“Everybody hang on,” Micha instructs, before he jerks on the e-brake.

The car spins out of control, like a carnival ride. With my eyes closed it feels like I’m flying. I want to stick my hands out and bask in the freeness. Moments later, the car smacks into the bank and the abrupt impact sends me flying for real. I land on top of Micha, banging my head on his as the car jerks to a stop.

“Oh, motherfucker,” Ethan moans. “Fuck. Lila, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she assures him with terror in her voice. “But why didn’t anyone warn me?”

I open my eyes and look into Micha’s aqua blue eyes. “Hi.”

“Are you okay?” He delicately touches my head with his fingertips. “We hit heads pretty hard.”

I press the heel of my hand to my head. “I think you did that on purpose, so I would end up in your lap.”

“Maybe just a little.” He leans down and kisses me passionately, sucking on my bottom lip before pulling away, leaving my body suffocated in warmth. “Actually I was aiming for a nice slide in, but I choked at the last second and didn’t pull the brake quick enough.”

I start to sit up, but he holds me down by placing a hand on my chest. “I think you should just stay there for a while. It’s a good place for you.”

My head is resting in his lap and I can feel the bulge through his pants. “Really? Even in this situation.”

His eyes sparkle with delight. “Again, your face is, like, inches away from it.”

“You two better shut the hell up with that,” Ethan warns sharply from the backseat. “It’s seriously getting annoying and I don’t have the stomach for it.”

Micha kisses me again, making an overexaggerated moan to irritate Ethan more. The car door slams as Ethan removes himself from the car and Micha helps me sit up.

“I’ll be back in a second,” he says. “I’m going to get the tow strap out of the trunk.”

As soon as he’s out of the car, Lila dives over the console and into the passenger seat. “So let me get this straight. He got his car stuck only so they could tow it out?”

I waver, cranking up the heat to full blast. “He got his car stuck to make a statement to his father about fixing his car.”

“But his father’s not here.”

“Yeah, it’s more for himself.”

She doesn’t get it and I don’t try to explain it to her. If this makes Micha feel better, then I’m glad. It’s what he deserves.

About an hour later, the car is unstuck. Micha got the tires wedged in really deep and we finally had to bring out the snow shovels Ethan had in back of his truck.

It’s not the only time we’ve been stuck out here and we learned our lesson the first time we got stranded to always be prepared with a snow shovel, tow strap, and chains. Otherwise, it’s a long walk home in below-freezing weather.

After the car is back in the shallow end of the snow, Micha takes the tow strap off and winds it around his hand as he proudly takes in the scratches and dents on the front fender.

“I’m going to ride home with Ethan,” Lila tells me, reaching for the handle of the door.

“Wait, I have to ask you something.” I hesitate and rotate in the seat to face her. “Are you sleeping with Ethan?”

Her blue eyes round as she ties the scarf around her neck. “No, we’re just friends. God, Ella, I don’t sleep with everyone.”

“It’s not that,” I tell her. “It’s just that you two seem close… and I mean, what do you guys do when you’re alone?”

She pushes the door open and steps out, her feet sinking into the snow. “We talk.”

I lean over, wondering what the two of them could possibly have in common. “About what?”

“Life.” She shuts the door, tramples to the back of the car where Ethan’s truck is running, and climbs inside.

One day, I’ll get her to confess to me what is they do. I turn up the music and sing along as I wait for Micha to get in. When he opens the door, a gust of wind blows in and chills the cab.

He pokes his head in, his cheeks pink from the cold and snowflakes speckling his hair. “What? Are you driving?”

I run my hand along the top of the steering wheel. “I was thinking about it. Why? Are you not going to let me?”

“I will totally let you.” He laughs. “But there’s something I need to do first.”

With my shoulders slumped, I swing my leg over the console and sit down in the passenger seat. “What do you need to do?”

He shuts the door, pausing as he nibbles at his lip ring and stares pensively out the windshield at the sky, which is getting darker. “I’m still deciding.”

“We really should be getting back,” I say, checking my messages. “Dean texted me, like, five minutes ago and said dinner is in an hour. I guess my dad is there now and your mom and her boyfriend are going to be over soon.”

“You seem sad that your dad’s there,” he states, looking at me intently.

I stare up at the cloudy sky and the snowflakes falling from the sky. “I’m not sad, just nervous.”

“But I thought the letter made it better,” he says. “That he let you know it wasn’t your fault.”

My breath puffs out unevenly. “Micha, I’ll always carry that night with me, whether my dad says it’s my fault or not.”

“Ella, it wasn’t your fault.” Panic flares in his eyes; he’s worried I’m reverting. “You have to start believing that.”

“Micha, I’m okay.” I place a hand on his as a comforting gesture. “It’s when I don’t say these things aloud that there’s a problem.”

His Adam’s apple bobs up and down as he swallows hard. “Okay.”

We sit in silence, watching the snowflakes land on the hood and drift through the beam of the headlights.

When he looks at me again, the lust in his eyes forces me to suck in a sharp breath. “Alright, no more drowning in our sorrows. It’s confession time again.”

“Haven’t we done a lot of that over the last day?” I thread my fingers through his. “I think I might be all confessed out.”

“I have this dream,” he says, ignoring my request. “Well, it’s more like a fantasy… But anyway, you and I have sex in my car. We are in the driver’s seat, with you on top of me.”

“That sounds an awful lot like the dream I had.”

“That’s because great minds think alike. But having sex on the hood in this weather doesn’t seem like it would work, so I’m going with inside.”

I glance over my shoulder at the road. “You want to have sex in the car? Right now? What if someone comes up here?”

“Hardly anyone comes up here in this kind of weather. You know that.” He stares at me, biting on the damn lip ring and my body burns hot with longing. Without even thinking, I maneuver over the console and straddle his lap.

His lips quirk. “I really thought it would take more persuading than that.”

He considers something, and then moves me over to get out of the car. Popping the trunk, he grabs something before hurrying back in, shivering from the cold air. There’s snow on his shoulders and a blanket in his hand. “Just in case someone does show up then we can at least be covered.”

“You keep a blanket in you trunk?” I say. “Man, you are prepared. How many times have you had sex in your car?”

He pulls me back onto his lap and wraps the blanket around us. “This is a first for me, pretty girl.”

“You’ve never done anyone in the car before?” I question with cynicism.

His face is humorless as he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I know you saw me with a lot of girls, but I think you totally mistake how much effort I put into it. Doing it in a car is going to be fucking complicated. Besides, I’ve been saving this place for you.”

Rolling my eyes, I fasten my arms around the back of his neck. “And what would have happened if we’d never gotten together? Then you would have never lived out your fantasy. And what if I wasn’t into it?”

He squeezes my ass. “Oh, I knew you’d be into it. As much as you get embarrassed about stuff, cars have always turned you on. I remember the first time I took you for a ride in The Beast. It was a piece of shit back then, but it could still kick it. You were sitting in the passenger seat with your hand out the window and you had this look on your face—you were getting so turned on. It turned me on so badly, I had to take care of myself when I got home.”

“I wasn’t getting turned on,” I lie. “I was enjoying the moment.”

An artful smirk curves at his lips. “If I would have pulled over and asked you to do me, you totally would have.”

I shake my head in protest. “No, I wouldn’t have. You would have freaked me out if you’d asked me.”

The intensity in his face switches to solemnity. “I actually know that. You know, when it came to doing crazy things like jumping off roofs and fighting, you were good to go. But challenge you to face your feelings and you’d run away like you were on fire.”

“That’s because I didn’t understand them,” I utter quietly, staring off into the darkness outside. “Anna… my therapist, thinks it’s because no one ever hugged me or whatever. I don’t know… She says weird stuff like that all the time to me, like she thinks it’s my childhood that made me this way.”

Silence incases us and finally I dare a glance at him, fearing I’ve probably freaked him out with my confession. “I’m sorry. I should probably keep that stuff to myself.”

“I want you to talk to me about stuff, Ella,” he says. “I’m just surprised you did. You’ve never said much about what goes on in therapy.”

“That’s because it’s personal.” My chest rises and falls as I breathe soundly.