“Just take me to Aunt Darla’s office,” I told him, leaning close enough to his ear so he could hear me over the wind.
He turned his head slightly to the right, closer to me. “I know where her apartment is. I thought that was where you lived.”
I wish. Life would be so much easier if I did. Aunt Darla was the one person I knew loved me unconditionally.
“No, but that’s OK. I live too far out. I’ll just go to her tonight.”
Tripp didn’t respond at first, and then he slowed down and pulled into a service station. When he came to a stop, I had a moment of panic, because I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with my legs. I didn’t want to make his bike fall over. That would be horrible.
Tripp placed both legs on the ground. The sight of him under the lights from the store sign, his wonderful body straddling his Harley, was just another image I would commit to my memory.
Then he turned to look back at me. “Is Darla going to be upset with you about this?”
I could lie to him, but something about those eyes of his made you want to tell him everything. So I shrugged, keeping my mouth shut.
A smirk appeared on his perfectly shaped lips, and my complete focus went to his mouth. The bottom lip was slightly more plump than the top, but it was so slight a difference that most people wouldn’t notice. I was just obsessed with him, and I noticed everything. In some of my daydreams, I had sucked on that bottom lip. It was very suckable.
“Bethy?” His voice broke into my fantasies, and I jerked my gaze back up to meet his. He wasn’t smirking anymore. He looked amused.
“Hm?” I replied like an idiot. He’d just caught me staring at his mouth.
“I asked you if you’d rather I take you home. I don’t mind the longer drive. You’ve had a rough night. I don’t want you having to face an angry Darla.”
She would be angry. I wasn’t sure what she was going to be more angry about: me going to Rush Finlay’s house party with Jonathon or me riding on the back of Tripp’s motorcycle. I had a feeling she was going to be equally mad about both.
“I live thirty minutes away,” I explained, dropping my gaze to the oil-stained pavement instead of looking into his eyes. I didn’t trust myself not to get lost in another daydream.
“With your parents?” he asked.
“My dad.”
He let out a low whistle. “Dad or Darla? Which one is gonna be more pissed?”
I let out a sigh. Dad wouldn’t be home tonight. He stayed out most Friday and Saturday nights, since he didn’t have to work the next day. “Darla. Dad won’t be home tonight.”
Tripp didn’t respond to that right away, so I studied the ground while I waited for him to make up his mind. Going back to my trailer was the best option for me, but I would feel so bad about Tripp having to spend the gas and time doing that. “You often stay home at night alone?” he asked. The concern in his voice surprised me. I glanced up to look at him, and sure enough, he was frowning.
“Just on weekends,” I replied, and his frown deepened.
“That isn’t safe.” He let out a sigh and shook his head. “I’m gonna take you to Darla. I feel better about that. You shouldn’t be staying home alone on weekends.”
I was almost seventeen! Why was he acting like I was ten? Did I look like a kid? “I turn seventeen in September. I’m not a child. I’ve been staying home alone on weekends most of my life.” I was a little annoyed with him now. I didn’t want Tripp to see me as a kid. I would be a junior this year at school.
A grin tugged at his lips, but he was holding it back. I could see him struggle with it. If he weren’t so dang beautiful, I’d climb off his bike and hitchhike home. I’d done that before, too.
“Never said you were a child, Bethy. That wasn’t what I was thinking when I said it wasn’t safe.”
All it took was that one sexy look and hearing his warm, deep voice to have me at his mercy again, enchanted. I’d go wherever he wanted me to.
“OK,” I replied.
He laughed this time, then turned around to start the motorcycle again. “Hold on tight,” he reminded me.
Once my arms were wrapped around him, we shot back onto the dark road that led to the club. Tonight I’d be facing Aunt Darla’s anger. But it was so worth it.
Tripp
Present day
I sat on my Harley and waited for Bethy to walk out of the clubhouse. Woods had been texting me Bethy’s work schedule every two weeks, and I made sure she made it home from work safely every night. It wasn’t stalking her, exactly. It was just the only way I could remain sane.
Watching over her was all I had. If I got too close, she flipped. The last time I’d tried to talk to her, she’d started screaming. I hadn’t been able to calm her down. I was watching her lose herself slowly. And it was tearing me up.
So I followed her to work every day, and I followed her home every night. Once she was safely in her apartment, I often sat parked across the road and watched her window until it went dark. She never looked at me, even though I wasn’t hiding the fact that I was following her. There was no use in hiding it from her.
The last words she’d actually spoken to me—not screamed at me, because there’d been a lot of that—had been eighteen months ago on the beach when we’d lost Jace. My cousin, my best friend, and the love of Bethy’s life. He’d drowned saving her life when she’d wandered into the ocean drunk and got caught in a riptide. Losing him had taken a part of my soul. He’d been the little brother I never had. He’d been the good Newark heir. He’d been everything I should have been but wasn’t.
And we had loved the same girl. Although he never knew it.
Watching her pull away from life more and more each day was so damn hard. Jace wouldn’t have wanted this. He would have hated it. He loved her more than he loved himself. Seeing her like this would have broken his heart.
Bethy swung her long dark hair over her shoulder as she stepped out of the clubhouse. The shorts she wore had once been tight and cupped her perfect round bottom. But just like she’d lost the will to live, she’d also lost weight. Too much.
The need to hold her and help her heal was so fucking strong. But she didn’t want me. I hadn’t realized how badly she hated me until I’d returned to Rosemary Beach a little more than two years ago. I’d run like hell eight years ago from a life threatening to suffocate me. My father had wanted something for me that I didn’t want, and I hadn’t been able to see my way out.