Page 65 of Carnal Wagers

“Sure you did.”

“My parents did the best they could.”

“Aye, a tip-top job to them if this is how they left you.”

My teeth ground together at his sarcasm. “You’re suddenly chatty.”

His nonchalant shrug made me squirm uncomfortably in my seat. Damn him.

“Just saying. You force something too much, you break it.”

“How hypocritical of you,” I snarled. “You spend your time breaking the law just to stand out. Whether it’s for money, power, or whatever else drives you, you want your life to have meaning.” I gazed out the window. The shadowed houses, darkened lawns, and gloomy trees blurred by through the window, everything bleached of color under patchy moonlight. “Everyone does in their own way.”

“Is that what this is? Are you using me to give your life meaning?”

The menace in his tone barely registered. I was using him, just not in the way he thought. I was using him to free myself and find the emotional connection I’d been hoping for my whole life. To find the person who thought about me the moment they woke up in the morning. The person who admired, cherished, and loved me above all others. I was tired of begging for scraps of affection.

It wasn’t my fault he didn’t recognize me or know who I was. I chose a fake identity with a name so close to my own he was a damn fool not to realize it. In fact, at this point, I wondered how much information I could give him about myself before he caught on.

The worst part was I didn’t hate him. I enjoyed our back-and-forth. If he’d made even the tiniest effort in our marriage, then maybe we would have worked. Maybe we wouldn’t be here, where I deceived him so he’d fall in love with a fake me, only to willingly divorce the real me. Twisted as that was.

“Aren’t you doing the same with me?” I challenged. “No one forced you to come after me. Is your life lacking meaning?”

In the darkness between streetlamps, the glow of the console contorted the grimace on his handsome face into something ghoulish and deadly, but his silent threat didn’t even faze me. Not after growing up with a psychopath as my twin.

A large shadowed shape rushed at us in my periphery. I snapped my head at it. A deer.

“Watch out!”

The tires squealed. The brakes ground. I vaulted forward against the seat belt, ramming into his extended arm and hand before the seat belt snapped taut. The car thumped onto its back tires, slamming me into my seat, his arm locking me in place. By then, the deer was gone, and we were stopped, but that wasn’t what I was seeing.

I was back there…back to the day I killed my childhood best friend. We were on the road, and I was gripping the steering wheel, watching the oncoming car, hearing the honking, but frozen in place and unable to move. Completely useless. My mind was trapped in a panic amid her screaming, the brakes squeaking, and metal crunching as my body rolled, and the reek of blood and diesel filled the car. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t even scream. Lights flashed. My ears rang. And Lea’s eyes were open, staring vacantly back at me, as blood rushed down the side of her head. She was dead. Again, and it was all my fault, all over again.

“Alice. Alice!”

Something shook me, and the memory faded. The bright glow of blue sirens from an ambulance melted into darkness. The sharp shrieks of metal crunching sank into an abyss of silence under the pounding of my heart.

“Oi, síbhean. Snap out of it. Come on.”

There was a click, then my body turned into a weightless, shaking mess, carried over that ridiculous gear handle and seat divider. What if my prank reduced Cillian’s reaction time? What if we’d crashed and he’d died because of it? It’d be my fault. Always my fault.

A low, deep humming cut through all the noise in my head. It was beautiful and melodious. Sweet, yet almost sad. The tune rumbled against my ear and head as heavy fingers stroked up and down my back, with arms tightly wrapped around me.

Slowly, the heaviness of my limbs dissipated. The dizziness cleared, and I could breathe again.

“Oi, look at me.”

Cillian’s warm fingers pressed up beneath my shaky chin. I straddled his thighs, my face wet and buried in his chest, the steering wheel digging into my back. That just made this all the more embarrassing. There was nothing strong and impressive about me right now. Everything around us was dark and blurred, and he’d probably see little of my face, but I couldn’t bear his condescension. Not when I was at my most vulnerable, a grown woman falling to pieces, sitting on him of all places.

“Eh, I’ve got you. Nothing happened. You’re safe. We’re safe.”

My eyes locked on a fleck of gray against his black shirt.

“Did we hit it?” I forced out.

“No.”

I nodded. “Okay.”