Chapter 13
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.