A Bad Day for Sunshine (Sunshine Vicram #1)(44)

Their bikes were bent and rusted and squeaked when they got closer, and Sun’s damnable empathy kicked in. But these were the Ravinders. The emotion would be wasted on them.

Hoping Hailey would ignore her for once in her life, she put her head down and pedaled faster, trying to hurry past. But two of the boys slid sideways to cut her off, and the rest surrounded her.

She had to stop so fast she almost fell, skidding to a halt in a cloud of dust. This amused them. Well, most of them.

Levi Ravinder sat on his bike a few feet from her, stone-faced, his gaze locked on to her as though he were contemplating inviting her to dinner. Or cooking her for it.

She never forgot the dynamics that day. The youngest boy of the bunch, Levi, who was taller and slimmer and darker than any of the others, seemed to wield the most power.

The gang stayed on their bikes, none of them saying a thing as they stared.

Her ice cream had melted over her left hand. She’d been struggling with it, anyway, but in the heat of the moment, she’d crushed the cone, and cold butter pecan oozed out of the wafer cone and slid between her fingers.

She dropped it in the dirt when they got off their bikes and closed in on her. All of them except Levi and, surprisingly, Hailey.

She tried to back her bike up to go around them, but one of the boys caught her rear wheel.

Her lungs stopped working, and the sun beating down overhead made her dizzy. “What do you want?”

“Your bike,” Hailey said. Her dirty blond hair hung in strings over her eyes, and she brushed it back with painfully thin hands.

“No,” Sun said. Her parents had given her that bike for her birthday. She wasn’t giving it up without a fight.

The boy who had a death grip on her back wheel sneered at her. “Then maybe we’ll just take it.”

She turned to him. “You can try, I guess.”

Everyone oohed and aahed at her bravado, but she was shaking so hard she could barely speak. Her voice came out breathy and weak, and her cheeks heated even more.

She made sure to keep one leg on the ground and one on a pedal in case she got the chance to take off. She wasn’t stupid. But now they knew she was scared.

She looked back at Levi and kept her gaze there. She knew who he was. Everyone knew who he was. He was the boy mothers warned their daughters about.

Even at fourteen, he was built like one of those guys in the movies. Tall and lean with muscles that cut across his stomach and chest. A chest bared to the golden sun overhead.

He wore only a pair of faded orange swimming trunks that looked a little big on him and an old pair of sneakers. He sat deathly still on his bike, one foot on the ground, and let his glistening gaze travel the length of her. It was dark and intense and made her stomach tighten in response.

The boy holding her wheel broke the spell Levi had her under. “You know how we like to have fun in the sun?” he asked the other kids, an eerie smirk slanting across his face. “We could have a lot of fun in this Sun.”

Levi’s cousins laughed, all five of them sizing her up.

Hailey, tiny for a twelve-year-old, dropped her bike, walked up to Sun, and ripped the chain from around her neck. The one that had her house key on it.

She tried to grab it back, but Hailey was too fast. She walked backward, swinging the chain back and forth like a hypnotist, her smile evil as she stopped beside her brother. Then, without warning, she turned and dropped the key down the front of Levi’s shorts.

Since they were swim shorts, the key must’ve caught in the fishnet lining, because they didn’t fall through and land on the ground like she was hoping.

“Why don’t you come get it?” Hailey said, probably hoping Sun would get off the bike so she could take it.

The others jumped back on their bikes and whooped and hollered as they rode around them in circles, stirring up dust, waiting to see what would happen next.

Levi had yet to move, as though his psycho sister did that kind of thing all the time. As though it were normal.

The cousins yelled really helpful suggestions like, “Get it!” and “We dare you!”

“Come on,” another said. “Don’t be a chicken. Get the key.”

Hailey crossed her arms, the challenge in her expression blatant. Almost as blatant as the crazy.

Sun gave in. She drew her leg over her bike, grossing out at the stickiness between her fingers, and dropped it on the ground. Hailey’s eyes glistened as Sun walked toward Levi.

Without waiting a second longer, Hailey ran to the bike, hopped on it, and took off, but the boys stayed for the show. They all stopped riding and watched, their eyes just as hungry, just as greedy, but for a very different reason.

He didn’t let go of his handlebars when she reached over and put her right, non-sticky hand on his stomach. But his muscles did tighten. His breath did still as he watched her.

She bit her bottom lip and slipped her fingers down the waistband of his shorts.

His skin was hot and smooth. His stomach hard. When her hand slid lower, he licked his lips.

“Come on, Levi,” one of the boys said, craving more. Craving violence. “Throw her down. Show her what you’re made of.”

Her heart beat so fast and so hard, she could hear her blood rushing in her ears, but she still didn’t feel the key. She slid her hand even lower down his abdomen, so low another couple of inches and she’d be between his legs.