Free Pride by Robin Wasserman Page A

insults, she’d challenged him to find some way to alleviate her Grace-induced boredom. He, in turn, had shown up at the end of his shift with a dirty pickup truck and a challenge of his own: Drive off into the middle of nowhere with a skuzzy stranger and hope that his definition of “something interesting to do” wouldn’t land her in the morgue.
    She didn’t even know why she’d called him. So he was hot. Fine. There was no point in denying that. Nor could she deny the fact that when he looked at her, when his eyes burned into her, she trembled.
    But that was irrelevant. It had to be. Kaia Sellers could not involve herself with someone like this Weed, poor, stupid, aimless, and completely unacceptable. Couldn’t, and wouldn’t. And yet …
    And yet, she’d made the call. And when he’d shown up at her door, she’d welcomed him in, hadn’t she? Leaned toward him, so he would smell her perfume. Favored him with a sultry smile.
    And now here she was in the old truck, Reed by her side, speeding through the darkened landscape, the lights of civilization (if Grace qualified) fading into the distance behind them.
    I must be crazy, Kaia thought, unsure whether to be appalled or amused. It was the only possible explanation.
    Crazy was fine—for a night. But whatever happened, Kaia promised herself, one night was all it would ever be. Reed Sawyer could not be allowed into her life. He didn’t fit. And never would.
    They drove in silence, and when the truck suddenly came to a stop, Reed turned off the engine and got out without a word. Kaia climbed out as well (once it became painfully clear he wasn’t planning on opening the door for her) and looked around in dismay. If this wasn’t the middle of nowhere, surely it was only a stone’s throw away.
    That’s it—he brought me here to kill me, she thought in sudden alarm.
    They were parked on the shoulder of a dusty road that stretched across the flat land until it disappeared into the darkness. Ahead of them sat the massive, hulking frame of a gutted industrial complex, long since abandoned.
    “We’re here? ” she asked, masking her increasing panic with the comfortably familiar cloak of disdain.
    He nodded, and hopped up on the hood of the truck.
    “And where is ‘here,’ exactly?”
    “This is Grace Mines,” he explained. “Or used to be. It closed down—then it burned down.”
    “And then what?” she asked, intrigued in spite of herself. She hopped up onto the hood of the truck next to him, looking more closely at the shattered remains of the mine, gleaming in the light of the full moon.
    “Then nothing. Who has the money to do anything about it?” he asked rhetorically. “It’s been like this ever since I can remember. I guess it always will be.”
    Kaia tried to imagine the empty husk before her as it had been in the boom times, teeming with workers, young men seeking their fortune, fathers struggling to support their families, the air filled with the clicking and whirring of machinery. This place had been alive once. And now? Weeds sprouted amid the fallen beams, empty beer cans lay strewn in piles of ash, the jagged glass of the shattered windows splintered the moonlight—now, it was just a corpse. A fallen giant, a dead zone, soon to be reclaimed by the wilderness around it.
    “You come here often?” she asked, her tone more serious than she’d intended.
    He nodded. “Something about it—” He looked over at her, then looked away. “We can go, if you want.”
    “No, I want to stay for a while.”
    And she was surprised to discover it was true.
    They sat there side by side, not talking, not touching. They sat for a long time, just staring at the old building, at the desert that lay beyond it. Kaia shivered once and, wordlessly, Reed tucked his jacket around her shoulders. It was heavy and warm—and smelled like him. Not pot this time, but a deep, rich scent, like dark coffee by an open fire. It fit here— he fit here—strange and