Damaged (Boys of Winter 2)

“Yeah,” I laugh, grinning up at him, absolutely loving the chance to tease him. “I was so desperate for you that I decided to fuck Cruz instead. You must have really rocked my world.”

He looks my way, his eyes narrowing. “Dick.”

“Don’t you forget it.”

We reach the main road and King comes to a stop, glancing up and down the street. “Well,” he says. “We have two choices. We can either walk twenty minutes back to the party and steal Carver’s Escalade, but also risk running into whatever backup Jacob called, or …” he adds, a devilish smirk kicking up the side of his mouth as his eyes sparkle with the best kind of mischief, “we can hotwire one of these bad boys and take it for a spin.”

My gaze shifts toward the cars lining the streets, and fuck it, I like the way the man thinks.

Not bothering to wait for me to agree, King grabs my hand and pulls me toward a black Mustang parked a little down the road, and the closer we get to it, the wider his grin becomes. “Do I even want to know how you learned to do this?”

He looks back at me, his eyes sparkling with a devilish laughter. “Probably not.”

I roll my eyes and watch as he steps up to the side of the Mustang only to shake his head at the idiocy of the owner who left the driver’s side window open just enough for King to slip his fingers in and shimmy the window down. “Fucking idiot,” he mutters to himself. “He should have at least made it a challenge.”

King’s hand dives inside the Mustang and unlocks the door before pulling it wide and dropping down beneath the steering wheel. I watch in amazement as he fiddles around, and not a moment later, he grins up at me as the engine roars to life.

I can’t help but laugh, he looks like a fourteen-year-old boy who just had the hot babysitter offer to suck his dick. “Well?” he asks, getting up and waving his hand toward the driver’s seat. “Are you driving?”

My eyes bug out of my head and I instantly retreat, shaking my head as the dread sinks heavily into my gut. “No. No, no, no, no. You don’t want me to drive.”

His brows furrow as he watches me with a strange curiosity. “Why the hell not?”

“Because you guys have been going to the ends of the earth to keep me alive and I wouldn’t want to put all your hard work to waste by throwing myself behind the wheel of a car.”

King just stares a moment longer, a grin slowly stretching across his face. “You can’t drive.”

I shake my head. “Nope, and I’ll deny it if you were to tell anybody, but the whole driving a car thing kinda scares the crap out of me.”

“But …” he trails off, unable to comprehend a word I’m saying. “How is that possible? You drive that Ducati as though you need it to breathe. How could you not know how to drive a car?”

I give him a tight smile, watching him over the top of the Mustang as I walk around to the passenger’s side. “I had to force myself to learn how to drive that Ducati, and it was shit scary, but a car … when would I have ever had a chance to learn that? I don’t have a driver’s license and I’ve been in shitty foster homes since, well … forever. None of them gave a shit about teaching me, and it’s not like I have a car to learn in.”

“Holy shit,” he breathes in astonishment, dropping into the driver’s seat and pulling the door closed behind him. “I’ve got to tell the boys.”

“No,” I rush out. “You can’t tell them that.”

He hits the gas and we take off down the road as he looks across at me. “Dare I ask why not?”

I glance out the window, not wanting him to see the embarrassment written across my face. “Because everyone my age knows how to drive. I’m probably the only chick around here who’s never even sat in the driver’s seat, but I’m too fucking scared to even try. The whole thing … I don’t know, it’s daunting. I don’t want to drive.”

“No, that’s not happening,” he says. “You’re honestly the toughest chick I’ve ever met, and tough chicks need badass cars. Do you like this one? We could take it home. It’ll take Cruz less than twenty minutes to get everything changed into your name.”

My jaw drops as I stare at him. “We’re not stealing this car … I mean, for good. After this, we need to ditch it somewhere the owner can find it, but it doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t need a car, there’s a whole garage of my father’s cars at home.”