“I’m surprised you still have this thing. Isn’t buying a fancy sports car the first thing rock stars do when they sign a big record deal?”
He grumbled, muttering under his breath.
“Oh my god!” I laughed and clapped my hands. “You did, didn’t you? If it’s bright yellow, I demand to be let out of this truck. I’d rather walk down I-95 than be in the presence of a man who drives a yellow sports car.”
“It’s not yellow,” he said in a low voice, so low, I had to turn my music down so I could hear as he elaborated. “My dad found an eighty-five Ferrari Testarossa that needed to be completely rebuilt. I bought it, and we worked on it together. It’s red, by the way. Not sure if that means I’m compensating for my dick, but I have no doubt you’ll tell me.”
Well…I had no idea what a Ferrari Testarossa was, but the fact that he’d worked on it with his dad wormed its way into my heart. That was my problem with Santiago. When he wasn’t being a douche-noggin, he had a soft side I once found irresistible. I’d been eighteen and hadn’t known any better. At twenty-three, I’d been around the block a few times and had learned the very valuable lesson: once a douche-noggin, always a douche-noggin.
“I wouldn’t know what you’re compensatin’ for, but Iamrelieved your other car isn’t yellow.”
“Why hate on yellow so hard?”
“Have youeverseen anyone drivin’ a yellow car who didn’t look like they’d sooner run someone with a flat tire down than help them out?”
His brow furrowed. “Is that a look?”
“It is. I’m gonna look out for yellow cars on the road and show you.”
“All right.”
I turned my volume back up. While Santiago and I had discussed cars, my playlist had moved onto Bear’s Den. I let my eyes drift closed as I listened to the soft, slower music.
Miles down the road, and minutes after our conversation had died off, Santi asked, “How did you come up with this theory about yellow cars?”
Opening my eyes again, I turned to him. “Experience. I had a manager out in L.A. who drove one. I’m not sure he even had a house or apartment. I think he sunk all his money into his tacky car and spent his nights sleeping in it.” Thinking of him made me shudder.
“He hurt you?”
“No, he didn’t. I mean, he didn’t do much for my career, and he was a tool, but he kept his hands to himself. He had a vibe, which I didn’t see when we first met. But, as you know, I’d been eighteen. A baby.”
“But you moved across the country on your own. Notthatmuch of a baby.”
I looked out the window, my stomach twisting and turning. It had taken every ounce of my courage to change my plane tickets from Georgia, where I was supposed to go to college, to California. When Haven and I had talked about taking the west coast by storm, to me, all it had been was talk. It might’ve stayed that way had the Santi-incident not happened.
“No, I guess not. But I had Haven. Nothing’s scary when Haven’s there, sinceshe’sthe scary one.”
“Haven, your roommate? She went to L.A. with you?”
I started to answer him, but then it dawned on me what we were doing—or whatIwas doing. I didn’t want to tell Santiago about the past five years. Nor did I want to form some kind of friendship with him. My mama’s voice in the back of my head and my cotillion instructor, Miss Sarah Rose Kennedy-Dalton’s penchant for slapping my hands whenever my manners slipped even slightly had me answering him, but only in the vaguest way.
“Yes, we’ve lived together since L.A. In New York, it’s been Haven, Liam, and me.”
“Liam...that was the guy in bed with you?”
“That was the guy.”
He grumbled, but asked no further questions. The implication Liam and I had been in bed together like lovers hadn’t flown over my head, but I had no desire to correct his misconception at this moment.
Halfway through the trip, Santiago pulled into a rest stop. One of the fancy ones—if a rest stop could qualify as fancy—with electric car chargers outside and skylights inside. It was so light and airy, I almost didn’t mind paying nearly ten bucks for a grande non-fat iced mocha.
Santiago ordered a very serious Earl Grey tea, only adding a squirt of honey to his steaming cup. I started toward the exit, planning on drinking my mocha on the road, but he had other ideas. He leaned his long body against the stand-up counter by the floor-to-ceiling windows and set his cup down.
I raised a brow. “We’re...goin’ to stand here?”
“I’m not ready to get back in the truck.” He sipped his tea, glancing out the window.
“Okay.” I rested my elbows on the counter, facing the window as well.