolts in fear, then I yank her beneath the surface.
We’re not growing unless we’re uncomfortable. So I’m gonna be the most uncomfortable person she knows.
Grabbing her delectable hips while her screams beneath the water send bubbles exploding upward, I kick my feet and send us back to the surface. The moment we break above the water, and her shouting turns my hearing tinny, I wrap her in my arms and slam my lips over hers to shut her up.
“I hate you,” she cries. Real, actual cries accompanied by tears. But sometimes to help someone we care for, we have to be the bad guy. To help them grow, we have to force them to do things they don’t want to do. “I hate you so much.”
“It’s okay. I like you so much that I’ll hold us together.” I wrap one arm around her back to hold her close, and bring the other beneath her ass to guide her legs around my hips. “Hold onto me, and I’ll help you be brave.”
“Nora! Nora! Nora!”
I stand at her door on Thursday evening in my pyjama best, complete with Green Lantern slippers and two cups of hot chocolate held in one hand. I slam my fist against the steel door, and smile when Galileo’s sniffing comes so loud that I hear it on my side.
“Nora! Hey, snob. Open up!”
“I’m done with you,” she shouts from inside her apartment. “I’m done, you’re not cute, and I don’t want to be brave tonight!”
“Just open the fucking door! I have something for you.”
“I don’t want a fort date!” she shouts back. “I don’t want a movie, I don’t care if a meteor is coming to kill us, and I’m still really mad about the lake.”
I step closer until my slippers press to the gap at the bottom of the door. Fisting the two mugs in one hand, I lay my cheek on the door and run my fingers in circle patterns. “Nora, sweet, beautiful, brave Nora. Open the door for Uncle Tuck.”
“You’re a creep! And a liar, too. Because I’m not sweet, beautiful, or brave.”
