Fireworks (True North, #6)

by Sarina Bowen

Seriously? He can’t even allow me a clean getaway? What. A. Jerk.

“I’m going to kill Rayanne. She’s going straight to helipad. And you’re next.” Benito’s forehead crinkles. “You’re not making a lot of sense, Skye.

“And you think you might be on TV?” He steps up to me and puts a hand on my shoulder, the way you might do with a crazy person. “Well, sure! Every day,” I babble, because I’m getting a contact high off Benito’s nearness. “Except this week, because I accidentally drew a penis.”

She lives with a cop who drives drunk. This is why a sweet girl of sixteen is also one of the more cynical people on Earth. She notices things. And yet she is powerless to change them.

You’re a dirty girl, ain’t you?” Dirty girl. No, she isn’t. But there’s no way to prove it. There will never be a way.

She doesn’t wait for Jimmy’s knock or his shouting. She’s not going to feel that hand creep down her body again tonight. Dirty girl, he called her. He’s half right. She feels very dirty right now, thanks to him.

she climbs out, dropping carefully onto the leaves and avoiding the stump below. The stump was Benito’s idea. He placed it there to help her climb back inside on nights when she needs to flee.

Who knew that sitting in the cold woods alone at night would seem cozier than being at home?

He’s the most beautiful boy she’s ever seen.

Skye feels so much safer sitting next to this boy in the woods than she feels in her so-called home. He’s right there beside her in the dark, but he doesn’t touch her.

Benito has told her this already. They talk all the time now.

Mom is saving up money to move somewhere else, but it’s gonna take a while.” All the air leaves Skye’s lungs. She’ll never be safe. And Benito might move away.

“Does your mom know the things he says to you?” he asks. Skye shakes her head. “You have to tell her.” Skye knows he’s right. And she also knows it might not matter.

Seeing Skye in the Gin Mill was like seeing a ghost. A six-foot tall, long-legged, girl-of-my-dreams ghost.

She makes good time on those long legs of hers—the same ones that marched through my teenage fantasies the whole year we were friends.

I’d follow her no matter what. Case or no case. It’s not even a conscious choice. Wherever she goes is where I need to be.

It’s no exaggeration to say that I’d never seen such a beautiful girl—in my town, in my life.

even before I opened my mouth to warn her not to trip over me, my heart spoke up. Mine, it had said. And I’d been pretty much gone for her from that day forward.

When Skye had come into my life, I’d wanted her from the first second. But we can’t always get what we want. I realized right away that Skye hadn’t needed a horny teenage boy trying to get under her skirt. She’d needed a friend and a protector.

It had been easy to be her friend, and harder to keep her safe. Ultimately I’d failed at both, and that’s how I lost her. I can’t fail again. But—Jesus Christ—the love of my life has the worst possible timing.

She hops off the porch and comes to stand beside me, trembling. Old instincts kick in, and I wrap an arm around her and pull her to my chest.

“Rob is a Colebury policeman.” Skye shivers, and I realize too late that her only experience with the Colebury police was Gage and sexual harassment. Shit.

Her mother’s life is a series of dead-end jobs and dead-end men. Skye is never, ever going to walk that same path.

She’s afraid to bring up the time Jimmy Gage grabbed her ass. Her mother will assume she did something to attract his attention.

Skye is a little worried that maybe somehow it’s her own fault. She might have given him the wrong signal. She won’t make that mistake again. Skye doesn’t ask her mother for new clothes anymore because wearing Rayanne’s old too-big sweatshirts seems safer.

She opens it to find Benito standing there. “You okay?” he asks between gritted teeth. Skye looks him up and down. His hands are balled into fists, and his eyes look hot and angry.

“Something wrong?” “Skye. There’s a hand print on your face.”

She’s not sure if Benito can actually hear her climb down from her bedroom window, or if he keeps a constant eye on the pathway into the woods, or if he just has some kind of sixth sense about when she needs company, but she rarely waits more than five or ten minutes before he appears with his ukulele and his calm demeanor.

The fact that he hasn’t done anything other than say horrible things to her and touch her ass, only heightens her dread. He likes that best, maybe. Her dread.

He’s a quiet comfort, and she loves him so much. She’ll never tell him, though.

the two meanest people are Jill Sullivan and Zara Rossi—Benito’s twin sister.

How can one man's touch be terrifying, while Benito's is something she craves?

“Take these,” she says to Skye Copeland, pressing something into the girl’s hands. “Wool socks are magic in this climate. Try them and they’ll change your life.”

“Griff! Will you make a plate for Skye?” “I’ve got it,” Benito says quickly.

she knows why people fall all over Skylar. The girl has the kind of rare, unholy beauty that other girls would sell their souls to have.

Zara can’t stand how her twin brother looks at Skye—like she’s a gift from heaven. Benito has it bad.

Zara gets to live in Jill’s brother’s room while he’s in college in Albany. She gets to borrow Jill’s clothes (at Jill’s whim) and ride in Jill’s white Volvo to school. In return, Zara is expected to kiss Jill’s ass twenty-four-seven, and to help steer Jill into the path of her uninterested brother.

Her brother doesn’t even hear the sarcasm. Nobody in her family can see that she is drowning.

Across from her, Skye is cleaning her plate. Zara notices this, but it only makes her angrier. That skinny girl can eat. Zara will simmer with teenage resentment, instead of coming to the logical conclusion, which is that Skye is starving because she’s too stressed out when she’s at home to eat.

Officer Benito makes some sense, given his teenage penchant for keeping certain people safe. Me, in particular.

It’s more like she stole…my weekend.” And my trust, which hurts worse.

Suddenly I’m freezing in my skirt and my little cashmere sweater. So I pick up the pace. Wordlessly, Benito slips his leather jacket off and drapes it over my shoulders. I stop on a dime under a streetlight. “No,” I say, shrugging it off again, eyeing his thin-looking black T-shirt. “It’s yours.”

I feel the same flush of excitement I always did when he was close to me.

“What kind of trouble?” “Doesn’t matter.” His voice is thick. “It never did. I’m here for that. I’m here for you.”

I’d never known what I’d done to deserve Benito. He was the greatest gift I’d ever been given. And he disappointed me in a very ordinary, teenage-heartbreak sort of way.

he steps back and grabs my hands—both of them—and balances them on his palms, inspecting them. “What are you doing?” I manage to croak, in spite of the lump in my throat. “Checkin’ for a wedding ring.”

I get paid like shizzle.” His laugh is a bark. “The fake-swearing thing is hard to get used to.”

“So… you’re Uncle Benito.” “That’s right.” He smiles, and I realize that it might undo me completely to see him holding a child.

“Can you help me find a place to stay?” He opens another cabinet, this one containing wine glasses. “You’re staying here, Skye. With me.”

Seeing him again actually hurts.