“Enough.” I held my hand up at her abruptly. “I don’t need your dad’s help.”
“He won’t judge you.” She looked at me anxiously. “Not if I vouch for you.”
“Would you vouch for me as the guy who f**ked you in his bed a week ago?”
“Of course not.” She made a face at me. “I would just say you were my friend.”
“Of course, your friend. Don’t you think he would want to know how we met? And would he be cool with us being friends?”
“My dad doesn’t judge people, Logan. I don’t know why you have something against him, but he’s a good man.”
“Yeah, he’s a good man.” My voice was harsh.
“I wish you would talk to me,” she pleaded.
“What do you want to know, Maddie?” I shouted, frustrated. “Do you really want to know what I think of your dad? Your perfect dad? Do you want to know why I wish I could watch him getting run over by a semi truck?” I watched as her face contorted with pain and she shrunk away from me, but I was too annoyed to stop.
“I f**king hate his guts.” I hit my fist against the steering wheel. “I am never going like him. I don’t know why you just can’t leave me alone. What don’t you get?”
“Sorry.” Her eyes flashed. “I thought you’d want to be friends.”
“Why would I want to be friends?” I looked at her, agitated. I was starting to feel bad for shouting at her, and that was making me even more upset. I didn’t want to care how she felt.
“I thought that we—”
“No, no, you haven’t been thinking,” I interrupted her. “I get it, you had a schoolgirl crush on me, but you move on, Maddie. You don’t track me down to seduce me, and then tell me you want to be friends. I’m not going to change. You’re not going to discover the other secret part of me. What you see is what you get. Do you understand that? I’m a car thief. I steal cars for money. I steal cars from people with kids.” I nodded to the baby seat in the back and ignored the twinge of guilt in me. I couldn’t afford to feel guilty in this business. “I’m not misunderstood, I’m not going to get a job in a f**king office, I’m not going to turn into some man who is going to give you the safe life you’ve grown up in. Just because I f**ked you, it doesn’t mean I want anything with you. Yeah, you’re hot. And yeah, I had a good time. But that was it. Stop trying to make this into more than it is. And don’t ask me why I’m mean to you or hate you. I don’t hate you. I just don’t f**king care.”
I took a deep breath and turned away from her. This time she didn’t try to shield me from the tears streaming down her face. She stared at me with wide, hurt eyes, and I was taken back to my childhood when I had told my mother I hated her. The pain that coursed through me right now was the same pain that had coursed through me then. I had been about twelve years old, and my dad had been on his way to steal a car and I was going to accompany him. My mother had been upset that he was using me as his lookout, and she had pulled me aside and told me that I couldn’t go. My father had been slightly drunk and had shouted at her. She stood her ground against him and had whispered that she couldn’t put up with it anymore. She told him that she wasn’t going to let him do this to the kids and that she was going to leave him. I had been incensed at her words and turned on her and shouted that I hated her and that she didn’t understand. The look she had given me at that moment had broken my heart in two. The pain mingled with shock, hurt and disbelief as she stared at me. I could feel how my words had hurt her. The hurt that coursed through her had flushed through me and I hadn’t known what to say. The anger and confusion in my own body had stopped me from apologizing in that moment. I knew that in that moment that my mother realized that the innocent and loving boy she had raised was gone. And as I stared at Maddie, in this instant, I knew I had also shattered her image of me. No matter what she had thought of me before, or what she were to think of me in the future, she would always be reminded of this conversation in this car.
“He’s here.” She bit her lip and turned away from me.
“What?” My voice was softer, and I didn’t understand what she was talking about. I wanted her to shout back at me, to scream and call me an ass**le.
“The guy you’re selling this car to? I think he’s here.” She squinted and then doubled down in her seat.
“What are you doing?”
“I think I know that guy,” she whispered up at me.
“Really?” I looked at her in surprise and then at the guy standing in front of the car. He looked somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t place him. “Stay here,” I hissed at Maddie again before I stepped out of the car.
“Hey.” The guy nodded at me.
“Hey.” I took in his dirty appearance and nodded. “You called me about the car?”
“Yeah.” He looked it over. “It runs well?”
“Yeah, smooth as a Ferrari, only twenty thousand miles as well.”
“You want five grand?”
“I want ten grand, but I’ll accept five.” I stared at him, and he stared back at me with a glint of something in his eyes.
“What about three grand?”
“No deal.”
“You got no papers.”
“So?”
“Two grand.”
“I don’t have time for games, five grand or nothing.” My voice rose, and then I noticed his hands were full of grease. “I’m going to go.”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to leave, Logan.” He stepped towards me with a menacing stare. “Marty’s not happy that you didn’t give him a call.”
“Marty?” I held my ground as I stared at the man, as I realized where I knew him from. He was one of Marty’s mechanics/henchmen.
“Yeah.” His voice was menacing. “You get a lot of protection in River Valley because of Marty. I wouldn’t like to think you were disrespecting him.”
“I don’t need Marty’s help.”
“Marty wants this car, and he’s willing to give you a grand.”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“You’ll take the grand, and be grateful you’re getting that. Next time, Marty won’t be so nice.”
“Forget about it.” I turned away from him, angry.