“So...” I cocked my head to the side as his words finally made it into my waterlogged brain. “Vic texted to make sure you weren’t here because we had to evacuate. So you decided to drive here, why? To make sure we did evacuate?”
Micah looked back with a sheepish grin. “It sounds kinda dumb when you put it that way. We wanted to check up on you and make sure you were okay.”
“We knew you were staying in one of those bungalows,” Axel added. “Muriel mentioned it at dinner. We couldn’t take the chance and worry that you’d been hurt.”
Okay, so that was pretty sweet. Maybe a little misguided to get out in the middle of a dangerous storm to check on me, but still sweet.
“So, what do you say?” Micah quirked a brow. “Let us give you a lift to your mom’s house? It’ll save you the trouble of waking your uncle and asking him to drive all the way up here.”
He had a point. A really good point. And they’d caught me at a particularly weak moment since Axel had just finished saying all those nice things.
“Well, if you really want to...” I sighed and sat back against the seat. “I guess I’ll owe you a favor.”
“That’s the best answer I could have hoped for.” I couldn’t see Axel’s grin since he had his eyes focused on the road ahead, but I heard the smile in his voice. “Buckle up, folks. We’re heading into the woods.”
Chapter Seven
Micah Walsh
Being so close to her was almost more than I could handle.
Even when she was sitting in the back seat, I still sensed her eyes on me and smelled her fresh, soapy scent.
How did she even smell so clean after walking in the rain?
Because she was Jasmine Bailey, and she was fucking amazing. That was how.
She defied science and logic and any attempt at reasoning.
I wanted to pick up where we’d left off at the diner. I wanted to explain how I’d never stopped liking her and tell her again how sorry I was for everything I did to make her childhood miserable.
But I didn’t say any of those things. I kept the conversation light and easy and non-committal as we slowly drove through the rain toward the back roads that led to her mother’s house.
“The turn is up here,” Jasmine pointed as she leaned up between my seat and Axel’s. “It’s kind of hard to see through the dense foliage, though. And the rain doesn’t help.”
Axel slowed the truck down to a crawl and turned where she’d pointed onto a bumpy dirt road that would have jostled all of us around the cab of the truck if we hadn’t been wearing seatbelts.
“God,” she frowned. “This road is probably going to be washed out soon. Y’all need to be careful on your way back after you drop me off.” She paused then, and with just a hint of a smile, she said, “Unless you want to stay over with my mom and uncle.”
I looked over at Axel and saw the corners of his mouth twitch. I knew exactly what he was thinking, but I was the one who said it out loud. “So you’re saying we can spend the night?”
Jasmine snorted and rolled her eyes. “Seriously, y’all. It gets extremely sketchy out here on these roads when it starts raining like this and—”
Whatever else she’d been about to say was cut off when Axel slammed on the brakes.
“Fuck!” he cursed as the truck spun in a half-circle before coming to a stop in front of a tree that had fallen across the road. “Sorry about that. Is everyone okay?”
We both looked back at Jasmine. “See what I mean?” she said, frowning. “We’ll be lucky if this is the only tree that’s down on our way. If y’all want to turn around now, I won’t blame you. There’s a gas station a few miles away where you can drop me off while I wait for my uncle to pick me up.”
“We’re not leaving you at some gas station in the middle of nowhere,” Axel said, taking the words right out of my mouth. “That’s just not going to happen. We’re all okay. No harm done. The rain is even starting to slow down a little. As long as there’s another road we can take, we’ll still be at your mom’s place before you know it.”
“Okay, I just...” she paused, took a deep breath, and gave a weary smile. “Thank you. I appreciate this more than I can say.”
“Not a problem at all,” Axel said as he turned the truck around and started to backtrack toward the main road. “We’ll be back on our way in just a few minutes.”
There was a tension in the air that hadn’t been there before as we drove back down the shitty road. Perhaps it was the realization that we had barely missed that tree or the understanding that we were still on a dangerous road in the middle of a storm.