Breathe Me In

The endearment made her weak in the knees. Too many more of those, and she might let him prove it beyond his wildest fantasies. Though a guy like him probably had fantasies she couldn’t even fathom.

A final moment of decision, and then she was walking toward him, feeling as if she was leaving behind everything she’d ever known…and it was okay.

Five minutes later, as she white-knuckled her seat with one hand and tried to keep her hair attached to her head with the other since he’d dropped the top back, she was rethinking that. This was anything but okay.

“We’re gonna die!” she screeched over the roaring wind and the hard-driving metal song blaring over the speakers.

Laughing, he dropped his head back and howled.

Crazy! He was absolutely crazy, but she’d known that, hadn’t she? They had to be doing 90, and nothing existed between her and the dark, rushing landscape and the ribbon of divided highway except this hunk of metal and a lap belt. Her heart thudded in her throat, and she was two seconds from covering her eyes when at last he eased off the accelerator. She glanced over to see him smirking at her. “Yeah, sorry. I just get caught up. Runs like a scalded dog, doesn’t she?”

Her dad said that all the time. Macy smoothed her hair down and caught her breath. “Yeah. Do you have a glove compartment full of moving violations?”

“Not currently.”

After a somewhat mellow chorus, the song kicked back into overdrive. Thank the stars above that he didn’t. She had a sneaking suspicion his driving habits matched the speed of whatever music was playing. “God! What is this song?”

“That’s Avatar, dude! ‘Smells Like a Freakshow.’”

“That doesn’t help me any, but I guess I shouldn’t have expected it to.”

And he’d called her dude. She liked love better.

As soon as he steered back into the Dermamania parking lot and braked to a halt, she threw open the door and scrambled out.

“Hey!” he protested.

“Sorry, I’m just going to fall down and kiss the ground.” Seriously, her knees were shaking. But as she turned around and looked at him practically lounging in the driver’s seat of his hotter-than-hell car, she wondered if maybe she was only blaming their tremor on his driving habits when in reality it was something far, far more disturbing. The lingering adrenaline had to be the reason she could only think about crawling over him, straddling him there and—

“I told you I’d get you back in one piece. I keep my promises.”

“You actually didn’t promise that.”

“Well… I said you were in good hands. I meant it.”

It was too much. He was too sexy. She turned and fled toward her safe, secure Acadia, which she’d never pushed over the speed limit on any given highway.

“Macy!” The sound of him getting out and slamming his door reached her just as she settled into her own driver’s seat. She didn’t know what she was thinking—she didn’t want to leave yet, but she didn’t want this attraction either. Before she could make any sort of move whatsoever, he’d gotten in on the passenger side. “Hey, did I scare you that bad? Jesus. I’m sorry.”

Yes, you scare me that bad. You. Just you.

“It’s all right. It’s…” She didn’t want to explain. Speed, any sort of speed—it was another somewhat freaky thing for her ever since her horse-riding accident. But she didn’t want to tell him about that. Usually it didn’t affect her to this extreme. Usually very little affected her. Until now.

“So what are your real thoughts on Candace and Brian?” he asked, and she appreciated the turn of the conversation. Macy, striving for normalcy herself, grabbed a ponytail holder from her gearshift and tied her hair back since it was probably a mess.

“I don’t know him. I know she likes him a lot.”

“Yeah, he seems pretty serious about her too.”

“They have a tough road ahead, you know. Especially if her family blames him for her skipping out on that wedding yesterday, which they will. I know them as well as I know her. I was supposed to go to the wedding myself, but we had a horse down at my parents’ ranch and we couldn’t make it.”

“They can’t blame him for that. He didn’t put a gun to her head.”

“I don’t know what happened. I need to call her.”

“I can promise you, he didn’t kidnap her. Or even twist her arm. If I were you, I’d leave them alone right now. It’s like they’ve been in a little cocoon since last night.”

Macy chewed her thumbnail for a second. Poor Candace. “So what exactly happened last night?” she asked.

“All I know is she came with us, we all went to the concert, and the two of them went off together alone all night. I guess they got a hotel room. We stayed at a friend’s.”

Candace had spent the night with Brian. Macy sighed and let her head meet the back of her seat. Ever since Brian had come around, their friend Samantha had been joking with Candace about handing in her “V-card,” and it looked like she’d done so. Well…good for her. Really. It was about time. The girl was twenty-three and for whatever reason—probably fear of her parents’ disapproval or just their hassling her—she’d rarely dated. Macy had been waiting for the guy to come along that Candace would stand up for…she just hadn’t expected it to be a guy like Brian Ross.

“So they went off. What did you get up to last night?” she asked on a whim. He chuckled and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

“Nothing. I’m a saint.”

“Right.”

His cell phone buzzed from his jeans pocket and he dug it out, giving a frustrated growl. “Dammit, I don’t know who this is.”

“What is it?”

“I keep getting texts from this person. They obviously know me but I don’t know them.”

She made a move to pluck it from his hand, not really meaning to succeed, and laughed when he evaded her.

“Hey! These are my private affairs.”

“How many private affairs do you have? Are they private to each other too?”

“Apparently they’re private to me. Like I said, I don’t know who the f**k this one is. Someone I talked to last night, I guess.”

“While imbibing mass quantities, I take it?”

“Well… I didn’t get laid last night. I do know that.”

Wow. This was a suitable conversation for a…what was this? A semi-date? No. It was nothing. It was just two friends of friends getting to know each other.

“But it’s a girl?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s a girl. If it’s a guy I’m gonna be pissed.”

“What’s she saying?”

He thumbed his phone, scrolling back through messages, then began to read. “‘Hey you, did you make it home?’ ‘Hello?’ ‘Not gonna talk to me now?’ ‘Okay, I’m worried now! lol’ ‘I really hope you’re not dead in a fuckin’ ditch somewhere, that would suck, lol’ ‘Wasn’t that a good time last night? I hope we can hang out again next time you’re here!’ And this one just now: ‘You DID say you’d call me.’” He shook his head with a little scoff. “Damn. I always get stuck with the crazy.”

“Have you responded?”

“Hell no. ʼCause like I said, I always get stuck with the crazy.”

“You must make quite an impression.”

“Well…yeah.” He said it as if it should be patently obvious, and she laughed.

“Hmm. Well, let’s just fix this right now.” This time when she tried, she succeeded in taking his phone from him, and he looked at her with a startled frown.

“The f**k are you doing?”

Macy grinned. She might try to avoid drama among her friends, but she didn’t mind it among complete strangers. It could be fun, in fact. And…oh hell, just like with this entire night, she didn’t know what had possessed her. She hit the Call button on the message and brought the phone to her ear.

“Oh my God. You’re f**king crazy,” Ghost said, but the admiration in his eyes was obvious.

“I have my moments—” She cut off abruptly as a feminine voice purred a hello, then forced steel into her own words. “Who is this, please?”

The voice on the other end of the connection rose several notes. “Who is this?”

“I asked you first. Is there some reason you’ve been texting my boyfriend all day?”

After sputtering a few seconds, the girl seemed to find her spunk again. “Your boyfriend said he didn’t have a girlfriend last night, just so you know.”

“That is good to know. Thank you for that. But that didn’t mean he wanted you to try to get the job, I’m sure, or he might have answered you by now. Don’t you think so?”

Seething silence met her sugar-sweet question, then the connection went dead. She tossed the phone at him, and he barely managed to catch it as he stared at her in open admiration. “Problem solved, I think,” she said with a wink.

“You’re awesome. She didn’t tell you who she was, though? It probably wouldn’t have rung a bell with me anyway.”

“She didn’t. But if you need me again to help clean out the crazy, just let me know.”

“I will. I definitely will. In fact I have an ex I’d love to see you go up against. But we won’t get into all that. It just puts me in a bad mood.”

“No exes. Okay.” She didn’t much like discussing hers, either, but she was enjoying the hell out of this. “What else is going on in your life? Anything I can help with right now?”

“Nah. No quick fixes.” He gestured toward the darkened building in front of them. “Just whatever’s going on in there. And I’m in a band…we’re on a bit of a hiatus right now. My family is mostly in Oklahoma. My grandmother’s not doing so well. I’ve been going up there whenever I get a chance, which isn’t often enough lately.”

“Oh? Do your parents live there too?”

“Both my parents are dead.”

“Oh. Oh…God, I’m sorry.” She leaned forward a little to get a better view of his face, since she could only see him in profile. “Really, I’m so sorry.”

He’d busied himself tracing his thumb around the edges of his cell phone. “Car wreck when I was six. Nah, it’s all right. It was so long ago, I barely remember them.”

“Still, though. I can’t imagine the pain being any less. Seems…seems it would hurt just as much to not have many memories of them.” She thought of her own parents and couldn’t even imagine.

He shrugged. “I guess I wouldn’t know. I remember the wreck, though. I was in the car. I have no idea why it was only me with them—I have a brother and sister too, but it was only me. Probably because I was being a little shit and wouldn’t stay with a babysitter or something.”

God, what did you say to something like that? Did he even want to talk about it? She was at a total loss, so after a moment she said the first thing that came to mind—probably not wise, but it was all she had. “All that, and still you like to live close to the edge, huh?”