favorite place.
The one where Wes and I are alone together.
A car horn breaks into my consciousness, causing me to go rigid in Wes’s arms. I don’t look, afraid of what I might find, but Wes does, and what he sees makes him grin against my lips. He lets go of me to salute something over my shoulder, so I give in to my curiosity and take a peek.
A small white mail truck comes puttering up next to us, and Eddie—the same mail carrier we’ve had since I was a kid—gives us a little wave before flipping a U-turn and heading back down the highway toward Franklin Springs.
“The mail is running?” I ask in shock.
“Sort of.” Wes chuckles, lifting his tank top to re-cover my eyes. “C’mon. Let’s head back. I’m starving.”
“But Q isn’t feeding us today,” I remind him as he ties the white cotton in a knot behind my head, grateful that he’s not going to push me to walk all the way back, unblindfolded.
“I told you, I have plenty of food.” Wes presses a kiss to my unsuspecting lips, which part in a silent gasp as his hand slides between my legs. “That’s not what I’m hungry for.”
I feel so much better on the way back. Bolder. Braver. I lace my fingers between Wes’s and swing our hands back and forth as we head down the exit ramp. The bright May sun warms the top of my head, and I suddenly want to feel it everywhere—on my cheeks, on my shoulders. I crave it like oxygen.
Once we’re at the bottom of the ramp, I pull Wes to a stop next to the chain-link fence encircling the mall and yank my hoodie off over my head. His makeshift blindfold comes off in the process, and I freeze, both from the delicious warmth on my skin and from the war being waged inside my head.
“Rain?”
I think I can do it. I think I can open my eyes and be okay. With Wes beside me and the sun on my face, I feel like I could fly if I really wanted to.
I listen for anything that might sound … I don’t know … triggering, but all I hear is the faint rumble of an engine in the distance.
Make that several engines.
“Shit,” Wes spits, tightening his grip on my hand.
“Wes?”
“Bonys.”
My eyes snap open and jerk in the direction of the break in the fence and then back up the ramp the way we came.
“We gotta run for it,” Wes growls.
“It’s too far!”
“Now, Rain!”
“No! Just … just … just put this on!” I take the can of spray paint in his hand and swap it out with my oversize Franklin Springs High sweatshirt.
Wes glances over my shoulder toward the sound of the rumble, but he doesn’t argue. He yanks the hoodie on over his head in the time it takes to suck in one more steadying breath. It fits him perfectly, hugging his broad chest and shoulders, and I get to work, spraying neon-orange ribs across the front and back. Wes flips the hood over his head and pulls it down low to cover his eyes.
Tossing the empty can over the barbed wire, I stand with my back against the fence and pull Wes in front of me so that I’m mostly hidden from view.
“Kiss me!” I beg as five shiny street bikes crest the hill at the end of the street. “Like I don’t want it!”
Wes doesn’t hesitate, grabbing me by the throat and shoving his thigh between my legs. He angles his back toward the oncoming threat as he plunges his tongue into my mouth, and as much as I want to sag against the fence and let him, I have to pretend to fight him off.
I don’t bother screaming—they won’t hear me over the roar of those engines—but I make a show of shoving his immoveable chest and trying to push off the fence with my boot as he holds me in place. Wes rips my tank top halfway down the front and grabs my breast as the first motorcycle passes.
And, against my better judgment, I look.
The crew of madmen seems to move in slow motion as they take in the show. Their once-chromed-out choppers and slick black street bikes have been spray-painted with neon skulls and bones and bloody, flaming body parts just like the leather jackets and hoodies they wear. Each man has on a helmet or mask more terrifying than the one before it. Mohawked, blood-spattered, Day-Glo