I said nothing in reply and Holland’s frown deepened. She was still holding the same fry that had been in her hand for about a minute now, and I could see that she found my sentiment to be genuinely insane, but she did her best to hide it, trying to pass her reaction off as something playful.
“That’s not healthy,” she teased gently. “Me time is a thing, Iain, and it’s important,” she said without a hint of irony. “I mean when was the last time you took a weekend?”
“I couldn’t tell you.”
She was silent for awhile, just studying me. Then I saw something flicker in her eye.
“Do you still have Bonnie and Clyde?”
I tensed at the mention of them.
I hadn’t thought about either of them in awhile.
Bonnie was my custom Triumph Bonneville. Clyde was my Hellcat Challenger. Once upon a time, they were prized possessions, but I had a lot of once upon a times.
None of which I cared to think about anymore.
“I sold them,” I said, watching Holland’s eyes go wide.
I could see her genuinely processing this, wondering who Iain Thorn was without his motorcycle, his car. His snowboard. His weekends. They had been the four loves of my life.
Once upon a time.
“So…” she trailed off, and from the way she did, I suspected she knew she was treading in a direction I might prefer not to be, and I could see her curiosity fighting her instincts to be perfectly nice, polite and deferential. All the good girl things her mommy had taught her to be.
But as it had lately, her curiosity won.
“How do you satisfy Speed Demon?” she asked.
I looked at her, keeping a blank expression despite something furiously twisting in my stomach.
A natural reaction to that particular reference from my past.
Speed Demon was the tongue-in-cheek nickname Adam and I had given our need to do things like fight or drive fast or free-fall thirty feet off a mountain with both feet strapped to a snowboard. According to us, we couldn’t help making these decisions. It was all the fault of the restless, rabid creature living inside us that frothed at the mouth and pinballed in our chests, bouncing off the walls and swinging on chandeliers till we placated it with some kind of adrenaline rush. The bigger the rush, the longer he stayed at bay.
We had adopted the nickname because it put a comedic spin on all the thoughtless asshole things we did. Adam’s arrest for reckless driving was funnier when he phrased it as making a sacrifice to the speed demon. Same went for my bi-annual trips to the ER for stitches, breaks or what-have-you. Our law school friends used to love debating over whose little shit of a demon was worse—Adam’s or mine—but there was rarely ever a clear verdict.
Adam’s struck more often. Mine did more damage.
I could feel my gaze growing unfairly frosty on Holland as I thought about this, but I didn’t break our stare as I took my time to answer the question.
“I don’t,” I finally said, and crisply enough to make her eyebrows go up a little bit.
But in case my tone didn’t convey that we were done with this topic, a new voice sounded to my left, interrupting us as if on cue.
“Omigod—Iain! I thought that was you!”
15
HOLLAND
Swishy dark hair. Legs for days.
It took me a second to realize our latest interruptor was a waitress here and not say, Iain’s ex. I didn’t know what Keira looked like, but this was definitely not her.
“Brooke,” Iain smiled. “How are you?”
There was a cordial tone to his voice as he looked at Brooke. A niceness that hadn’t been there a second before with me.