8. Knives

EIGHT

KNIVES

My phone dings with a new text. I'm in a foul enough mood that I'm tempted to ignore it and keep staring out the car window, but there's always a chance it's work-related.

Just suck it up , Lily's text says.

I glower at it. I'd sent my text informing her about the "road trip" last night. She'd waited to respond until she knew I'd already be on the move.

Silvano has to be a fucking sadist. He definitely knows Maddox and I don't get along, so I don't believe any of his reasons about why we need to be working together.

He just wants to see me suffer.

I let my eyes focus on the reflections in the window—on Maddox, driving down I-95 at a very legal speed.

It's absolute hell.

"You don't have to drive like a granny," I mutter, not looking at him. "Actually, I think I saw a few grannies passing us."

"I'm going ten miles over the speed limit," he points out. "That's pushing it enough." He flashes a smug smirk at me. "Just wait until we're on our way back. Then I'll only go five ."

"Jesus. Pull over and let me drive." At least if I'm driving, I'll have something to keep me occupied.

"Nope," Maddox says, popping the ‘p.' "We already rock-paper-scissored for it. I won. I don't want to deal with your crazy fucking driving the whole way to New Valence. You'd get us pulled over for sure. Then what? Tell Silvano you were too reckless to do the job right?" he taunts.

Yeah, right. We're both already on thin ice—especially after we'd interrupted whatever the fuck Kyran and Silvano were doing last night.

Maybe this is punishment for that. We cockblocked them, so we have to suffer.

They shouldn't have been fucking during "work" hours anyway. …Although I don't have much of a leg to stand on, given how often I've fucked Maddox in the mansion.

"Just don't drive so slow it takes us an entire extra day to get there," I say.

"What would you like me to do?" he retorts. "Go ninety? A hundred? Be part of a merry car chase?"

I flip him off and close my eyes to try to nap, but it's not happening. I'm hyper aware of Maddox right there, breathing just within arm's reach.

The radio station gets fuzzy for a while, until we hit the point where it reaches the range for the next station. A familiar rock song starts up.

It doesn't take long for Maddox to start bobbing his head in time with the music and softly sing along.

He'd always done that. I remember teasing him for it, because it was impossible for us to listen to music without him adding his own voice to the mix.

That's why I'd taken him to karaoke for one of our first dates.

"There's a new karaoke place over by 31st Street," I say, surprising myself.

His singing immediately halts, and he glances briefly at me before returning his attention to the road. "Yeah?" His tone is cautious, but he doesn't instantly snap at me. "I didn't know that. Have you been?"

"Nah. Just saw it around. One of my friends said it was good. Private rooms, great menu, cheap booze." I snort to myself. "I bet he was mostly impressed with the cheap booze. I doubt anyone would tolerate his singing while sober."

"Is he as bad as you?" Maddox asks, deadpan enough to where I can't figure out if he's teasing or being an asshole.

Probably the latter, but for some reason, I don't feel like rising to the bait.

"Hey, I at least know the lyrics to the songs I pick. My buddy picks popular songs and two lines in has to hum, badly, because he has no fucking clue how it goes." I let out a small laugh. "Only a step above a cat in heat."

"So you still go to karaoke?"

I still can't read his voice, and it's pissing me off because fuck, this is Maddox . I know him better than anyone.

At least, I'd thought I did.

"Not a lot," I say. "Just if somebody else invites me."

It just isn't as fun now as it used to be when I was a teen. I've outgrown it, or I lost my taste for singing, or… something.

My eyes flick back to Maddox. He's got his lips pursed, and I wonder what he's not saying.

"I don't," he says after a moment.

The admission surprises me—not only because he'd said it, but because he'd always loved karaoke. We'd even snuck into bars with open karaoke when we'd been younger, all because it was his favorite thing to do.

The song ends, and the radio DJ does some inane chatter about the oldies. His voice grates, and I'm ready to switch the station when the next song finally starts.

My eyes widen.

It's the song that had been playing when Maddox and I had first fucked.

The song I lost my virginity to.

His fingers tighten around the wheel, his knuckles turning white, and I know he's thinking of the same thing I am.

He hasn't forgotten any more than I have.

"I can change it," Maddox blurts out, already reaching toward the console.

"Keep your hands on the wheel," I snap in my most dominant voice.

A shudder runs through him, and he slowly rests his hand back on the wheel. "Why?" he asks, so quietly I almost can't even hear him over the song. "What's the point, Nayeem?" He grimaces, correcting himself quickly, "Knives."

"It's a good song," I say quietly. I don't mention that I haven't been able to listen to it at all since I'd landed in jail. "The two of us, we're done. There's no reason to deny ourselves this song."

"It's not that good of a song," he mutters, not looking at me.

The comment hurts more than I expect, and I open my mouth to lash out at him. How dare he shit on what we had, after everything he'd put me through.

But as the song continues, I realize there's no fucking point.

We can spend the next ten hours sniping at each other, being absolutely miserable, or we could— I could—just fucking suck it up.

"Whatever," I mutter. "Change it, then. A place like this won't have any other decent station."

Even though he sighs, he doesn't change it. The silence settles over us as he continues to drive.

The song changes, and I falter for a moment. Since he's not going to be the mature adult, it falls to me to try to get us through this long fucking drive without wanting to kill each other.

I don't like having all this time with my thoughts. If I were at home, I'd distract myself with work or video games. I could hit up a hookup app and find some sort of distraction. New Bristol is large enough that there's always somebody available, even this early in the day.

That would probably work out as well as it had the last time.

My usual anger at Maddox deflates, and I'm left with this fucking awful pain in my chest. It's familiar, a pain I've felt often over the past years. It used to bring me to tears, until I learned how to bury it in rage.

If I don't hate Maddox, I have to fucking deal with the fact that I'm a pathetic, hurt little boy.

We keep driving, and the rock music fades away into nothing. The trees give way to flatter plains.

Traffic also gets heavier, until we're going at a slow fifteen miles an hour.

"Why the fuck is there traffic?" I mutter, pulling out my phone to check—only to find that we're in a dead zone. I make a sound of frustration and fiddle with the radio to try to find a local station with traffic info.

I stop on the first station with talking. It isn't a traffic report, though. It's two people talking about local politics. We're in one of the backwater counties by this point, far enough away from New Bristol that I don't recognize any of the names.

" It's honestly a travesty that we have all these New Bristol liberals trying to dictate how we run things around here, " one host says.

" Right? They think they're the only ones who matter in the state. Most of them aren't even real Americans. Illegals who hop the border ? —"

For fuck's sake.

Maddox makes a disgusted sound.

"There isn't even a border to hop in this state!" I argue at the radio.

"If it wasn't for those ‘New Bristol liberals,' they wouldn't even have half the shit they do," Maddox grumbles. "They do realize the entire state's economy is based there, right?"

I let out a startled laugh. "They probably don't. Let's see them do all the work the immigrants are doing for them, at the same wages—" I cut myself off and shake my head. "Never mind. We don't need to listen to this crap." I change the station until I find an actual traffic report, telling us there's fucking construction happening. Great.

After a few minutes, Maddox asks, "Your parents doing all right?"

I stare out the window, wondering how to answer that question. "Guess so. My mom refuses to talk to me though. Because of the whole…" I shrug. "Doesn't matter. I send her money regularly."

Maddox nods.

I debate internally, wondering if it's too intimate a question for us, before I ask, "Are you still… uh… on speaking terms with your parents?"

He snorts, pausing long enough to where I'm not sure he's going to respond at all before he finally says, "I guess? I don't know. I've gone to a few family dinners, but they're always just waiting for me to ‘clean up my act,' and when they find out I haven't gotten a girlfriend and quit the mob—" He rolls his eyes. "—they're quick to shoo me off."

"They can't honestly expect you to give up the family that cares about you in favor of those dickbags," I say, like I'd often said back in the day.

It's not an excuse. I know that we hurt people. But the entire world is out there, trying to hurt us, so why the fuck shouldn't we take what we can for ourselves?

The mafia is more of a family to us than our own blood relatives.

"Dad tried to pull a gun on me the last time," he says.

Knowing Maddox, he's been holding this in, like he holds everything in. It's as exasperating now as it's always been, knowing he can't just talk about what's bothering him.

"Hope you turned it on him instead," I answer darkly. "He'd deserve it."

I only interacted with the man a handful of times, but what I remember isn't pleasant. He'd been a racist asshole, on top of demanding that everybody in the house always cater to his whims. If he wanted something, they had to drop everything to get it for him.

Mostly, Maddox and I had made sure not to spend time in either of our homes.

"Pulled my own piece," he says, surprising me.

"Yeah?"

He nods. "I know. Maddox the coward actually made him back off."

I wish I'd seen it, because I'd desperately wanted to rip that asshole a new one back in the day.

"Good for you," I say, my voice bland. "Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy."

"I know, right?" He laughs, though it's humorless. He shakes his head. "Haven't been back since. Maybe I won't."

He will, though. He's always been too desperate for attention, too desperate for affection, to turn his back on his blood family.

Traffic starts picking up again, and I can't think of anything else to say.

For a few minutes, I didn't hate talking to Maddox.

I'd even enjoyed myself again.

I grit my teeth and remind myself not to fall for that trap. Maddox might be good company, but he isn't reliable.

I'm not putting myself through all that pain again.