LOVE ME AT FULL SPEED

The speedometer hit ninety and mum yelped in her seat. "Nora." Mum's hand gripped the door handle so hard her knuckles went white. "Nora, slow down." I didn't. The road ahead was empty and black, a beautiful ribbon of asphalt cutting through nothing, and I knew every curve of it the way most people know their own name. I checked the mirror. "Please." My mother's voice cracked. "You're scaring me." I eased my foot off the gas, just enough to make her stop shaking, and took the next smooth curve, the tires barely complaining. Up ahead, red taillights clustered at the edge of the road, cars parked at odd angles. I knew what that was. I'd know it anywhere, in any town and on any road. A cluster of people waiting for an engine to scream. "What is that?" my mother whispered. "Nothing," I replied, looking straight ahead. My hands knew exactly how to get through it, weaving past the parked cars, past a boy leaning against a hood who watched us pass with recognition in his eyes. I wasn't just some girl who'd wandered onto the wrong road, but to my mum, it was just a strange gathering by the road. She didn't know what I knew. Then the headlights came from behind, filling the rearview mirror until the whole place turned white. Tires screamed somewhere close. "Nora!" That wasn't my mother sitting beside me anymore. It was Ivy. Glass exploded, a sound so loud it rang in my ears and my hands locked around the wheel so tight my fingers went numb. I could smell rubber burning. I could hear someone laughing right before the laughter turned into a scream and I couldn't tell anymore whether I was fifteen minutes into a drive or eight months back on a different road entirely. Then it stopped. The road was empty again. My mother sat beside me, seatbelt on, hands folded in her lap like she wasn't just screaming my name a second ago. There was nothing behind us. Nothing ahead but dark road and the low hum of the engine. Only then did I realize I'd been holding my breath the whole time. "You okay?" my mother asked quietly, watching me from the corner of her eye the way she'd been watching me for eight months straight. "I'm fine," I said, and eased back down to sixty, like a normal person driving home from a normal errand. "You didn't have to, Nora. You can stay off the wheel until you're ready." "I am ready." Neither of us said Ivy's name. We hadn't said it out loud in eight months, not even the night my mother sat me down and told me we were moving. She'd said I needed a fresh start and new city. A chance to breathe. And I understood exactly what she meant without either of us saying the real reason. We drove the rest of the way in silence, and I watched the exit signs count down toward a city I'd never seen and a family I hadn't asked for. ………… Cole Hartley opened the door with nothing but a short nod, almost like he was expecting a delivery and not a stepsister. "You must be Nora." He looked me over once, quick and assessing, the way you'd size up a stray dog that wandered onto your porch and hadn't decided yet whether it was going to bite. "Dad said you'd be here around six." "I am." He stepped back to let me in, and the house swallowed the sound of the driver pulling away behind me, off to the other mansion Mum now shared with a man I'd met only twice. Cole's house had marble floors that caught the light strangely, a staircase that curved like something out of a magazine spread, and the stillness of a place with too many rooms and not enough people in them. He didn't offer to help with my bags and rather watched me haul them in myself, arms crossed, looking too comfortable in his own space. "So how's this supposed to work?" I asked, dropping my duffel by the stairs. "Depends." He almost smiled, the smile didn't reach his eyes. "How long are you planning on staying?" "As long as my mom's married to your dad, I'd guess." "Right." He said it like he already had opinions about that, opinions he wasn't going to share yet. "Well... Try not to touch anything you can't afford." "Wow… What a warm welcome." "I run a tight house, that's all." He turned toward the kitchen, footsteps echoing off floors that had clearly never seen a scuff mark. "I am not interested in funding a charity case, no offense." I felt my jaw tighten. "None taken. I wasn't after your money anyway." "Sure." He snorted in disbelief. I could hear the doubt in the way he said it, like he'd already sized me up before I even walked through the door and filed me under gold digger, subcategory: pathetic. His phone buzzed on the counter and he glanced at it. The expression on his face instantly changed into a scowl, gone almost before I caught it, replaced instantly by a blankness that told me more than his actual expression had. "I have to go out," he said. "It's almost seven." "I'm aware of the time." He grabbed his jacket off the back of a chair, already moving toward the door with urgency. "Where are you going to?" "Out." He paused at the door and stared down at me. "You don't get to ask me questions in my home." "Excuse me? We live together now." "Only because my dad decided to be charitable to another gold digger on the streets. I don't owe you an explanation. If you want to leave before I am back, you can. Just don't steal anything from me 'cause I will find you." He left before I could answer, and I stood in his enormous, silent kitchen cursing him out. His car pulled out of the driveway and sped off. I heard the sound of the engine again a little after midnight. I had just finished settling in and lay in an unfamiliar bed staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, counting the ways this house didn't feel like anything close to home, so the sound pulled me straight to the window without thinking twice. Cole was outside with three other guys standing around him in the driveway, all of them dressed in dark clothes, all of them moving with just enough restlessness to tell me they were drunk. The car doors opened, and the growling engines rolled through the quiet neighborhood. Cole opened his own car door, and for just a second the interior light caught something sitting on the passenger seat. A helmet. I went completely still. I hadn't seen one up close in eight months, not since the last time I put one on myself. My whole body remembered, the weight of it against my skull, the smell of old foam padding, Ivy laughing beside me right before everything went wrong and never got the chance to go back to being normal. Cole shut the door and the cars pulled out of the driveway in a line, taillights disappearing down the street one by one, and I stood at the window with my heart slamming against my ribs so hard it felt like it wanted out. He had no idea what he'd just done instead. He'd shown me exactly what I flew hundreds of miles to get away from..