I’d have listened. Maybe. Maybe.
He never did that—never said a damn word.
So I did touch his sister, despite my better judgment, and the whole thing blew up in my face like dynamite stuffed in a shit cake.
Fifty percent her fault, fifty percent mine.
One hundred percent devastating.
“You okay, man?”
“Yup.” I’m grateful for my shades so Craig can’t see the lie in my eyes.
“We appreciate you doing this,” he says, lowering his voice so Lucy can’t hear us. Not that there’s much risk of that. It’s hard to hear much of anything over Mrs. Hawkins’s wailing.
“It’s no problem.”
Another lie. It’s a huge problem. It’s bad enough that I have to spend two weeks with her. Worse that it’s in such close quarters. Worst of all, we have to stop and see fucking Oscar on what’s supposed to be a trip to my new life.
“Spock’d kill me for saying this, but I’m a little relieved her piece of shit car broke down before the trip. None of us thought that car had a chance in hell of making it out of Virginia, much less to California.”
“And you think Horny does?” I say, nodding with my chin at the brown—yes, brown—station wagon.
“Fifty-fifty shot,” Craig says, thumping the roof of the car. “Weird to think this will probably be the last time I see the car where I got my first score. Remember Amy Pearson?”
I do. Small tits, great ass, redhead. Red other areas too.
(And don’t look at me that way. She and Craig were never serious, and I didn’t hit that until a year after he hooked up with her.)
“Yeah, I remember,” I say.
I also remember that Lucy and I hooked up in the backseat of this car as well. It was the first time I went under her shirt, and I swear to God it felt like the first time I touched a breast instead of the hundredth. That’s how it was with Lucy. Every damned thing had felt like a first.
And then it had felt like the last.
Shit.
I look at my watch, and Craig notices. “Yeah. This has gone on long enough. Mom,” he calls gently to his mother who’s telling Lucy in a watery voice to text every hour. “They’ve gotta hit the road.”
“Of course you do,” Delia Hawkins says, swiping at the tears. “So you don’t drive after dark! You won’t drive after dark. Will you? Reece?”
“No ma’am,” I say, going over to hug the woman who practically raised me.
“And you’ll text every hour too, right? But not while driving. Every stop. I want to know every single thing about this trip, you kids are just going to have the best time.”
I hug her tighter and try to ignore the sulky silence of Lucy behind me. We haven’t so much as made eye contact since her family gathered around the car to say goodbye.
Not since I told her I didn’t want a damn thing from her. Because the lies just keep coming this morning, apparently.
Lucy’s dad hands me a Triple-A card as I go to hug him. “Not the most glamorous going-away gift,” he says a little gruffly as he thumps my back. “But I’ll feel better knowing you have it if you get stranded somewhere.”
“Does nobody in this family have faith in my mechanic abilities?” I ask with a wink.
“I do,” Brandi says, wrapping her skinny arms around my neck and giving me a smacking kiss on the cheek. “And for what it’s worth, my money’s on you and Lucy killing each other long before the car dies.”
I narrow my eyes at her, which she can’t see through my sunglasses. Or maybe she can see, because she gives me a wide grin that’s full of little-sister sass. That’s what Brandi’s always been. The little sister Lucy should have been. Except where my feelings for one sister have always been strictly brotherly, the other…
“Reece. You coming, or what?” Lucy says.
I turn around to snap at her that I’m not the one who’s been yapping for the past twenty minutes, but I get distracted when I see she’s by the driver’s-side door.
“I’m driving,” I state.
She shoves her sunglasses up onto her head, pushing her dark hair back, and glares. “This is my trip. My plan. I drive.”
“Lucy—” her mother murmurs.
We both ignore Delia. “Sure, you can drive” I say, giving Lucy an easy smile that has her eyes narrowing. “Keys are in my front left pocket.”
Her gaze drifts down to the front of my jeans, just for a second, but it’s enough. Shit. Major error in judgment on my part. All it takes is her looking at my cock to remember what it felt like when she touched it. With her hands, mouth…
I stifle a groan, not exactly wanting to let on to her parents that I was their darling daughter’s first blow job and that she was damn good at it.
“Lucy, you’re making the guy drive all over the damn country,” Craig says, coming to my rescue. “At least let him take first shift behind the wheel. Plus, you’re sort of crashing his deal. He thought he’d be taking Horny alone.”
I’ve never hated the nickname of this stupid car so much as I do right now, on the verge of a full-blown (pun intended) erection, in front of my pseudo-parents, all from a memory of a girl I don’t even like.
I can tell by the look on Lucy’s face that she wants to argue, not because she’s actually dying to drive, but because she hates me too much to let me drive.