Fraud

Ivy growls and shuffles over the backseat to sit up, her hair a mess around her head when she tugs the bag off and looks around.

“Damn it. We are in the woods. This is bullshit.”

Twisting in my seat to look at her, our eyes meet just as another bolt of lightning tears through the night sky, the flash of it reflected in her gaze, just like a night that never should have happened.

Ivy’s shoulders flinch at the sound, yet she says nothing, our silent thoughts tangled together as thunder shakes the car.

“I hate storms,” she finally whispers.

It’s hard to speak around the knot in my throat. “Why?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

That’s a dangerous topic to bring up, yet both of us keep returning to that place, the violence of the storm around us forcing us back to a moment in time when our stupid pranks took on a cruel new meaning.

My voice is rough when I say, “We should go inside before the rain starts.”

Just like that, the skies open up. It would have been best not to mention it. Mother Nature hates when we’re together and does everything in her power to stop us.

Maybe Ivy was right to say that we are the natural disaster. Not the storms. Not the turbulence. Not the lightning that cuts trees in half and sends us ru

We are the devastation that was born on the day we met as children, our hatred of each other swirling in chaotic winds, our attraction cracking the sky apart on a spark that becomes a raging fire at the point where it strikes the earth.

She wasn’t the person who set my house on fire that night. Nature was at fault for that. But I’d blamed her for it. And punished her.

There’s a reason we never bring our families into this, the events of that night the biggest reason, and yet I’m the one who crossed that line happily.

Then again, this woman has a way of pushing me to every extreme.

“Bit late for that,” she jokes. “Guess we won’t be grabbing my bags either.”

I grin. “It would definitely suck having to drag all sixty of them in through the rain.”

“Seventeen,” she snarls.

“My apologies for miscounting.”

Forcing myself to break the stare down we’re having, I grit my teeth as I shove my door open and step out into the torrential rain. I open Ivy’s door and offer a hand to help her out, blue eyes tipping up to me with memories behind them.

She has to raise her voice to be heard over the storm. “Such a gentleman,” she teases, her words daring me to do what we both want.

I tug her out and shut her door, but when she attempts to step away, I pull her back to cage her against the car.

Her near white hair is plastered to the sides of her face, both of us soaked already. I’ve seen her like this before, drowned beneath the rain, her eyes wide with both fear and desire.

Fuck what Mother Nature wants.

I’m no longer interested in her warnings.

I’m taking what I should have taken all those years ago.

“Only for you,” I answer honestly before my mouth claims hers in a kiss that shouldn’t happen and will only lead to disaster.