“Fuuuuckk,” Ava Jade screamed with a smile as Grey cranked the wheel, whipping the old Volvo around a stack of tires in the middle of the massive field. Making her press hard into my side in the backseat, sucked close from the g-force as we spun out.
Grey didn’t let the car stop for even a second, turning the wheel hard and gunning it until we fishtailed out of the spin and were barreling over the dry dirt and patchy grass again.
“Why didn’t you take me here before?” Ghost called over the roar of the engine and the music blasting from the speakers, completely at ease without a seatbelt in the middle of the backseat as Grey drove us at double the legal limit over uneven terrain. She held herself from being sucked back with hands gripping the edges of the front seat, legs spread wide like she was riding a bull instead of a backseat.
I licked my lips. “Crank it!” I ordered Grey, and he cut the wheel, throwing Ava Jade back into my lap before she could adjust her hold. I caught her before she could smash her head into the window, running a possessive hand down her side to grip the inside of her thigh.
She looked up at me in the dark, eyes gleaming with danger, and smiled.
I knew this was a good idea. We hadn’t been up here to rally the cars in ages. Not since the night we found Randy’s body.
“Shit, Grey,” Corvus hissed from the front seat, and I realized he wasn’t as lucky as Ava Jade, his head having knocked into the window.
He rolled it down, letting a blast of cool wind into the car as Grey kept going, taking hard turns and speeding so fast it made Ava Jade squeal.
I didn’t think I’d ever seen her so alive. So blissfully empty of all her darkness if only for just a moment.
She pushed away from me and tipped her head back, howling like a wolf, her back arched to the wind, arms spread wide, eyes shut. Either she trusted Grey’s control of the vehicle implicitly or she didn’t care if we crashed.
I knew I didn’t.
Sometimes I craved it.
Imagining the press of cold steel as it fed through my flesh, twisted with my bones. If it weren’t for my brothers in the car, I just might give in to that tiny voice whispering what if you just let go of the wheel. I supposed it was a good thing they didn’t let me drive.
“What is that?” Ava Jade shouted, leaning over the center console to point out the windshield, far into the distance at the jump we built last summer. The old property Diesel bought three years back was nearly a hundred acres of empty fields with nothing in any direction for miles. We’d been making it into our playground every chance we got. And that jump was one of three that were complete. The others, not so much.
It was the smallest of the three, but still a rush at fifteen feet.
Grey jerked his gaze to Corvus, and my eldest brother nodded, giving him permission. A small grin pinning up one edge of his mouth.
“You should hold on to something, Sparrow.”
She braced herself on the seats again, widening her legs as she planted her feet firm against the floor.
Grey switched gears and pushed the Volvo to its max, the night time landscape rushing by in a blur of dark shapes. I let the pull of danger wake and tame the black thing rumbling deep within. Tipping my head back as the cold wind stroked it. As the g-force made it quiver.
My hand found the inside of Ava Jade’s thigh and skated higher.
Her eyes found mine as Grey sped us to the ramp, shifting gears every second. She held my gaze there as I pressed my hand flat against her cunt through her jeans, feeling her warmth.
She shuddered as my fingers began to rub and the ramp came into full view in the dim headlights out the front windshield.
“Hold on!” Grey shouted, and I took it literally, squeezing her juicy little cunt hard so she tried to squeeze her thighs closed, her lips popping open in surprise as the Volvo hit the base of the ramp, thrusting us into the air.
For one blissful, weightless second, we floated, the dark becoming an ocean, the wind its waves.
Ava Jade’s hair lifted from her shoulders as the car dropped, and there was that one second of complete silence before the front tires hit the ground. The Volvo jerked and Ava Jade was violently tossed to one side of the car, her cunt slipping free of my grasp as she barreled into the opposite door hard and came up laughing like a maniac as the tires spat dirt until we were at a stop.
I could see her pulse thudding in her neck, quick and steady. Not frantic.
Just like mine.
She caught me staring and licked her lips, her gaze alighting on the hand that’d been firmly attached to her just a second ago.
I grinned at her wickedly.
“We have to do that again,” she said, breathless, shouting over the spluttering radio.
She perked up, spinning away from me to push out of the Volvo. She opened the driver’s side door next. “Get out,” she told Grey. “I want to drive.”
Hairline cracks formed in Grey’s confident smile.
“Fuck no,” Corvus said, turning down the music. “Get back in.”
She planted her hands on her hips and continued to stare at Grey. I kicked his seat. “You heard the woman, get the fuck out and let her drive.”
I dug my whiskey bottle from the bottom of Corvus’ seat, happy to find it still intact, and took a pull, relishing the burn.
“Not tonight,” Corvus said, giving me a pointed look through the cracked side mirror, but Grey was already getting out of the car, spreading his arms wide with a flourish.
“Your chariot?”
“Why, thank you,” she replied, slipping into the seat, her hands caressing the wheel. I could see the goosebumps on her arms from here. Each peachy blonde hair raised like she was brimming with electricity—energy that needed an outlet. Right now, this was it.
“Come on, Corv,” she said, nudging him with her elbow. “I think you kind of owe me. Live a little with us, please?”
He inhaled, face pinching. “Fine. No hero shit, though. I mean it. Leave that to the professionals.”
Grey smirked at the insinuation as he slid into the back with me. He seemed out of place in the seat, and I could honestly say I couldn’t remember a time I’d ever seen him not up front.
He seemed just as weirded out by it as me, looking around and trying to find a place to put his feet comfortably.
“Put your fucking seatbelts on.”
I rolled my eyes at Corvus, shaking my head at Grey as he and Corvus buckled themselves in.
“Where’s the faith?” Ava Jade asked, rolling her eyes when Corvus reached across her body to yank down her seatbelt, notching it in despite her protest.
“You can drive stick, right?” Grey asked as Ava Jade adjusted her seat.
She shrugged. “Guess we’ll find out.”
“Are you fucking ser—”
Whatever Corvus had been about to say was cut short as Ghost gunned the engine, the tires spinning on the spot for a second before she threw it into second gear and tore off downfield with a holler, turning the music back up between shifting gears.
The Volvo bumped over the uneven terrain as she leaned forward in her seat, squinting out the windshield to see as the night sky began to brighten, bruised by the purples and pinks of a new day.
The engine groaned as she pushed it to its limits, axels near snapping as she cut hard corners and nearly hit the fucking shed where the other old beaters and some guns and ammunition were stored.
Corv gripped the holy shit handle like his life depended on. Grey’s face turned ashen after barely five minutes.
I elbowed him. “Corv is the one with control issues. Relax. Enjoy the motherfuckin’ ride, Brother.”
He swallowed, taking the bottle of whiskey when I offered it for a quick swig. He shook his head, grimacing, but it did the trick to help ease the tension through his shoulders, and I polished off the last of it before chucking the bottle through the window as far as she would go.
The car dragged to a stop as Ghost finished a round of doughnuts that left a massive circular tread in the field. But the look in her eyes told me she was far from finished.
Her breath caught.
“What?” Corvus growled. “What the fuck are you looking at?”
He tried to follow her line of sight through the dim, but couldn’t find whatever it was.
I didn’t have to see it to know.
It was ramp numero three.
The largest of the set we completed last summer.
One Grey had only jumped with me once and we’d busted the whole chassis of the car we used.
It was at that moment that the song on the radio switched to a new, familiar beat. The opening line of Primal Ethos’ On The Edge the spark she needed to light her fire.
She cranked it as high as it would go and threw the Volvo into gear, speeding over the earth like a bullet.
“AJ, no,” Grey yelled. “It’s too high!”
“Sparrow, stop.”
But she was beyond hearing us and inside my heart beat to a mantra of yes, yes, yes.
“Punch it!” I called as she neared the base of the ramp. This one jumped over a pond, and if she didn’t hit it hard enough, we’d never clear it.
She did as I bid her.
Corvus grabbed the brake.
Fuck.
It broke off in his hand, and he chucked it from the window, cursing.
“Ava Jade!”
The ramp was only milliseconds away now.
I shut my eyes.
Blinding yellow light shocked the backs of my eyelids and Ava Jade screamed, blinded by the dawn.
I acted without thinking as the car’s perfect trajectory wobbled. We weren’t going to hit it right. She couldn’t see.
I was through the seats in a second, curling a fist around the wheel to jerk it to the right as the tires hit the base of the ramp.
The world tipped up, and my head cracked against something hard as the Volvo rolled, my stomach in my throat as the metal contracted all around us and dirt and broken glass pattered against my face and neck, burying themselves in my skin.
The rolling stopped. Or my head stopped spinning. The Volvo balanced precariously on two wheels at the end of its spin before falling back to all four, the cloying smell of engine smoke and dry dirt filling my nose.
Someone coughed, and I reached for Grey, jerking his arm.
He tapped my hand as he continued to cough, letting me know he was all right as On The Edge continued to play intermittently on the busted radio.
The light made it hard to see through the dust cloud as Ava Jade grunted, disentangling her leg from where it was trapped beneath the wheel well with Corvus’ help to lift the gnarled metal.
My stomach clenched, but then she was free and Corvus was inspecting her leg, the only injury he sported a shallow cut in his temple leaking crimson down into his eye.
That’s when she started laughing.
A dull chuckle at first, morphing quickly into a full belly laugh, her eyes leaking as she clutched her stomach. Tears clearing tracks through the dirt coating her face.
I couldn’t help laughing too, a lightness taking shape in my chest so wide and all-consuming that it blotted out the dark.
Grey chuckled too, slapping me on the leg as he shook his head, incredulous that we were somehow still alive.
Corvus’ door opened with a creaking groan as he stepped outside, kicking it shut behind him. The dawn light covering him in its vivid orange hue as he stalked away.
“Corvus!” Ava Jade called after him between fits of laughter. “Where the fuck are you going?”
He didn’t answer her, just kept walking, shoving his hands into his pockets, his back up. And I knew he needed to leave. It wasn’t a matter of choice. He was going to lose himself if he stayed, and Corvus James never lost himself. Never lost his control.
Too bad.
It would set him free.
