Page 52 of Break for Me

“You’re not a very nice person sometimes, you know that?” She asked, standing upright again to glare at me.

“Most of the time,” I corrected. I sat the backpack next to her feet and I could hear the girl suck in a breath when I knelt in front of her to unbuckle the straps of her heels.

“I swear to every unholy thing in every universe, if you try to kick me right now, girl,” I warned. I paused to look back up to her face and she only shook her head. She stayed quiet while I swapped out her shoes right there on the sidewalk. And the amount of self-control that it took to not touch the full length of the long leg that was on display through the slit in her dress before I stood up again was infuriating.

“Thank you,” she whispered without ever looking at me once I was standing in front of her again.

“It’s physically painful for you to say those words to me, isn’t it?”

“I imagine it’s similar to having to swallow a Chinese throwing star.”

I put my hand on her arm to get her moving in the right direction again toward the parking garage.

“Isn’t this city ridiculously dangerous to just go roaming the streets once it’s dark?” She asked.

“You think there’s someone out here more dangerous than me?”

“That’s…easily the most frightening question I’ve ever been asked,” she said, and added an extra few inches of space between our shoulders while we walked.

I didn’t know why I thought that would’ve brought her closer to me. I also didn’t know why I was disappointed that it didn’t.

“What does love look like for you?” She asked.

“What?”

“Come on. We talked about me already. Tell me something about you. Anything.”

“And that’s what you want to know? What I think love looks like?”

She must have really been disliking this walk with me.

“Sure.”

“Seph,” I said and shrugged. “It looks like Persephone.”

“My God, man,” she said and stopped dead in her tracks to stare at me. I chuckled but I kept moving.

“Eye-catching in black. Looks like just any regular Challenger on the outside, until you get to see beneath it all and find out that she’s actually a Demon. Can’t be touched because she can’t be caught.”

“A car, Jersey. It’s. A. Car.”

She didn’t notice at all that my eyes traveled the full length of her body while she stood there.

“She. She is a car, yes.”

She was quiet for a second while she shook her head.

“You don’t think this stepdaddy of yours will want you to find that God-given soulmate of stability?” I asked.

Why even ask? I had no fucking clue.

I should’ve left Memphis in my ear to tell me when to shut my hole.

But Trista laughed. “You don’t just find a soulmate, J.”

“Then by all means, my little love know-it-all, tell me how it happens.”

“Don’t be a dick,” she said quickly.

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