“Can you take me home?” I blurt, not bothering with pretenses.
“Shouldn’t your brothers be doing that for you now?” he asks. “You made it clear you don’t need me around.”
“Devlin, that’s not fair,” I say. “And you know it.”
His lips tighten, and he rakes a hand through his hair and sighs. He jerks his chin toward the car, looking down at me in that damn hot way of his. He unlocks the car, and I climb in before he can move because I don’t want to know if he was going to open the door for me or not.
“Why don’t you have your own car?” he asks, glancing sideways at me as he starts the little Ferrari. The engine purrs, and I lay my head back on the headrest and close my eyes. I need to drive, to get out of here, but he just sits there waiting for my answer, not going anywhere.
“My family won’t let me learn to drive.”
“Why not?” he asks. “All your brothers have cars. Even the freshmen.”
“But how could they control me if I could just leave on my own?” I ask, an edge of bitterness creeping into my voice. I’ve wanted a license for two years, since Royal got his at fourteen, thanks to some of Daddy’s connections who could pretend Royal needed a hardship license, as if he had to go to work and provide for his family.
“And you said my family’s backwards,” Devlin mutters.
“Yeah,” I say. “We’re fucked up like that.”
His hand falls on my knee, and I try not to gasp aloud at his touch. Just the warmth of his hand on my bare skin makes me want to eat him alive. I have to force myself not to move. If I do, he might stop touching me, and I might crumble to dust and blow away.
“Crystal,” he says. “What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You never talk bad about your family,” he says. “What happened?”
“I think you were right,” I admit, opening my eyes and forcing myself to focus on something besides the heat of his hand shimmering up my thigh, awakening things that are better left dead. “My family is tied to the mafia. My dad stole some candy recipe from your dad and ran off to get funded by the Valentis themselves.”
Devlin stares ahead for a second, his other hand resting on the steering wheel. We’re still in the parking lot. I’m still itching to move, to do something, like it’s all wound up tight inside me and I need to let it out. I need to scream, or drive so fast I can’t remember anything but how to breathe, or numb myself with a credit card and a website full of shoes I’ll wear once and forget I own.
“That’s not exactly what happened,” Devlin says. “But yeah, I know your family’s tied up in that shit. I told you that before.”
“I know,” I say. “I guess I just didn’t want to know the truth. They’ve always kept me sheltered from it, and I was happy to stay that way. It’s the same with the car. They won’t buy me a car because then they’d have to teach me to drive. And they won’t teach me to drive because then they wouldn’t know where I am at all times. I know they mean well, that they want to protect me. But they also want to see me in a certain way.”
“They want to control you,” he says.
I start to protest, to defend them because it’s my default setting, but then I stop myself. “Yeah,” I say. “So, tell me what happened between our dads.”
“They were in a class together senior year,” Devlin says with a shrug. “It was one of those senior project classes. They were paired up, and they had to come up with some idea for a business and try to start it. No one expects a business to actually succeed when you’re in high school, but this school likes to prepare people for the real world, and it looks good on college applications and all that. Dad thought they could make your family’s candy business into something big, Dolce Sweets. He just came up with the name and the idea and the first candy together. The recipes, all the rest of it, that’s all your family’s. That all came later.”
“But the whole idea for Dolce Sweets was your dad’s?”
He shrugs. “Yeah. They were going to be business partners and keep it going after high school, turn it into something real. Your dad knew some people back in New York who could lend him some startup money, but once my dad found out who it was, he didn’t want anything to do with it. So your dad took the idea and ran with it. Literally.”
“Fuck,” I say, letting my head fall back again. Once, I would have doubted him, called him a liar. But I know it’s true. There’s too much evidence to back up what he’s saying, and nothing but naïve loyalty to back up a denial.
Devlin slides his seat all the way back and pats his thigh. “Come here and drive us home.”
“What?” My head snaps up and I stare at him.
“You said you don’t know how to drive,” he says, a smile tugging at his lips. “This is the south, Sugar. Everybody drives.”
“But… What if I wreck?”
“You won’t,” he says. “I’ll be right here to catch you if something goes wrong.”
“You just got this car,” I say, my protests getting weaker. I really fucking want to do this. But the thought of sitting in his lap while I do it… I don’t know if I can handle that.