Free Break Me In by Shari Slade

Chapter One

    I look back at my garage apartment one last time and worry for a second that I’ll turn into a pillar of salt right here in the driveway.
    The busted front door hangs crooked from the hinges at the top of the rickety steps. Noah did that in his rush to have me. It’s a stunning display of devastation and desire. As I walk toward Noah’s bike, I picture my landlord’s face, purple with rage, when he discovers the destruction. I wonder if he’ll think something terrible happened to me or if he’ll just be happy I’m gone. The bastard. I should’ve known anyone who’d rent to a teenager with no references, no bank account and no security deposit was probably not someone who’d value my privacy or honor the terms of a lease. God, I hadn’t even known I was supposed to have a lease.
    But I’d managed. And he hadn’t even started to give me a hard time about anything until I realized that he wasn’t supposed to come and go from my place as he pleased. When I finally asked him for a lease last year, he’d laughed in my face. The next time I brought him the rent a few hours late, he’d already printed an eviction notice. I got the message loud and clear: there’d be no more second chances.
    I can almost feel the lump of cash I’d slipped from my coffee can on the way out the door burning like a hot coal in my bag. Not quite enough for the rent due next week. Nowhere near enough for first and last on a new place.
    Certainly not enough to buy my freedom. There’s never enough for that, no matter how many shifts I work.
    Sure, I’ve managed. But I haven’t done much more than that. Almost three years in that shithole and now I’m not managing at all. It’s probably stupid and dangerous to have all my cash with me, but there isn’t a chance in hell I’ll leave it behind.
    I don’t know when I’ll be back. If I’ll be back. But most of all, I don’t know why I stayed so long.
    “It’s not too late to strip you naked again and throw you over my shoulder. Get your sweet ass on this bike.” Noah says but I don’t falter.
    “Does a topless ride through town earn me anything extra? Is there a rate card somewhere I can consult?” I slip behind him.
    Stone adjusts his sunglasses. “She’s a fucking handful.”
    Noah reaches back and claps a hand on my leg, digs his fingers into the thin denim stretched over my generous thigh, and squeezes. “More than.”
    I know by the sureness of his touch and the pleasure in his voice that it’s a compliment.
    Noah and Stone both rev their engines in the driveway, but we don’t pull away. The sound is loud and forbidding, two snarling beasts, and I see a few blinds snap open across the street. This isn’t the kind of neighborhood where people will help if there’s trouble, but they’ll peek through their curtains and maybe call the cops if it looks like someone is loading a TV into the back of a shady truck.
    They’ll leave me to my fate, though. If they even notice at all. It’s not like I’m a brand-new flat screen.
    It’s still better than the neighborhood I grew up in. In that kind of neighborhood people stay far away from the windows if they think there’s trouble. One like where Harry lives now. Or lived. Shit, where the hell is that son of a bitch? I feel the butt of Noah’s gun through his jacket and shiver. People sure as shit don’t call for help in neighborhoods like that. Help only ever makes things worse. They call for revenge, street justice, the kind found tucked into the waistband of Noah’s jeans.
    A car the color of my landlord’s caddy slows down as it rolls by, and I squeeze closer to Noah, press my face into the leather stretched across his back and take a steadying breath. “Get me out of here.”
    Before he comes home for an early lunch raving about destruction of property or disorderly conduct and tells me not to come back. I don’t say any of that out loud because I’m not ready to seal my fate just yet. I know I may