CHAPTER 8 #2
Beck bumped into her driveway, not expertly dodging the pothole like Jamie always did. “You should probably fix that,” Beck said, not unkindly.
“Thanks for the tip,” Daisy replied, and finally, a bit of her ire crept back into her voice. It was like she’d forgotten entirely that she was supposed to dislike him until that moment. She popped her door open, climbed out, and turned toward me. “Are you… coming in?”
Even though my stomach dropped at the thought of riding home with Beck, Mom had strict rules.
Homework after school before anything else.
If I stayed and she found out about it, she’d pitch a fit.
I couldn’t even stand imagining the twist of disappointment on her face.
“I’ll have him take me home,” I told her as I passed up her backpack, offering a smile. “See you tomorrow.”
Daisy’s eyes flicked to Beck.
“Don’t worry.” He rested his hand on the gearshift, revving the engine once so that the sound offset his next words. “I don’t have my lighter on me at the moment. She’s safe from the arsonist.”
I really was going to kick the back of his seat.
“Pyro,” Daisy corrected him. “You said pyromaniac was preferred.”
“I did, didn’t I?” He gave her a smile. It almost looked normal. “You might not like me, Daisy Dear, but I think I like you.”
She rolled her eyes, but I could see the thought on her face.
If Nellie is willing to be alone with him, it must be okay.
With a reluctant nod, she started up her driveway, climbed the concrete stairs that led to her front door, and slid through it.
Beck waited until the door shut behind her to put the car into gear.
He did the guy thing, putting one hand on the passenger’s seat headrest and looking over his shoulder to reverse.
“Wait. Let me up front.” I went to unbuckle my seatbelt. “It’s stuck.”
“Oh, yeah. That belt is broken. Forgot to tell ya.” Beck’s eyes dropped to where I uselessly pressed on the buckle. He backed out onto the road. “Guess you’re just stuck back there.”
“It’s broken?”
This time, Beck’s reply was the sound of the car revving, foot pressing the gas pedal to the floorboards, launching us both back into our seats.
Thankfully, my house was within city limits, which meant Speed Demon over here didn’t have an excuse to go above thirty-five miles per hour.
Even though we hadn’t been as close as I’d wanted all those years ago, Beck had been to our house once when Ms. Jennings brought him along. He’d never been to the new house, though. I had to tell him which turns to take and what the number was for the community gate.
Thankfully, Mom wouldn’t be home from work yet, so I wouldn’t have to answer any alarmed questions as to why I was with Beck.
Alone with Beck. Immediately after she said she didn’t want me alone with him.
Dad would be home, but he wouldn’t come out of his room to know the difference.
I doubted he’d even look out the window.
Instead of pulling into the driveway when we got to it, Beck sidled up against the curb, illegally putting the car into park and turning the engine off. There was a car parked on the other curb—on the correct side—so Beck had effectively blocked the street off. Figured.
“Here we are,” he said in a light voice. He drew his sunglasses off, squinting against the sunlight. “Bigger house than I remember.”
“We moved.”
“Daddy got a big bonus, huh?”
More like Daddy quit. “Mom, actually.”
Beck studied the exterior of the house for a beat longer before turning to look over his shoulder. A startled laugh burst from him. “You should see your hair right now. Looks like a bird’s nest.”
I froze in the backseat, but not because anger washed over me—it was because his laugh had been so genuine.
Familiar. There was no sardonic undertone or mocking malice in his eyes.
Heat crawled up the back of my neck, because it took me too off guard.
That realization had my voice snapping. “Just unbuckle my seatbelt, would you?”
Beck popped his door open, flipped his seat over, and climbed into the backseat. “Bossy, bossy,” he grumbled, but that smile still touched his mouth. “I guess that’s not new.”
“I wasn’t bossy when I was little.”
“You totally were. When the little kids played in one of the empty meeting rooms, you always told everyone what roles they were.” He placed one knee on the bench seat beside me. “Lydia couldn’t be the princess, because you were already the princess.”
He was talking about when we were really little, then, when we still played save the princess, and before Mom started making me be at her side in the ballroom. “You were never around us when we played those games.”
“Wasn’t I?”
“I never saw you.” He was always out in the garden. Because even then, when we’d been really little, no one had wanted to play with him.
Beck’s lips twitched, but this time, it wasn’t a smile.
With him leaning in, I could see the indents on his nose where his sunglasses had been resting. Something about it was so… normal. The tough, cool guy facade that he gave off was shattered by the little ovals pressed into his nose.
And then his hand brushed my hip. He slid two fingers underneath the belt at my waist, lifting it from my body to take it into his hands.
His knuckles brushed against the front of my stomach, where my skirt dug into the spot at my belly button, and he moved slowly.
Like he was purposefully taking his time.
S-L-O-W-L-Y. The letters crawled by as heat crawled up my neck.
A little line formed between Beck’s eyebrows, and I realized he wasn’t doing it on purpose. “Hang on.” The words were quiet, almost like they were more of a thought as he pushed harder against the buckle.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
A soft chuckle escaped his lips.
“Why did you show up today?”
“To your school?” he asked, sounding surprised. “I told you.”
Now I frowned. He had?
Beck paused in trying to get the buckle to click, lifting his gaze to me. The green of his irises almost glowed, as if the sunlight stirred inside the color. His lashes were so dark, matching his roots but not his hair. “I said I’ll remind you what it’s like to really want someone.”
“And you showing up to my school is doing that?”
“Not necessarily.” A corner of his lips pulled up as his gaze darted to the side. “Kinda. But not exactly.”
“Then why?”
The old crush that’d held me hostage through the years gripped me now, as suddenly as if Beck’s hand had shot out and grabbed my throat.
He might as well have, for how impossible it was to suck in a breath.
The air was tinged with the woody scent of him, a smell that was different, yet the same. I refused to breathe it in.
He turned back to the seatbelt. “I was bored.”
“Beckham.” His name was quiet on my tongue, and thankfully, the hushed quality made me sound resigned—not shaken. “It’s not going to work. Whatever you’re trying to do… it’s not going to work.” So please stop trying.
With his knee still pressed into the seat, Beck leaned impossibly closer, lowering until his nose was level with mine.
Six inches stretched between us. Maybe less.
“Eleanor.” His voice was patient, almost warm, as if he were speaking to a child.
His green eyes went from my left eye to my right eye.
“Are you sure about that?” And then his gaze dropped to my mouth.
I was instantly aware of myself—of how my lips were parted and slightly chapped, and my hair was a tangled mess, and my uniform collar was sweaty from sitting in the sun.
When you want someone, you’ll look at their mouth. You’ll imagine kissing them. You won’t be able to help it.
I knew he was trying to get a rise out of me, to plant thoughts in my head and gloat when they bloomed. Knowing that didn’t change anything. My eyes, on their own accord, dipped.
Beckham Jennings’s mouth was perfect. I remember the first time I’d thought it.
We’d been playing chess out in one of Alderton-Du Ponte’s gardens, with the moonlight illuminating the stone board, brightening his expression.
He’d been an okay chess player with a terrible poker face, and I’d watched him react every time I moved a piece.
His eyes would shift, and his lips would quirk to the side.
His top lip was fuller than his lower lip, and when he smiled—really smiled—it stretched thin. They were plush and rosy, and just as I’d thought about it every time I saw him, I wondered, now, what it’d be like.
What it’d be like to kiss them.
And even now, I found myself trying to remember. I’d touched those lips before.
I’d kissed those lips before.
When you want someone, you’ll look at their mouth. You’ll imagine kissing them. You won’t be able to help it.
“Where’s your head at, Eleanor Brighton?” Beck crooned, and I jerked my eyes up to find his eyes crinkled with the victory. A match he’d won. I’d barely even put up a fight. “You’re gonna make me blush.”
The seatbelt snapped open beneath his fingertips.
The sound startled me, like it broke the tension.
Beck eased the straps off my lap before climbing back out of the convertible, holding the driver’s seat down for me to crawl out.
“Come on,” he said neutrally, as if nothing had just happened, and as if my pulse wasn’t in cardiac territory.
“I don’t have all day. I’m illegally parked, you know. ”
His nonchalance suddenly enraged me, like a switch flipping.
I could literally feel the anger within me go from a five to a one hundred, from a simmer to a boil.
“I can’t stand you,” I told him, temper flaring over.
I not-so-gracefully got out of the car, gripping my backpack strap like I was about to use it as a weapon.
Maybe I was. “I don’t want to see you, don’t you get that?
I don’t want you butting in on my life, or my friend’s lives, or anything.
You should’ve stayed out wherever you came from, because no one wants you here. ”
Beck stood at the edge of his car and listened to me rage with a small smile on his face, as if I were performing a play personalized for him. The look was all too familiar; the sort of patronizing expression you’d give a child throwing a temper tantrum.
Yeah, I really was about to start swinging my backpack at him. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”
Beck raised his shoulders in a lazy shrug. “Can’t.”
“Go meddle in Lydia’s life if you’re that bored.”
“You are far more fun.”
“Beckham.”
His eyes glowed like a cat’s. “I like the way you say my name,” he murmured, that small smile lifting further. “Say it again.”
This time, I couldn’t stop my hand from raising, reaching back to gather the momentum I needed to shove him into the car.
“Eleanor?”
I whirled around at the sound of my name behind me, because out of anyone who could’ve called out to me, I hadn’t expected it to be Carter Pembleton.
But it was.
Carter stood on the top step that led up to our front door, in his socks.
The door was open behind him, with another figure standing in the entryway.
At first glimpse, I’d thought it was Jamie—which, again, would’ve made sense—but instead, it was Dad.
He wore his dark pajama pants and a light gray shirt, one with a few questionable stains, and he was squinting as if he hadn’t seen the sunlight in ages. He probably hadn’t.
Carter’s socked feet. He’d been at my house long enough to take his shoes off. Long enough to talk to Dad without me there.
My brain locked up, and the first word that came to mind was H-O-R-R-I-F-Y-I-N-G.
“Well.” Beck swung his car door shut, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Isn’t this a party?”