Page 33 of Ride with the Devil

So… did she like it? Is that why she was smiling? Or was that because she just wanted dinner? Maybe?—

“Kylie.”

My thoughts running a mile a minute, I miss what she said. “What’s that?”

“My name. It’s Kylie.” She grabs the serving spoon and starts dishing out some spaghetti onto her plate. “You earned it, ace.”

I watch approvingly as she piles it up, then douses the noodles in sauce. As soon as she plops down in one of the two seats, pulling the plate toward her, I ask, “Do I get to be ‘Luca’ then?”

She glances up at me, spaghetti twirled expertly around her fork. “Would you prefer it?”

I think about it for a second.

“I like being your ‘ace’, Kylie.”

And I like the taste of her name on my tongue, too.

It’s even better than spaghetti.

ELEVEN

CUCUMBER

KYLIE

Who ever thought getting my ass kicked at checkers would be a turn-on?

Then again, there’s something about this guy. I don’t know what it is. I mean, I like him. He’s like nothing I ever expected from a guy affiliated with one of the local gangs who run Springfield. He’s not a fuckboi, either. He just seems so… good.

He cooks me three meals a day. A simple breakfast, a basic lunch, and a hot dinner which, I have to say, is way more than my last, four, boyfriends did for me. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It has to be filling, and he gets bonus points for even doing all the dishes afterward.

I’ll give Luca credit. He really took my teasing to heart. When I taunted him for being unprepared to keep someone a captive up here… he’s done a complete one-eighty in the last week.

It doesn’t stop with three meals a day, either. There’s no laundry facilities here. When I ran out of clean clothes, he had another order for me delivered the same day. And it’s not likehe’s rich. During our endless checkers games, I poke and prod and try to get any information out of him as I can.

I tell myself that, deep down, I’m still the Hummingbird. If I ever have to take out Luca, the more I know about him, the easier it will be. And after a week in the cabin, even I can’t pretend that I’m basically interrogating him for any other reason than that I’m curious.

Sometimes he humors me. Sometimes he sighs, then answers my questions as best he can without giving away Sinners business.

And then, sometimes, he turns the questions around on me. Which would be fine if he didn’t eventually end most of our conversations by whooping my butt at checkersandpleading with me to throw my lot in with his boss.

At this point, I should just throw him a bone. I kind of started to feel a little bad about how worried he is about me. He really believes that, if I can’t be swayed, I’ll end up dead. Not likely, especially since I never would’ve gone to the cops with what I saw, but he’s so… soearnest.

But I’m not an idiot. If I finally shrug and agree, he’ll be relieved—but if his boss isn’t just stringing him along, telling him what he wants to hear before he finally takes matters into his own hands, then that’s it. He won’t have any reason to be my babysitter anymore.

I can already sense that we’ve been here too long. His boss probably needs him, his buddy probably wants his cabin back, and he’s gotta be tired of buying everything I require. I even tried to give him the couple of dollars I had in my jacket pocket. Luca refused.

I’m his responsibility, after all.

Of course, then I retaliated by asking for a couple of things that I could use. I mean, if he really thinks he has to take care ofme—and it’s obvious he’s not about to give me the one thing I’m really missing now—why not take him up on the offer?

We’re at an impasse now. He’s getting more and more determined to get me to agree with him. I don’t want to go home anytime soon since I kind of like being his captive.

Because of that, we’ve learned which topics of conversation to dance around. I’ve learned that Luca’s favorite movie is an 80s classic,Die Hard,that he didn’t see until he was an adult. He’s an only child; and that’s all I’ve gotten out of him about his family. He likes the color blue. He’s a Gemini.

I still don’t know why he wears that key on a chain around his neck.

I don’t know why, even when the fire in the fireplace cranks up the heat, he keeps his long-sleeves covering his arm all the way to his wrist.

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