Page 2 of Midnight Auto Parts
“Breathe,” Kierce murmured in my ear, his voice rich with power, shooting tingles down my nape.
“I was hyperventilating again, huh?”
The steel band cinching my lungs tightened another notch until my nostrils burned. I couldn’t suck down enough oxygen each time it hit me,reallyhit me, I had died. That I walked and talked, ate and drank, the same as always, couldn’t compete with the lingering tautness of my still-sensitive skin or the knowledgeof how it felt to be boiled alive by a god to prove a theory to himself.
“You’re not dead.” His lips brushed my earlobe. “You’re every bit as alive as I am.”
None of those assurances helped much, since I hadn’t been convinced how alive he was from the start.
As I rotated within his arms, I braced for the sight of him, for this new perception of his truest self.
Rather than a pale complexion, I perceived the moonlight glow of his skin. His gray eyes weren’t misty as I had first thought but shimmered as if crushed diamonds spangled his irises. Within them, I saw forever. Bright as the moon, as vast as time, and mine for the taking. The gentle promise they held, the infinite horizons they contained, scared the spit out of me. Even the individual strands of his black hair managed to gleam like they were dipped in stardust, reflecting the deep, dark light of the nebulous corona ringing his head.
Though the ocean-blue Hawaiian shirt printed with pink hula girls, yellow surfboards, and neon-green palm fronds that kept finding its way into his weekly rotation did help take the edge off.
“You’re staring at me again.” His touch echoed down to my bones. “Would you like me to dim myself?”
As hard as I tried, I had yet to master the trick myself, forcing me to confront this all-encompassinghim.
Until I learned to mute myself too, I avoided looking in mirrors or glimpsing myself in reflective surfaces. What I saw through my own eyes was bad enough. Pearlescent skin was nice and all, but this wasn’t me.
The only thing saving my sanity at the moment was the fact neither Matty nor Josie could perceive those changes in me. The Suarez brothers, on the other hand, saw the new me just fine. They barely glanced in my direction for fear of Matty registeringthe differences, but that could only go on for so long before he worried that I had fallen out with our mechanics and confronted me. I didn’t want to lie to him, so, yeah. I had to figure out how to break the news without breaking my siblings’ hearts.
“Yes,” I breathed, hands fisting in his shirt, senses reeling from overstimulation.
“I don’t mind.” His knuckle skated down my cheek. “I can only imagine what you’re going through.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong.” I risked squinting at him through my lashes. “But you went through this too.”
“That was…”
“…a long time ago,” I finished for him, hating how his brush with divinity had stolen his past and terrified it would do the same to me. In time. How long did you have to live for your mind to develop the holes as wide as those in his memories? A century? Two? Three? Was there a magic number?
An ear-splitting roar shook the window in my office as Pink Panic revved her engine then sped away.
“I should go.” I withdrew from him, grateful for his patience with my slow adaptation to my new reality. Which, despite that patience, must seem like a rejection of it…and him. “Tameka will be waiting for me.”
Before I could open the door, frantic taps on the glass drew my attention to Badb and then beyond her.
To the parking lot.
Theemptyparking lot.
Cursing under my breath, I shoved through the door with a hard drop in the pit of my stomach.
I turned my head left. I turned my head right.
There was no sign of Tameka. Or Keshawn. Or Pink Panic.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I fumbled out my cell and dialed Josie. “We’ve got a runner.”
Thank God the chip I injected under the skin of every new loaner meant we could track Camaro easily.
“Ah, yes.” She breathed in deep. “I love the smell of repo in the morning.”
“That makes one of us.” I kicked the outer wall of the shop. “How soon can you get here?”
I caught my gaze swinging up to her apartment, but she had moved out. For the time being. Until the sting of Armie’s final betrayal lessened, and she made peace with knowing he’d used her to gain access to our homes where he had then mounted cameras to spy on us, she was rooming with Carter.