Page 104 of Cinderella Is Faking It

He opened his mouth and then closed it again, shooting me a look from the corner of his eyes. Ever the negotiator. “What’s your proposal?”

“If you let me drive, I’ll go down on you at the next rest stop.” I was only half-kidding.

He barked a loud laugh. “You’re leaning into the exhibitionist kink now, huh?”

“The next stop is coming up in ten miles,” I said, pointing at the street sign we whizzed past.

“Counteroffer: I go down on you at that rest stop, and then I’ll drive you home.”

“We’re negotiating for the driver’s seat, not the sex.”

“Shame.”

“Besides, I don’t want your mouth down there, when I’m still… you know…” I gestured at the towel between me and the fine Italian leather seat. The thing not a single book in Beck’s library had prepared me for: a lot of great sex led to a lot of great orgasms, but if didn’t use condoms and you fell asleep instead of properly taking care ofit, gravity would do the job for you the next morning.

“Leaking cum?” he asked, not a note of attribution in those words. “Shouldn’t that be my concern, since it’smymouth coming in contact withmycum?”

“Two miles,” I said instead of answering him.

“Counteroffer,” he said again, “I let you drive, and you let me take you to New York next month.”

My mood plummeted. “No.”

“We go to the big Barnes & Noble. You buy every single book you want.”

“First of all, we would go to The Strand. Shop indie. Second of all, no.”

“I’m offering to buy you booksandlet you drive. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life within a 50-mile radius of Boston?”

“Doesn’t even matter.” I sank back in my seat, my hands wrapping around each other in my lap. My thumb itched to dig into my skin, to stop my thoughts from plummeting down the hole that was the inevitable finish line of this. Cordelia Montgomery would vanish from public life. I’d stop seeing Beck. There was no next month for us. Cape Cod had been a blip. Two days of forgetting the outside world existed. But it did, and we were getting closer to Boston and our lives by the second.

“Of course, it matters. What do you want, Del?”

“No,” I mumbled, “we just passed the rest stop where we could have switched seats. You can just keep driving.”

I didn’t even see the other car bulleting towards us. More than anything, I heard the crash. The crunch of metal folding in. The high pitch of glass shattering. Bones cracking. And then everything went silent.

FORTY-ONE

I could have only been knockedout for a second, because the airbag was still deflating when I opened my eyes. The adrenaline was pumping through my veins, clearing my thoughts as I assessed the damage to my body (glass shards jutting from my left arm and a throbbing head), then assessed the situation. The car had flipped onto the driver’s side, but it looked like it had been run off the road. Good. No risk of other cars crashing into mine. The windshield was gone, replaced by dry grass and undergrowth. I could crawl out of there if I got myself out of my seatbelt. I reached out, and it released with a snap, dropping me an inch to the ground, into a sea of shards. I didn’t even register the glass cutting through my clothes, because as I pushed myself upright, my eyes caught on a wave of blonde hair streaked with crimson.

Because I hadn’t been alone in the car.

Moments from before the accident flashed through my mind. Big blue eyes turning from mischief to ice. Smile faltering.

I stared at her for a split-second, suspended above me by her seatbelt, blood cresting her brow and trickling from the corner of her mouth. Not moving. Not waking.

“I’m going to take you to New York, to London, to Paris.” The words rushed out of me like a bargain, and I pushed myself up against her. I tried to hold her head up and steady her neck with my shoulders as I fumbled for the seatbelt, but it was fucking stuck. I clicked and clicked the damn button, but it didn’t come loose. “You better be listening, Blondie, because you’re not winning this argument by default, hear me?”

She didn’t respond.

I kicked the seatbelt. It snapped open, and her limp body collapsed onto me. I cradled her face against my chest with my bleeding arm and used the good one for leverage against the roof of the car. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” I kept mumbling the same words over and over, dragging us backwards through the shattered windshield. Once outside, I could see the dark fumes rising from the car, and my instincts screamed at me to put as much distance between us and the vehicle as possible. As soon as we were a couple feet away, I laid the lifeless body down in the grass. Her right arm was bent at an unnatural angle, but that was the least of my worries.

She was so pale.

Pale skin. Pale hair. Pale blue dress. And all the blood contrasting against that. Soaking into her hair from the cut on her forehead and into her dress from where a piece of glass jutted from her ribs. Ribs that weren’t fucking moving.

“Counteroffer, Delilah, if you wake up right now, I’ll dress up as Mr. Knightley for the wedding,” I promised. I smoothed her wet hair from her face and tipped her head back before I lowered my ear to her nose. Her breathing was slow and shallow, but it was there. “That’s my girl,” I sighed and tried to find a pulse on her neck but came up blank. It had to be so weak. Fuck. “Just hang on, sweetheart.”

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