Page 25 of Never Bound

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To my overpriced college that I’d be flunking out of if it weren’t for you,” she snapped. “And before you say anything, this isnotabout us or whatever happened the other day. This is for Maeve, and only Maeve, and if you give a shit about her, you’ll get in the car.”

“IfIgive a shit about her?” I opened the door and slumped reluctantly into the creamy leather seat of the vintage luxury car, then reached under the seat for the box full of antiseptic wipes and flimsy bandages, while she wedged herself behind the wheel. “That’s fucking rich that you’ve now appointed yourself the undisputed expert onmyfamily situation.”

If we’d been behaving normally instead of like bickering arch-nemeses, I might have taken this opportunity to confess that I’d always been secretly fascinated with cars. I’d driven exactly three times in my life—each time in the south of France, where the professor had a country home, a vintage Citroën, and was pretty much constantly drunk, which provided the perfect opportunity. My mind naturally had a feel for machines and how they worked, and driving was freedom. I’d in fact enjoyed it more than—for liability purposes—I generally liked to admit enjoying anything other than sex. I’d already admired this sprawling American classic, having washed it several times and even poked around under the hood once or twice when no one was around. I might even go so far as to say that I wanted one like it someday, although, judging by the storm cloud on Louisa’s face, I should’ve learned by now to stop wanting things. Look where it kept getting me.

“Oh, I understand the situation perfectly,” she seethed, blood-streaked fingers fumbling clumsily on the seat belt as she buckled herself in. “The situation where I tried over and over again to prove that you could trust me enough to help, but you wouldn’t let me. But then again, I guessnomere mortal could possibly understand the unfathomable depths of your vastly superior brain, the one that gives you the right to go around conning and misleading people with no consequence.”

“Oh,” I said. “Speaking of misleading people, aren’t you afraid to get in a car with the slave who brutally violated you? You know, the one you’re going to tell Daddy all about?”

Fuck, what waswrongwith me? She’d just wrenched bits of jagged wire out of my bloody flesh by hand and was now voluntarily driving me somewhere to help my sister, and I was still too much of a stubborn fucking asshole to apologize to her. Instead, I was making itworse.

She started up the car with a roar, forcing herself to wrap her bloody hands around the steering wheel. If anywhere, we should’ve been headed to the fucking ER.

She backed out of the driveway with a lurch, then slammed her foot on the gas pedal, then the brake, sending both of us flying forward and the first aid kit smack into the dashboard, its contents spilling all over the passenger side. “Don’t you understand that Ineverwould have threatened to say that if you hadn’t left me feeling completely humiliated?”

At the first intersection, she braked violently again, this time forcing me to brace myself with a bloody handprint on the dashboard. “Humiliated?” I repeated incredulously. “You? Before you go around claiming that, you might want to consider who you’re talking to.”

“Given how this conversation is going, who I’m talking to is unfortunately the last person I’dliketo be talking to,” she shot back.

“Oh, in that case, right back at you. You know, you weresoclose to having me convinced that you weren’t a spiteful, vindictive brat.”

“Yeah, well, you hadmebelieving that you weren’t a pretentious, manipulative dick!”

“Oh, but I thought this wasn’t about us.”

“Shut up,” she growled. “Just shut up. I don’t want to hear anything else out of you for the rest of the drive. And before you ask, yes, Iwillwhip you this time.”

“The hell you will.” I leaned back in the seat defiantly. “You don’t have it in you.”

“Wanna bet?” She gritted her teeth and prodded the accelerator further, her eyes in tunnel vision. The car fairly leaped forward as we flew down the highway on-ramp. She stayed in the far left lane, weaving her way around slower drivers as if daring them to try to pass her.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve won every bet we’ve ever made, so, um … yeah?”

“Ha. You just fell for the gambler’s fallacy!” she said, hair whipping in her face as she turned to look at me in demented triumph. “Surprise! I’m more logical than you are.”

“Oh really?” I scoffed. “Because there’s not a whole lot of logic in the way you’re driving right now.”

“Then stop fucking stressing me out! Do youwantme to crash this car?”

“You know, at this point, I—”

“Fuck!” we both exclaimed. She’d missed her turn and overcorrected, whipping the Cadillac violently across two lanes of traffic and toward the side of a grocery delivery van. Just in time, I reached over and grabbed the wheel, veering us out of the shadow of the van driver, who angrily laid on the horn as we sped away up the exit ramp.

“Do you evenknowhow to fucking drive?” I demanded.

“I do when I don’t have someone in the passenger seatscreamingat me!” She tried to get her breathing under control as we rolled off the freeway and onto University Boulevard. I was doing the same, though not as loudly. “So if you value your life, shut your goddamn mouth!”

That did the trick. I gathered up the antiseptic and bandages from under the seat and passed a handful over to her. We cleaned ourselves up as best we could, riding the rest of the way to campus in silence.

HER

If we’d been capable of communicating in any way but screaming, I would have taken the opportunity to explain that the Cadillac used to belong to my brother—one of his two most prized possessions, along with his guitar. When he left, he’d initially taken both, but in some drug-induced haze, he’d abandoned the car in a washout in the desert. The police returned it to my father, whose name was still on the title. Ethan knew where it was but hadn’t been back for it. And even though the car had been mine by default for over a year, driving it still reminded me of him.

And after that, I would have explained that as soon as we stopped, I planned to call my father again but only to explain that I was bringing my boy to campus to meet a professor who was “interested in his background,” which wouldn’t be a lie. My plan was that my hopefully judgment-impaired father would then call the housekeeper to explain the situation, meaning we wouldn’t have to worry about being missed. For a while.

As it was, though, we pulled into the campus in silence, while I gripped the steering wheel like a vise so he wouldn’t see my hands shaking as I wedged the Cadillac into a spot in the top-tier parking zone that matched the sticker on the windshield I’d convinced my father to pay for as consolation for disallowing me to live on campus.

---