“Dude! This is sweet!” Jamie grinned, holding the Braves tickets aloft. “I’ve never been to a major league game!”
“That second one’s for me,” Bash noted, grinning. “See? Not so selfless after all.”
Jamie laughed, reading the tickets more carefully. “Wait, are these…” he trailed off. “No way! No freaking way!”
He sat straight up in bed, his excitement tangible and his sudden movements launching me onto the floor.
“Care to enlighten me?” I asked Sebastian, arching an eyebrow as I regained my balance. I’dnever seen my brother so excited.
Bash laughed, watching with a happy smile as Jamie practically bounced up and down in anticipation. “They’re VIP Meet & Greet passes. You get to tour Turner Field before the game, meet all the players, take photos, get autographs… It’s supposed to be awesome.”
“Wow,” I murmured, more than a little in awe of my boyfriend. He’d managed to turn this day of mourning and grief into one of light and joy for my brother — a price I’d never be able to repay. Slipping one hand into his, I squeezed lightly and dropped my head against his shoulder. “I love you.”
Bash kissed the top of my head. “The tickets are flexible, so we can choose a game once the season kicks off and Jamie’s feeling up for it.”
“Dude, if this isn’t motivation for me to master my prosthetic in record time, I don’t know what is,” Jamie muttered, still unable to unglue his eyes from the tickets in his hands. “I’m gonna run a lap around the bases.”
I turned to face the wall, not wanting Jamie to see the moisture filming my eyes. But, in a happy twist of fate, they weren’t sad tears.
They were joyous.
***
“Lux?” Minnie called from the kitchen. “That boyfriend of yours called. Said his plans changed and he can pick you up tonight after all.”
“Okay thanks, Min!” I called back. I was in the front, wiping down tabletops and refilling condiment bottles after a busy Saturday night at the diner. Her announcement was a pleasant surprise. Bash made it a habit to pick me up after my shifts each night — tonight was one of the rare nights he’d said he couldn’t make it. His mother had dragged him away for the weekend to visit one of his great aunts who apparently controlled a vast amount of financial assets and required some annual ass-kissing to guarantee the Covingtons weren’t forgotten in her will. I wondered how he’d managed to escape early enough to pick me up.
Most nights he waited inside for me to finish cleaning after closing time — he’d charmed Minnie during their first meeting and from then on she’d been more than thrilled to let him keep us company. At the beginning I’d protested, saying he had much better things to do with his nights than help fill empty salt and pepper shakers, but he’d worn me down, insisting that no time spent with me was wasted. Tonight, as the minutes ticked by and Bash failed to appear at the front door, I felt a flutter of unease in my stomach. Maybe he wasn’t coming after all.
Sure enough, though, when I stepped out of the diner into the brisk January night, his Mercedes was there idling in the parking lot. Dismissing my rattled intuition, I waved goodbye to Minnie as she locked up and hurried for the car, eager to see Sebastian. The dark tinted windows were impossible to see through from the outside, but I knew he saw me — I heard the locks click open as I approached. Reaching for the handle with a smile on my face, I slid into the passenger seat and turned to kiss him hello.
Before I could so much as strap on my seatbelt, the car lurched forward with a jolt that slammed my still-open door shut and sent my stomachreeling into my throat. Yet the shock induced by our abrupt departure was quickly overshadowed when I realized the man in the driver’s seat was not my boyfriend.
It was his father.
“Lux!” Andrew grinned over at me, then looked back at the road. “So glad you could make it.”
I reached for my seatbelt and strapped it on, my heart pounding as I eyed the speedometer. We were hurling away from the diner at breakneck speeds, inching past fifty miles per hour within seconds of leaving the parking lot.
“Senator.” I tried to keep my voice steady. “What a surprise.”
“Ah, well, I knew my boy was out of town tonight. Figured you could use a ride home.”
“Minnie would’ve taken me.”
“Nonsense! I’m happy to drive you.” His perfect smile was too unwavering to be genuine. “Plus, this way we can chat.”
I didn’t want to “chat” with him. I didn’t want to be in this car, traveling at this speed, without anyone knowing where I was or who I was with. I wished more than anything that I had a cellphone to call Bash, Minnie, or Jamie. Hell, I’d even call my parents at this point, I was so eager to escape this man’s presence.
“Want to hear something funny?” Andrew asked.
I didn’t respond. I had nothing nice to say– any words I spoke would only anger him.
“No?” He laughed with forced good humor, his tone disingenuously cheery. “I’ll tell you anyway. My maid,Greta — you remember Greta, don’t you?”
I clenched my hands tightly together in my lap and I looked out the window at the trees speeding by in a greenish blur. Inthe movies, people always jumped out of cars going a hundred miles per hour and walked away without a scratch; at what speed could I hurl my body from the passenger seat in real life and still survive?
Not this fast, that much was certain.