wouldn’t lose. The more games she won, the madder Carter got. What was his problem? Losing at something as stupid as pool wasn’t that big of a deal but he got a little crazy, like he’d dropped something nasty into his Diet Coke. Then it got worse. When Steffy broke down and pretend-lost so they could get the hell out of there, he jerked her around so sharply that he hurt her arm.
‘Don’t pull that shit on me,’ he yelled. ‘Do this fair and square and I promise, we’re done in one game.’ Of course they weren’t. The more they played, the more bent Carter became, turning the game into pool hell. He made them play until Steffy felt tears running, and Carter was furious and out of control. Thank God the fury ended it, but not like you’d think. Steffy was winning for, like, the hundredth time and Carter freaked. He ripped the crap out of the pink felt top of Mr Till’s pool table trying to kill her last ball.
‘Oh, shit,’ Steffy said. ‘Let’s go!’
‘We can’t have that!’ Carter shouted, loud enough to wake up the neighbors even though the Rolos were down. He kept stabbing the felt with his pool cue as if he hadn’t already done enough, gouging like he could make the table bleed, yowling, ‘We can’t have that!’
It was awful. He was out of control and nothing Steffy said or did could move him away from the table or get him outside, where it was safe.
By the end she was praying to him, ‘Please. We have to go!’
He showed big square robot teeth in a yellow robot grin. ‘Not yet.’
With security off, Carter got into the Tills’ storage no problem by punching a panel to open a secret door. He dragged in a pile of old newspapers and crumpled them on the pool table, grinning. ‘Smart, right?’
He was trying to make it look like it was not a kid with a pool cue who wrecked Mr Till’s special watermelon felt, it was death by accidental fire. Steffy was not about to help him. She stood back while he kicked the slats out of a chair; there was no stopping Carter now. She couldn’t stop him from sticking them underneath the newspaper either, when any asshole knew you piled the kindling on top. At the end she ran outside because she couldn’t bear to see him light the match.
It’s OK, she told herself, shivering in the dark, and on quiet Coral Shores she could almost believe it. She had to! It’s only a little fire.
By the time Carter came back to the car, she was telling herself that he hadn’t just done that. This was her boyfriend, after all. He might get mad and do stupid things but nobody starts a fire in an empty house. In fact she was sure of it, because he got in the car grinning like nothing had happened, and they both started to laugh. A song they liked came on the radio and Carter was singing which made Steffy feel better, so she sang too.
They ended up on Bayfront Drive after all. He put the top down so if kids saw them together, they’d be impressed. At the curve nearest the bridge, they parked. It was sweet, very sweet, sitting under the palm trees with Carter’s lips going all those nice places. It was sweet and sexy and sad, clinging in the dark. Steffy thought they were just making out, but she knows now that while Carter was doing all those nice things to her, his mind was not on it. It was somewhere else.
God she was scared when the sirens started to howl.
Carter quit doing what he was doing and faced forward.
They watched the sky light up over Coral Shores.
They quit talking, too. It was too weird out; Steffy was too scared. Even Carter was scared; she felt him jittering, pressed close with one leg over the stick shift and Steffy pulled so tight that the ridge on the bucket seat hurt her ass.
Heavy trucks rumbled past. There were so many that the street shook.
When it was all done they just sat. Finally when the glow died and the sky was empty over Palm Shores, a long time after the last city truck rolled past on its way back to town, he grunted and started the car.
Then he said, ‘You know I love you.’
‘I’m so glad.’
The next thing Steffy knew the two of them were way the hell