Uppercut Princess (The Heights Crew #1)(65)

“Are you kidding? You get hurt and Johnny will fucking kill me.” He makes sure I’m staring straight into the abyss of his eyes. “He’ll also give me shit because those beautiful legs of yours will be wrapped around me.” My heart kicks up. He’s trying to bait me.

He winks, and a flush of heat hits my cheeks. In another place, another town, Oscar would be the shit. I bet the girls swamped him when he went to Spring Hill. Who doesn’t want to date the quarterback? Especially if he’s as good as Oscar makes himself out to be.

“Are you seriously flirting with me after you told them you didn’t think I should fight?”

A scowl crosses his face, and he stalks toward me. “Did you ever think Johnny’s not the only one who doesn’t want to see you get hurt? Don’t be so fucking dense, Princess.”

“Don’t call me fucking Princess.”

His lips quirk up. “I like calling you Princess. I like the angry heat it brings to your cheeks and the mouth it gives you. That’s like crack to me, Pretty Girl. Pretty, Pretty Princess,” he tacks on, like shoving the knife that much deeper.

He returns to his bike and hops on. He revs it up, and it surprisingly roars to life without hiccups. In fact, it thunders, dangerous and sexy. And Oscar most certainly has sex appeal while he’s on it.

“Careful when you get on,” he calls back to me.

I bite my lip and step forward. He points out where to put my feet, and I straddle the seat, then end up having to move closer to him as the bike vibrates beneath us.

“Hold on,” he says, his voice loud enough to hear just over the purring engine.

I stare at his back. His shirt hugs his torso, so I can imagine the athletic body underneath. I move my arms around him, but it’s Oscar who pulls them tighter, overlapping my hands until I grip one in the other. He pats me as if saying, “Good girl,” and I grit my teeth.

“Don’t enjoy this too much, Princess. I’m sure there are eyes all over us right now. Wouldn’t want someone seeing how much you enjoy being pressed against me.”

If they’re watching the look on my face right now, there’s nothing I have to worry about.

But when Oscar hits the gas, I squeeze him. Try as I might not to, a skitter of fear runs through me. I’ve never been on a motorcycle before. The guys I went to school with had Porsches and Mustangs, not bikes like this. Not that any one of them ever asked me out for a drive anyway.

Oscar drives the city streets, muscles tensing and moving beneath my touch. There’s no doubt about the fact that he has a six-pack hiding under his shirt. The hard ridges of his abs bite into my wrists.

Once we get going, the fear of the ride floats away. My hair blows in the wind, and a sense of freedom flows through me. I wish escaping was this easy.

The feeling of being free doesn’t last long though. After a while, my mind retreats, catching and dragging on all the things that just happened. Now that I’m out of the moment, my body locks up. Oscar must feel the change in me because he pats my hand again, then smooths his fingers over the tiny bones in my wrist to comfort me. Without even seeing my face, he knows I need it.

I met the guy who killed my parents.

Fuck.

I touched him. I sat in the same room with him. Hell, I fucking strategized with the asshole.

Oscar pulls up in front of my building. I stumble off the bike and make it to the cement wall. I lean my forearm against it as my stomach revolts. The hand that touched that dirty fucker dangles at my side, my fingers outstretched. I stare down at it, and my stomach twists again with the threat of losing its contents.

Behind me, the engine cuts off, and Oscar runs up to me. He puts a hand on the small of my back, rubbing there. “It’s okay.”

I swallow, my eyes closing on their own free will. It’s not okay. Not at all. It’s not okay that I have to make nice with that asshole and his friends. He should be able to hear what I really have to say. He might’ve, in court. But that day has long passed. The fucking corrupt cops and the Heights Crew’s reach made sure of that. I never got the chance to stand up and tell that fucker exactly what he did to me and my family. And even then, at twelve, I wouldn’t have known the extent. All I knew was grief. Now, I know the extent. Now, I could tear that fucker down.

Then again, since he doesn’t have a soul, he won’t care. He has no feelings left inside him.

This is the guy I have to appease.

I know what I have to do, but for just this moment, I’m going to rage against it all.

“Let’s get you upstairs,” Oscar says, his voice gentle. All the teasing and flirting from earlier is gone. In its place is true concern.

Since it doesn’t look like I’m actually going to throw up, I take his hand and we both move up to my apartment.

Oscar opens the door for me, and this time it doesn’t even faze me that everyone else seems to have a key to my apartment too. I’m used to it. It no longer bothers me that certain people do. I’m not used to having friends. People who care about me.

Oscar guides me to the chair. “Have a seat. I’ll get you some water…and some ice,” he tacks on.

I stare blankly ahead, my elbows on my knees as soon as I’m sat in the chair. The faucet runs, and a few seconds later, Oscar thrusts a glass in my face. I take it with shaking hands and then press my wrist onto the icepack Oscar sets on the coffee table in front of me.