Page 13 of Ignition

“I think I’m gonna enter on Friday night,” I said, mostly to change the subject as Caleb’s fingers moved, navigating from post to post, nearly shaking with anger.

He was taking the divorce hard, which was a little ironic since his life didn’t change that much, but I was left fuckin’ busting my ass with gig work on top of my job at the shop to make sure that Nina’s senior year wasn’t affected.

Caleb wouldn’t get that, though; money wasn’t even something on his radar. Imaginary numbers that never amounted to anything.

“This piece of shit?” he asked incredulously. “I know we all had a phase where we were like, really,really, into Rihanna. But she didn’t mean zero to sixty in three point five minutes; she meant seconds.”

“Vete a la chingada.” I scowled. “It’s notthatslow.”

Sure, it’d taken a little longer than I’d wanted to get up to speed on the highway, but it just needed tweaking. And I had enough time to do it.

“Nick, it practically crawls. There’s no way you can put money on it doing anything more than rolling out of the driveway.”

“I only just got it running,” I argued. “It’s not like it’ll always run like this; I’ll make improvements.”

“Improvements,” Caleb scoffed, chomping down a few more bites of burger until he was tossing his empty wrapper into the bag and wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Like what? Hauling it to the junkyard and buying a new car?”

“Some of us can’t afford to throw things away just because they need a little work,” I snapped, feeling heat rush to my face with my anger.

Of course, to a rich prick like Caleb, the car was inconvenient. But it wasn’t like I had the money to replace it. Even if I managed to sell it, I’d sort of fucked over the resale value by getting rid of the special edition parts anyway.

“I didn’t say throw it away, you could sell it for scrap at least.”

My scowl became a glare, frustration bubbling up insideme and making the space feel tighter than it already was with two big alphas crowding the front seat. “Change the fuckin’ subject, man.”

“Touchy,” Caleb muttered in a tone that reminded me more of an omega than an alpha. He had a habit of sounding like that, and, if I wasn’t so annoyed, it would’ve been cute.

I shifted to grab my soda from the cupholder and was immediately assaulted with the earthy sweetness of his scent in the rapidly rising temperature in the car. Pheremones stuck to my tongue and the roof of my mouth in the humidity, and I took a big gulp of soda in an attempt to wash them away.

“Little hot in here, isn’t it?” I mumbled, fiddling with the controls of the fans.

Going without AC in Florida was insane, and the heavier the air got, the more oppressively sticky the heat felt. Though maybe that was just the stick of my clothes to my body with sweat.

“I don’t think so,” Caleb said, letting out a low, irritated hiss as he navigated through his phone. “Ha! I knew it…”

“What?” I said, hardly listening. His scent was clinging to my nostrils and the back of my tongue, making my skin feel tighter and itchier by the second. My cock swelled in my shorts until I was sure there was no way Caleb wasn’t going to notice.

Well, if he ever looked up from his fucking phone.

“Marissa messaged me back,” he said triumphantly. “I knew she would.”

“I thought you guys broke up.”

Marissa was his on-again, off-again… girlfriend felt like a strong word. But hookup wasn’t quite right either. I was pretty sure I’d heard Nina use the term ‘situationship’ once, and that seemed to fit the bill. One minute they were practically fucking through their clothes at some party, and the next they were screaming at each other, usually ending with her trying to take his head off with whatever heavy object was closest.

Sometimes, I sort of thought she had a point. It’d be nice to throw something at Caleb once in a while.

“Yeah, she posted some soft launch bullshit with another guy today.”

“Don’t you think that means she moved on?” I asked, chewing on my straw in an effort to coat my tongue with the last few drops of soda lingering in the plastic.

He scoffed. “It means she was trying to get under my skin, and once she realized she didn’t, she messaged me.”

I didn’t get him at all. Sometimes it was hard to tell whether or not he liked fucking her, or fighting with her more.

Both sounded fuckin’ exhausting.

“Why don’t you drop her for good this time? It’s obvious the two of you don’t work.”