Boarding with the Bad Boy [COMPLETE + BONUS published edition]

"Are You Going to Kill Me?"

Sam and I don't speak as we climb into the truck or as he starts her up, pulling into the street. I'm doing my best to keep my mouth shut, but my curiosity gets the best of me and finally I can't help myself.

"What did Ryan say to you?" I ask.

Sam keeps his eyes on the road, but I notice his bloody knuckles clenching the steering wheel. "Nothing," he mumbles.

"I call bullshit." I can tell the subject pisses him off, so I dig in, singing "bullshit" a second time.

"Drop it, Grey," he snaps. "I'm serious."

"Oookay, captain." I turn back to the road. "Would you rather talk about what the hell happened in there?"

"I don't want to talk about anything with you right now," Sam growls, flexing his fingers against the steering wheel.

"Well what was so important you needed me in the car with you then?" I mutter under my breath. I know Sam can hear me but he doesn't bother responding. After a few more moments of silence, I click on the truck's sound system, ejecting my favorite live Dylan CD and slipping in my angriest punk one. I turn the volume all the way up.

It's rained since I entered the party, and the roads are slick and shiny in the moonlight. Salisbury's a small enough town not to merit streetlights, and the roads are windy and dark this late. Sam doesn't seem concerned by this, driving the truck faster than necessary toward school. I don't say anything about it until he shoots by Ryder's driveway.

"Hey," I say, jutting my thumb toward the entrance we just missed. "Forget where we're headed?"

Sam ignores me, speeding up as we come to—and pass—the edge of town. I start to feel a little nervous. "Seriously, what are you doing?" I ask as we take a right onto an even darker, more wooded street than the one we've just left.

Sam continues to ignore me, taking another right onto a dirt road. I have no idea where we are, but I haven't seen a house in at least five minutes.

Sam stops the truck in the middle of the road, shutting off the headlights. It's pitch black in the woods; I can hardly make out the shape of his face in the dark. When he punches the radio off and the truck falls silent, my breath catches in my throat.

"What are you doing?" I ask again, my voice coming out high and nervous.

I see a flash of white as Sam rolls his eyes in the dark. "Get out of the car, Grey."

"Are you going to kill me?"

He laughs then. "No, I'm not going to kill you." He opens his door and slides to the ground, muttering something I can't quite hear, but that sounds a little like, "Though that would save me a lot of trouble."

I sit in the passenger's seat for a couple seconds before unbuckling my seatbelt and slipping out of the car. Jill's wedges sink into the plush ground of the woods we're surrounded by and I stumble slightly, catching my balance on the door.

I go to move around the hood of the truck, but Sam stops me.

"Stay on your side," he commands.

It's my turn to laugh. "What's going on?" I mostly trust that he's not going to kill me, but I'm at a total loss for why I'm standing out in the middle of nowhere with him like this.

"Bed," Sam says. It takes a second for me to realize he's talking about the bed of the truck, but I see him heading that way on the other side of the car and I copy him, stretching high on my tiptoes to lean over the railing. My own fault for lifting it with my dad last year.