Watch Me Fall (Ross Siblings, #5) by Cherrie Lynn
Dedication
For my dear friend Melanie, the strongest person I know. I love you!
Chapter One
“Have you ever thought about how close to death we are at every moment?”
Starla Kimbrell’s fingers froze midtext. A chill lifted the fine hairs at her nape, but she did her best to huff out an exasperated sigh and look unaffected. Max glanced over at her from the driver’s seat of the older-model Mustang currently hurtling down a dark ribbon of Texas farm road. “Well, have you?”
“Don’t start your shit tonight. I’m not in the mood.”
“Seriously, Star. Look. My hands on the steering wheel, for example.”
She side-eyed the subject of his attention, debating whether she should finish her text to Janelle with a quick last will and testament. Not that she had much to leave to anyone.
The ground on either side of the car dropped away as they crossed onto the Perkins Creek Bridge, and Starla squirmed a little in her seat. She hated bridges on a good day. She found she hated them even more when the driver of the car she was in started talking crazy. “Just one tiny yank a couple of inches to the right…” To demonstrate, Max gave the wheel only a tiny yank. The car lurched to the right and quickly back to center. She gasped, her hands shooting out to either side, meeting door and center console as if that would somehow protect her if he decided to do something stupid.
“We’re on a f*cking bridge, Max.”
“I know. That’s my point. See this eighteen-wheeler coming toward us? A yank in the opposite direction and we’re worm food. One little twitch of my muscles. It’s all over. It’s f*ckin’ weird when you think about how easy it would be.”
She stared at those approaching headlights until they blinded her, heart thudding. But they rocketed safely by, and she finally allowed herself the breath her frozen lungs had been denying her. Not that she really thought Max would do something like that.
Hell, sometimes she didn’t know.
“We didn’t go into the light after all,” he remarked, teeth gleaming as his lips curled in a grin.
“That’s beautiful.” And this was over. Starla drew another shaking breath. That was two. She was on a roll. “Stop the f*cking car.”
Max finished his swig from the beer bottle he’d been keeping nestled between his legs before swinging his head around to look at her. “Huh?”
“I said, stop the car. I’m getting out.”
“Yeah, right.” With a scoff, he switched on the blinker to turn down Old Harris Road, a labyrinthine county road barely wide enough for two cars and the unfortunate route they’d have to take to reach the party he’d insisted on going to tonight.
Starla watched the headlights illuminate the trees as he made the turn, suddenly feeling slightly dizzy and more than a little sick. Deftones’ “Digital Bath” droned from the Mustang’s speakers. She listened for a moment, drawing steady breaths through her nose to build her strength before speaking again. “I’m serious, Max.”
“So you want out. What the hell for? Did I scare you? You should be scared. We should all be scared.”
“You are so weird.” She lifted her phone again, focusing on the lighted screen and ignoring how it shook in her hand. “So f*cking weird.”
He nudged her with his right elbow. She jerked away from the touch. “That’s why—hey, come on! That’s why you like me.”
She liked weird, yeah. Psychotic? Not so much. And the more time she spent with this dude, the more he leaned toward the latter.
I gotta get the hell out of here, she quickly texted Janelle. And shit’s prolly about to hit the fan.
She really didn’t want to hear her best friend’s reply, though. Jan had tried to warn her. They’d all tried to warn her—Ghost, Brian, everyone who even vaguely knew Max had told her he was not good news. Well, to be fair, “f*cking whacked-out freak” had been Ghost’s exact words. And, naturally, that had only intrigued Starla more. Coming from Ghost? Yeah. Curiosity had spiked to the stratosphere.
So she had only herself to blame. If she weren’t such a sucker for black hair and blue eyes, mystery and weirdness, if she weren’t the type to want to touch the fire even when she knew it would burn…
“Dammit!” she erupted, spurred by her own internal frustrations, trying to shut them up. “I said let me out of the f*cking car, Max.”
“Where you gonna go, huh? Calm down.” Muttering “crazy bitch” under his breath, he took another drink of his beer.
She was the crazy bitch? “Anywhere that’s away from you.”
He stepped on the brake so hard, she pitched forward. Her right hand scrabbled for the door handle, but ironlike fingers clamped around her left arm, and she swung around to glare into Max’s outraged blue eyes. “You’re not getting out of this f*cking car in the middle of f*cking nowhere.”
“I don’t care. You’re getting drunk, and you’ll be drunker by the time I’m ready to go home. I shouldn’t have come. So let me out, and I’ll call someone to come get me.”
Her cell phone chimed with an incoming message, most likely Janelle’s reply. The last thing she wanted was for him to see it.