Page 66 of Possess Me! (I Want You To)

We snuck out after midnight. Apparently, Luca’s roommate usually went to bed early, and after the painless dinner, her guard had been down. It was strange how much they trusted each other. I wondered if Luca would feel just as guilty about lying to her as he did about whatever it was that had driven him to help me in the first place.

His backpack was a steady weight against his back as he tiptoed down the front steps quietly, his breath leaving him in anxious little puffs.

“This feels so wrong,” he muttered to himself. The cement was cold enough it bled through his beat-up tennis shoes. “I’ve never lied to her like this before.”

We don’t have a choice.

“I know, I know.” He paused, glancing longingly back at the apartment building one last time. “I just…I know she’s not trying to be a dick, you know?”

Do you always believe the best in everyone?

“Maybe not everyone.” Luca laughed, but the sound was short and bitter. He shook his head and I watched the world blur wetly through his eyes as he blinked away tears, before he climbed into the driver’s side of the beat-up Honda parked on the street. I’d noticed it a few times. Always just figured the piece of shit had been abandoned. Every single door was a different color, like it had been Frankenstein-ed together, and the interior looked no better. The seats were covered in fast food wrappers and makeup products, and I made a mental note to clear them off when Luca went to sleep.

We’d drive until we ran out of gas. That was the plan. When Luca got too tired, I’d take over. His earlier bluster had been just that. Bluster. No substance. I knew him well enough now not to believe half the argumentative shit that came out of his mouth. Tonight was step one in the plan we’d concocted while waiting anxiously for Violet to finish her goddamn pasta.

Out on the open road the world felt like a much larger place. I hadn’t had much time in cars recently—aside from my weekly trips to Ridgefield for clubbing with my sisters. It was…novel. Until I’d hitched a ride inside Luca, my world had been a tiny place. Sure, I’d traveled to Elmwood with Lydia to kill her nephew, but she’d stuck me in the goddamn Nothing the whole time.

I’d never done anything willingly when I’d been with Lydia.

Once again, the memory of green eyes flooded with fear and revulsion, came to my mind. Amanda’s son. My greatest regret. No. That wasn’t true. My greatest regret was interacting with Amanda at all. She’d been the mother I’d never had, but because of me… No. No. I wouldn’t think about it. I refused.

No matter what Lydia wanted me to believe, the fate of the Evans family had not been my fault.

“What’s up with you?” Luca asked quietly, his gaze still trained on the road in front of him. It was the middle of summer now and during the day the asphalt was hot enough to see the heat waves rolling off it. Even now the warmth in the air tasted like salt and promise as we whipped down narrow streets toward the freeway.

Nothing is “up with me.”

“Yeah, okay. Keep your secrets, Mr. Mysterious,” Luca scoffed. “It’s not like you’re in my head, or anything.“ Honestly, until that moment, I hadn’t realized he could feel my emotions the same way I could feel his.

Do you really want to know?

“Duh? I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”

God, I wanted to slap his naughty little ass. Mouthing off like he had any right to do so. He wasn’t the one in charge here—even if he was.

“Prudeeeeence.” Luca was whining again, and to my annoyance, the sound made my cock twitch. Why was it that even at his most obnoxious, I couldn’t help but react this way? I should hate this on principle.

I mulled over whether or not to respond.

Luca clearly had a vendetta against silence, because he broke the quiet once again. “Look. The whole point of all of this is to end your…afterlife right? So does it really hurt to open up a bit? It’s not like I’m going to tell anyone. Scout’s honor.”

If I answer your questions are you going to answer mine?

That seemed to stall him for a moment as he figured out how to reply. Underneath his skin I felt the flicker of unease.

“I guess that’s only fair.” Luca sighed, then stayed silent for probably the first time in his entire life. There was no sound inside the vehicle—aside from the whisper of the wind trickling in through the windows as Luca rolled them down and tipped his face toward the breeze. It said a lot about him that he could enjoy something as simple as that—even when he was in the middle of running away. Even when his life had turned upside down, and his eyes still shined with unshed tears.

I was thinking about before, I finally answered him when I was ready.

Half an hour had gone by. He hadn’t spoken the entire time. He’d just pulled onto the freeway and sped off north like a fire was lit under his ass. Streetlights blurred beside us, streaks of lights like shooting stars in the dark. They painted his high cheekbones with slashes of brilliance.

Now it was my turn to wait for his reply.

It was surprisingly busy on the road considering what time it was. But then again, I’d grown up in Elmwood, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that San Diego was different. Elmwood had a population of three thousand people. No movie theater. No malls. Not even their own Walmart. It was a useless sort of place, and even though I’d lived there for all of my actual life, it had never felt like home.

It was a prison built with trees and smiles. Smiles that were never genuine when they were aimed at me—at least—until I’d met her. Amanda.

Funny how now that I was dead, Elmwood was one of the only places I knew of that was safe for someone like me.

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