“What were you even doing with that guy, Lucy?” Titus asks suddenly out of the blue. His voice shattering the silence nearly shakes me out of my skin.
“What?” I stammer. “I…um…I don’t know.”
And that’s the truth.
“Guys like that are no good,” he says. “You stay away from him from now on. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Yes, sir?The words just slipped out of my mouth without any warning whatsoever as naturally as taking a deep breath of air or running my hands through my hair after a shower.
Titus doesn’t comment, but I notice the way the corners of his lips curl slightly.
“You know I put in a good word with your dad for you like I said.”
My jaw drops. “You did? About me staying home to pursue my art?”
He nods. “That’s right.”
Joy springs from my heart like water gushing from a fountain. A giddy smile comes over my face that I can’t hold back. I must look so silly, but Titus smiles back too.
“Thank you!” I say, suppressing my desire to throw my arms around him in a massive hug. “Now I guess all we have to do is hope that my dad starts seeing things my way.”
“Right,” Titus laughs. “It’s a big thing to hope for, but…”
He raises his hand up in front of my face and crosses his fingers. For some reason, I am immediately taken back to the parking lot when he had his arm around me and that hand was cupped on my shoulder.
I realize that my heart is racing. I hope there are no outer signs that he could notice, like blushing or sweating.
Quickly, I raise my hand up and cross my fingers too.
“Let’s hope!”
Titus chuckles and looks back at the road, and I’m still smiling, but that’s when something terrible happens. That’s when my cell phone vibrates. And it’s loud enough that it can be heard throughout the whole truck.
It’s not my dad. He would call. It’s most likely Eric, and there’s no way I’m checking that while I’m riding with Titus, so I just ignore it.
But then, less than a minute later, it actually rings. And I can’t ignore that.
I pull my phone from my backpack and glance at the screen, praying it will be my dad, but there’s Eric’s name on the caller ID. I side-eye Titus, hoping he isn’t paying attention, but he’s looking and has already seen.
“Titus, I—”
Before I can react, my phone is in Titus’s hand. He hangs up for me and stuffs it back in my bag, then whips the truck on a hard right down a road I’ve never been on or even really noticed.
“That little son of a bitch,” he growls under his breath. “He still thinks he has a chance to make you his, doesn’t he?”
The trees are whipping by on either side of us. Titus has his foot on the gas, and we are speeding down this road that seems to lead to nowhere.
“I…I don’t know?”
“He didn’t listen to me back there.” I can see how white Titus’s knuckles are as he grips the steering wheel, the veins on his biceps looking like they’re ready to bulge out from under his skin as we plunge deeper and deeper into the woods. He glances over at me. “That little punk willnevermake you his, Lucy. You understand that?”
I’m nearly shivering. Every nerve in my body is blazing as though I’ve been struck by lightning. I can barely even muster the will to nod my head. “I…yes, sir.”
He smiles at me, a smile like a wolf would smile after having just found its prey.
“Good.”