Make You Burn by Megan Crane Read Free Book Online Page A

public, anyway—so she stood there and held that hard look of his, no matter how it hurt her. It was the only vigil she could keep.
    Ajax reached over and fit his tough hand against her cheek, with a careful sort of strength that struck her as far more tender than it probably should have, and then he held it there. Her heart thudded hard and her stomach twisted into a bulky knot. Tears spiked, in her chest and her nose and behind her eyes, no matter how she tried to blink them back. Sophie held on to his hand with her own, those brash rings of his warm and hard beneath her fingers and the strength in his palm harder still, and she’d never know how long they stood like that.
    There was nothing to say. She appreciated that Ajax didn’t try.
    The October afternoon heaved on around them. People walked into the building and then out again, letting out a blast of ice-cold air-conditioning every time the doors swung open. She could hear cars chugging past in the street. There were magnolia blossoms and the scent of sweet olive in the air, mixed in with asphalt and the heat, the usual city perfume. Everything was perfectly, horribly normal in all directions, except her father was in a bag somewhere and the man standing in front of her had terrible bruises in his gaze.
    He swallowed, and she wondered if that was his version of the sobbing, tearing, expanding rawness she could feel beating against her chest and battering at the backs of her eyes. She didn’t think it would ever stop.
    She didn’t see how it could.
    “Come on,” he said, and his voice was lower than she remembered it. It was a rough bass line she could feel inside of her, vibrating against her sternum and then radiating out until it hit her toes. “Let’s get out of here.”
    He didn’t speak more than a couple of words to the next taxi driver until they made it to the street where he’d parked his car, some beige sedan with Louisiana plates that surprised the hell out of her. Ajax didn’t strike her as the kind of man who would condescend to drive a mediocre car, when forced to drive a car at all.
    “Nice car,” she said, and maybe that was why he didn’t hold her door for her this time. She told herself she didn’t care either way. “Have you been in Louisiana all these years?”
    “Texas, mostly.” He slid her a cool blue look. “And don’t fucking insult me. This embarrassing piece of shit is not mine.”
    And she didn’t want to think. She certainly didn’t want to feel. So she climbed in and let him drive them away, out of New Orleans and into the thick green countryside. She didn’t ask where they were headed. She didn’t ask why. She had that raw, swollen hollow inside of her, so she curled herself around it and tried to get used to the unwieldy, impossible weight of it.
    Ajax drove fast, like he thought he could outrun it.
    They moved through the lowlands, brown here and lush there, gnarled old trees and sullen waterways. They crossed the great, muddy expanse of the Mississippi River on the far side of Baton Rouge before he turned off the interstate and headed into the swamps. Sophie rested her head against her window and let the magic of a bayou sunset wash over her, purples and oranges and plump clouds woven in and out of the sunken trees like minor benedictions. And Ajax sat beside her, big and tough and strong enough to make the whole world and even that grief gnawing at her insides feel small in comparison, and even more, let her imagine that she wasn’t completely alone in the world now.
    He let her mourn in peace and she held that close, like the imprint of his tough hand with those heavy rings against her cheek.
    She saw the lights of the building before they came to it, glimmering at the end of a long stretch of the only flat road etched into miles of swampland in all directions. Sophie had never been to this place before, but she recognized it for exactly what it was on sight. She knew it by the Harleys lined up in front,