Page 13 of Wreck Me

“You’ve been holed up in here for hours since you came home. Let’s get you some fresh air. Are you up for a bike ride?”

My eyes lit up. “Yeah? You’re actually gonna take the Triumph out?”

My mom didn’t like that. She didn’t like us taking our bikes out after dark. In the thirty-odd years that my dad had been riding he’d only wiped out once, but it still made her nervous. Especially me doing it with him.

“Yeah, let’s do it,” he said, his excitement mirroring mine.

I eyed my screen. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll meet you in the lobby?”

“Sounds good, pumpkin.”

He walked out and closed my door, then I pulled up the intel program. I set some parameters to narrow down the information, basically to any sign of nefarious activity.

And then I left it to run in the background while I locked the screen, then bounced to my closet to pull out my riding leathers.

I was smiling like an idiot at the thought of riding down the open backroads with my dad.

This day had turned around after all.

I grinned at the sight of my mom picking at her tacos.

She wasn’t the biggest fan, but she’d made an effort, having them made for a little low-key celebratory dinner to mark my first day at Luxington University. She’d even had her cook make raspberry cupcakes, complete with fondant, which I was a major fan of. I was weird like that, fondant was my comfort food. I rolled it into little balls and popped them into my mouth like marshmallows.

“Thank you, Mom,” I said, smiling at her and dad across the table. “This is really great.”

Her blonde hair was in a French braid looking as perfect with not a single hair out of place as it had when she’d done it up this morning. She’d taken off her gray suit jacket, just her frilly peach blouse on beneath with one of her usual pencil skirts and her designer heels. She loved her heels and she had a massive collection. She even wore them around the house.

She smiled back at me. “I’m glad.” She took a sip from her glass of white wine, then asked me, “So, how was your first day?”

I told her about my classes and each syllabus and she nodded along, offering her own insight, really getting into it.

I tried to sound enthusiastic and she seemed to buy it.

My dad was another story.

I caught him rolling his eyes and shaking his head.

“After you complete your first year, I have a summer internship lined up for you.”

“You do?”

“I thought that was supposed to be a surprise?” my dad said.

Mom gave his hand a squeeze as she grinned at us in turn. “I know, but I was too excited to keep it quiet with how well she’s taking to it already.”

My dad’s face fell, but he didn’t speak to it.

No, he was much smarter than that, much more strategic. He knew neither of us responded well to direct confrontation. He had to go about it another way.

“I knew if you just gave it a try, you’d see how well it would fit,” my mom said. “It has a large creative element, which I know you enjoy and thrive at. And with the connection to my profession, it will make things much easier for you to succeed.”

“Sky’s never needed things easy,” my dad said.

“Well, it’s about time she did. She’s worked so hard to get to nowhere in particular. The institute didn’t pan out the way she’d intended, and that’s okay. She has us here helping her now. She can take a lot of that pressure off herself.”

“Maria—” my dad started.

“We’ve already had her work for everything, paying her own way, not calling in any favors. That was your idea, remember? You didn’t want her becoming spoiled and entitled. So I let her go to public school, let her kill herself working to pay for her schooling. Now she needs a break. Now she can take advantage of what we’ve worked for.”

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