Page 95 of Wicked Dreams

“Yeah, right.” Riley scowls. “You okay, Margo?”

I give her a thumbs-up. There’s a slim possibility of ending up dead in a ditch, I suppose… But I trust that Caleb won’t be that irrational.

He guns it out of the parking lot. His anger takes up most of the oxygen, but the longer it remains, the madder I get.

He finally turns off the road at an overlook, and I leap out. He follows me, watching like a lion waiting to fucking pounce. I have electricity in my veins, energy that has to come out.

“Not cool.” I rub my arms.

“Notcool?” He scowls at me. “What the fuck, Margo?”

I stare at him. “What thefuck? Like I’m supposed to just sit on the sidelines and watch you date my ex-friend? Talk about hypocrisy! Let me live my life if you won’t make room in yours for me.”

“You can’tlivewith Theo.” He paces in front of me. His hands rake through his hair, tugging at the strands. “I can’t do this. I can’t?—”

“Oh, fuck you, Caleb.”Can’t do it. He’s getting on my ever-loving last nerve. I kick at the ground, gravel scattering ahead of me. “Can’t dowhat?”

He stalks toward me. “How did you crawl under my skin so easily?”

I back away, but he keeps coming.

“I’ll swear to God, Margo, I have the urge to kill whoever touches you. I don’t give a flying fuck if they’re a friend, because all that matters is how I can possess you. My touch. My words. You’re mine.”

He said it. He said I’m his—but does he mean it when he doesn’t show it? My brain is stuck on that fact.

My dad used to say: People will show you who they really are.Believe them.

What has Caleb done for me? All his actions are against me.

I shove him away from me, my temper flaring. The asshole barely moves.

“You’re right, Caleb. You can be the big, bad control freak while you kiss your girlfriend a-andcheaton her. I’m not a puppet whose strings you can jerk around.”

His face is dark, and he stops abruptly in front of me. His expression is…pained. That’s the only way I can describe it. Pained or devastated.

He cups my cheek. His thumb strokes across my lips. “I don’t want to pull your strings, baby. I want to cut them.”

The air leaves my lungs in a rush.

His hand falls away from me, and he goes back to the car, the conversation apparently over.

The slight fear of him leaving me here, like he left me at his house, gnaws at me. I get in the car before he can bark at me, and we’re once again entombed in silence.

Finally, I glance over at him. “You can’t just…”

I stop, frustrated with myself. Withhim. What is he trying to do, isolate me?

Yes, that’s probably exactly what he wants.

“I’m not an island that you can fortify,” I murmur. “I’m a person.”

He glowers at me. “You might think so, little lamb, but you’remine. No one else’s. Stop fucking testing me.”

I don’t have anything to say to that.

Stop fucking testing me. Sure—as soon as he loses the girlfriend. Eh, even then… maybe not. Still, he might throw me out of the car if I argue, and weariness tugs at my bones. He drives me back to the Bryans’ house, shadowing me up to the front door like a hulking bodyguard.

I slip inside without a word.

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