Sure, he’d been.
His mouth went so tight, it was edged in white. “I was messing with you,” he insisted, seriously.
He was messing with me.
Those long fingers flexed again. “You that mad at me?” he asked.
“I’m not mad at you.”
“Upset with me?”
I didn’t look at him as I said, “No.” I wasn’t. I wasn’t. “I just…” What could I say? “You don’t ever joke around with me. I’m just surprised.” I started to crack my knuckles but stopped. “Okay, maybe I am a little upset with you, but I’m almost over it.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him glance at me again, and I could barely hear his voice when he spoke again. “I joke around outside of work,” he said softly.
I wasn’t going to overthink it.
Did that come out defensively, or was it my imagination? “That’s good.” I was such a sucker. I really was. He was trying, and I didn’t have it in me to brush him off. “You can joke around with me whenever you want,” I replied just as softly as he had. “I wouldn’t tell anybody. I know it doesn’t mean anything, and I’m really good at keeping secrets. It can be another one of ours.”
I doubted I would ever forget the way he turned his head to look at me, slowly, so slowly, those eyes like hot freaking coals, raking me over. Seeing me. His eyebrows were knit, like he was deep in thought, and he just—
“RIP!” I shouted the second I spotted the car pulling out in front of us all of a sudden.
The brakes he slammed were instant. So instant, so unexpected, so forceful, I barely had time to suck in a breath and throw my arms up over my face. I closed my eyes just as the seat belt jerked across my chest, and I felt something slap me right between my breasts as someone’s brakes screamed in the background. But I knew I hadn’t made a peep.
I couldn’t have.
My entire brain just… shut down.
My upper body went forward…
And the truck made contact.
I wouldn’t be able to describe the sound of metal meeting metal. Of the truck careening into the car that had pulled out of what I would figure out later was a gas station. Even if someone had played me samples of crashes, I wouldn’t have been able to pick out what I had heard. It had just been noise.
But I felt my body jerk. Felt the seat belt dig into my shoulder. Felt what I didn’t know until seconds later was a big palm right in the middle of my collarbones.
Later, I would feel the painful fucking ache across my neck and shoulders.
And just like that, it was over.
The truck had stopped moving, the brakes had stopped squealing, and nothing but panting filled my ears.
My panting.
It was mine.
“Rip?” I sucked in a breath as I opened my eyes and found a totally intact windshield in front of me.
The weight across my collarbones moved, making me look down to see it had been a hand—his hand—there. Holding me back. There. Just there.
Dragging my eyes up his wrist, to his elbow, to his shoulder and then his face, I noticed his cheeks were flushed. That not-thin but not-full mouth was parted. But it was the thin red slice across his upper eyebrow that held my gaze.
“Are you okay?” I panted, not sure if I’d even be able to hear him above the roaring of blood and adrenaline and who the hell knew what flooding my ear canals as my brain registered that the danger was over and I was pretty sure we were okay.
Rip blinked. Those curly black eyelashes just dropped, once and then twice to cover his eyes briefly. His nostrils flared.
“You okay?” I asked again, the hand closest to him—which I’d tucked into my body by reflex—reached out. I set my palms and fingers on his forearm, only briefly feeling the goose bumps under them. “You all right?”
He let out a sharp exhale and then nodded.
I squeezed his arm again, just barely noticing that it was shaking. “They just pulled out of nowhere.” I sucked in a breath, trying to slow down my heartbeat. “I didn’t see them until it was almost too late,” I admitted, hearing that shaking in my voice as my brain refused to slow down and instead said you were in a car wreck in case you didn’t know.
We had been in a car wreck.
Shit.
I sucked in a breath through my mouth and let my head fall back against the headrest, moving my eyes forward again to see that the truck’s front end was smashed up against the driver and rear side doors of a late model BMW. I’d detailed them enough over the years to recognize the body frame.
“Holy shit,” I hissed, everything about me starting to tremble. We had been in a freaking car wreck. My heart was going to beat right out of my damn chest, it felt like. “Holy fuck.”
I swallowed. Tried to take a deep breath. Then I swallowed again.
I was fine.
Rip was fine.
That was all that mattered.
Glancing down at the seat belt across my chest and waist… it hadn’t clicked until right then that Rip had done some restomodding, which meant he’d modified his truck. Which meant he’d added safer seat belts since his truck had been made before the age of airbags. And based on the screeching, he’d updated the brake system too. If he hadn’t….
That wasn’t a nice thing to think about.
Movement inside the sedan told me that the driver of the other car was fine too. The door seemed to be jammed from the way the person inside was moving, but by the time I managed to think clearly enough to decide to get out of the car, that driver had managed to get the door opened and thrown a leg out.
The sound of a seat belt clicking had me glancing to my side to see Rip’s hand lingering over that part at my hip. He looked a little pale, and his hand wasn’t what I would call steady as it hovered there. I wasn’t sure what the hell I was thinking as I slid mine over and set it on top of his, everything going up to my elbow not much less shaky than his.
He was watching me, and all I could muster up was a smile that was probably just as wonky and off as the rest of me was.
“Son of a bitch!” a voice outside the truck yelled, and I didn’t need to look out to know that it had to be the driver of the BMW, who I had seen out of my peripheral vision circling his car.
My heart hammered away inside of me. I was shaking a little. My shoulder was starting to ache, but I was okay, and so was the man next to me. That was all that mattered.
“Motherfucker!” the driver outside yelled. I didn’t notice that Rip hadn’t answered me.
But somehow, I managed to focus enough to say, “I’ll—I’ll call the cops, but let’s get out of the truck first.”
Still, he said nothing.
Pulling the seat belt off from around me and letting it fall to the side between the seat and the door, I tried my best to get my arms under control enough so that they would stop trembling. I had goose bumps everywhere too, but I ignored those as well.
That had been close. Too freaking close.
“Luna, get out of the truck,” Rip finally managed to say, his voice soft and… off.
I nodded.
I was fine. My adrenaline was just crashing. I was pumped up, and now I was falling. We were safe. Everything was okay.
Not looking over at the man to my left, I got myself together enough to push open the door to the truck and climb out, only barely managing to remember my purse from where I’d left it right next to my feet. Luckily, I had zipped it, so nothing had fallen out and gotten strewn all over the floor. It only took a moment to fish my phone out and hit 911.