“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.
But she can’t really go there without signaling that she and I haven’t so much drifted apart in recent years like everyone assumes, so much as collided and then very deliberately steered off course.
Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if her parents were actually matchmaking with this scheme of theirs. Not in the romantic sense—but they’ve both mentioned on occasion that it’s a shame that the two of us aren’t as close as we used to be.
Both Lucy and I have happily let them believe it’s due to circumstance—me taking care of Pops, her off taking over the hospitality world or some shit.
The way she gives me one last glare before flicking her finger to knock her sunglasses back over her eyes tells me she intends to keep her parents in the dark, even though she’d like nothing more than to go toe-to-toe with me right now.
But the way she snarls “Asshole” under her breath as we pass going around the back of the car lets me know we’ll go toe-to-toe later.
As Lucy gives her parents and sister one last round of hugs, I man-hug Craig, a little surprised to feel a little sting of regret as he thumps my back once, and then again, as though not quite ready to let go.
I’ve been so hell-bent on getting out of this town, getting a fresh start where I’m not the poor boy who lost his mother, later to be defined as the surly boy with the attitude.
But I realize now that as much shit as I’m leaving behind, there’s good stuff too, and all of it’s right here in this driveway.
“See you, man,” Craig says.
His voice seems just a little hoarser than usual, and I nod, suddenly extra-glad we’re both wearing sunglasses.