Eleven
Holden
I’m not exactly sure why I agreed to be the one driving seventeen hours down to Florida for this trip over winter break. The only time I’ve ever taken a road trip of this magnitude was to move from California to Chicago, and it was a drive I hated every minute of.
My desperation to get laid—and under Phoenix’s skin—must be at an all-time high.
It’s the only explanation for why I’m suffering through the daggers being glared at me through the headrest. Or the hateful stare I’ll randomly catch in the rearview mirror whenever I change lanes or talk to Noah, who’s beside him in the back seat.
At this rate, I think Phoenix might be getting under my skin more than the other way around. It doesn’t help that every time our gazes collide, my attention snags on his lips, and I can’t help the way my blood heats when I remember the stunt he pulled in my room.
It only takes a second for me to realize he’s probably plotting yet another way to ensure my demise while our eyes are locked through the reflection. Then I snap right out of it.
Those moments alone have already made for a less-than-desirable trip, and we still have fourteen more hours to go. But I also know it could also be much, much worse.
Still, the tension is enough for me to crave the pit stops for gas and food every few hours, if only for a slight reprieve from the toxic cloud filling my Jeep.
I glance to where Theo pulled into the pump behind me and is refilling his Bronco. Meanwhile, Phoenix, Kason, and the others head inside to order lunch and hit the restrooms, leaving the two of us here alone.
“How’s your drive going?” I call over to Theo as I screw the cap back on my gas tank.
“Long,” he replies, leaning against the driver’s door. “Yours?”
“It’s a disaster, honestly.” Blowing out a breath, I shake my head and walk in his direction. “Thank God we’re stopping for the night, or I’d be inclined to run us off the road.”
“Already sick of driving?”
“If only,” I say with a laugh. “Just sick of Phoenix aiming evil eyes at the back of my head for hours on end. I swear he’s plotting murder back there. Simply looking for the right opportunity to act.”
Theo snorts, amusement evident in his tone when he asks, “I take it things between the two of you didn’t end well, then?”
The question catches me off guard, and my brows clash together. “End well?”
“At the Kappa Sig party?” When I don’t acknowledge what he says, he lets out a laugh and shakes his head. “Man, you really need to start keeping a log of the people you sleep with if they’re starting to run together this badly.”
My brain comes screeching to a halt, attempting to recalibrate and make sense of what he’s saying.
Only, it doesn’t. Because Phoenix and I have never slept together.
Apart from him making out with me, dry humping me to high heaven, and cuffing me to my bed for Theo to find, nothing has happened between us.
And even then, I haven’t told a soul about that night. Theo might have an idea of what happened, but even he doesn’t know who it was with.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
It’s Theo’s turn to look confused, dark brows slashing down over light green eyes. “The final’s week party in May. The same night as—”
“Oh, my God,” I whisper, piece after piece clicking into place in rapid-fire succession—all the answers I was missing to create a clear picture in my head.
The anniversary of my parents’ death. Blacking out, only to wake up naked and alone the next morning with no memories from the night before.
No idea who it was I’d spent the night with.
It was Phoenix?
“There’s the lightbulb,” Theo jokes, oblivious to the plethora of epiphanies slamming into me like a fifty-car pile-up.
Why Phoenix’s hatred for me seems to run so deep for no reason. Why his image of me was tainted from the moment we met. Why he wants me nowhere near Kason. Yet the most significant being…why my body felt familiarity in his touch when he left me chained to my bed.
It was because my body subconsciously remembered it.
Shit.
“Yeah,” I choke out, doing my best to recover from the onslaught of emotions rampaging through me. “Takes a second sometimes.”
He laughs again before going to say something, but the commotion behind me causes him to glance over my shoulder. Turning to look, I spot Harrison, Noah, and the rest heading back out with ten bags of food and piling back in the cars.
“Ugh, I’m starving,” Theo says as Phoenix approaches and hands him his order. “You’re the best.”
Phoenix gives him a weak smile. “No problem, man.”
He must feel me staring at him, because his attention shifts to me. And while so many questions have been answered, there’s now a new one pinging around in my brain.
Why hasn’t he said anything?
I don’t have a chance to even think of a reason, let alone ask him, because he takes me off guard by shoving a greasy bag of food in my chest.
“What—”
“Your food,” is all he says before turning back toward the Jeep.
I’m left staring after him, wordless and more confused than ever, when a chuckle comes from beside me.
“Yep,” Theo muses with a shake of his head. “Definitely didn’t end well.”
Apparently. I just wish I had a fucking clue why.
Dread fills my gut as I realize we have another four hours before we reach the Mercer’s place in Nashville; our halfway stop for the evening. Meaning four more hours of death glares while my mind attempts to figure out what happened back in May.
But rather than dwelling on it, I do my best to shove down the thousands of questions swirling inside my brain and fake a smile. “Guess we better get back on the road.”
“Probably,” Theo says with a heavy sigh. “But hey, if you need to escape the tension for a bit, you’re more than welcome to drive the Bronco.”
“You don’t want me to.”
He gives a shrug. “I swear, I don’t mind.”
My eyes shift from him to the mustard-yellow contraption he calls a vehicle. “I meant what I said. The only place I’d be caught driving this thing is off a damn cliff.”
He aims a smirk at me before yanking open the driver’s door. “From the sounds of it, you’re ready to anyway.”
Shit. After the bomb he just dropped on me? Me turning kamikaze on all their asses is less of a possibility and more of a guarantee.
“More than you know, man. More than you fucking know.”
Thankfully, the time spent in the car after lunch is much more mellow—though I’d like to merit it to Phoenix falling asleep about thirty minutes after lunch. It’s a little hard to give death glares when you’re in a food coma, I guess.
Yet the peace wasn’t all that peaceful, seeing as I couldn’t stop sneaking glimpses at his sleeping form in the rearview mirror, begging the recesses of my mind to remember something.
Anything .
But as another few hours pass and we close in on Nashville, I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe even having a bit of fun—with Noah, at least.
“Okay, this has been bothering me since we got in the car, so I have to ask,” he starts just after we cross the state line into Tennessee. “Why do you have a duck named Jerry on your dash?”
I can’t help the smile curling across my lips as I glance at the rubber duck he’s speaking of perched via a piece of tape on the top of my dashboard. There’s a little Hi, my name is sticker on its chest, and I filled out the blank space with a black Sharpie, dubbing him Jerry.
“It’s a Jeep-people thing,” Phoenix says before I can reply.
I didn’t realize he woke up, and my eyes shift to the rearview to find him already staring at me. “Why do you say it like that?”
“I didn’t say it like anything.”
“Except you did,” I insist before glancing at Kason—who is dead asleep in the passenger seat.
So much for being the mediator like he promised.
“You kinda did,” Noah confirms, and hell, at least someone’s on my side. “You said it like you just found out he has an STD.”
This time, Noah is the recipient of my irritated frown. “Why the fuck does everyone equate me with STDs?”
“I dunno,” Phoenix says, tone laced with equal parts sarcasm and venom. “Maybe it’s because you’ve spent the last couple years defining yourself as a man-whore who will screw everything that walks on two legs.”
I watch his face silently for a minute, waiting for even the slightest hint of anything. Any clue as to what happened between us. But all I pick up on is a big, fat nothing, so I let my focus shift back to the road.
“It’s a label I’ve been given.”
“It’s one you’ve earned.”
My attention stays locked on the road, knowing it’s either that or risk crashing into oncoming traffic. And I can’t get answers out of Phoenix if I’m gorked from a head-on collision.
“Okay, but back to the duck,” Noah says, simultaneously diffusing the tension and rerouting us back to the original conversation. “I have to know the story.”
“There’s not much of a story to tell,” I insist. “I wasn’t ducked or anything.”
“Ducked?”
“Duck, duck, Jeep,” Phoenix interjects, before adding, “Again, a Jeep-people thing.”
Noah laughs. “You’re acting like they’re a cult.”
“Because it is.”
“Am I even needed for this conversation?” I snap from the front, my ability to play things off officially gone. “Because it sure doesn’t seem like it.”
Phoenix meets my glare in the rearview once again, a little smirk on his lips.
It’s then I realize his entire goal was just to rile me up. Fray my edges. Lose my carefree persona he’s slowly starting to slice through, one jab at a time. And I fed right into it without a second thought, thanks to my mind being so occupied with Theo’s little slip-up.
Points to Nix on this one.
“I’ll smother his face with a pillow to shut him up,” Noah says, and true to his word, he slams his pillow right into Phoenix’s face. And while it’s not enough for me to completely compose myself again, I do get a small amount of enjoyment from it.
“Whatever, I’m done with this,” I hear Phoenix mutter, and I glance back just in time to see him shove his headphones in his ears—no doubt in an attempt to drown out our conversation.
“Didn’t want to tell you anyway,” I snark back, aware it might be brushed aside. Which it evidently is, so when he doesn’t respond, I fall into storytelling mode.
“I found the duck, actually. Move-in weekend of freshman year. It was the same weekend as the Duck Derby they do in the Chicago River, and my Gran and I were exploring the city before she flew back to California. We’d caught the end of the race by chance and watched the winner slide into the massive net to catch them all. But this one fell outta the net.”
“So you just kept it?”
I nod. “Yep.”
“Why?”
“I’d just bought my Jeep a few weeks before and knew of the so-called cult,” I say, aiming a barb at Phoenix—even if he can’t hear me. “So I gave him a name and taped him to the dash. He’s been there ever since.”
Noah lets out a low hum. “Never took you for the sentimental type.”
“Only with my Gran,” I say, thinking of the woman I owe everything to. Without her, God only knows where I’d be. Certainly a lot more fucked up than I am already.
Noah catches me off guard by asking for the first truly personal piece of me in the years we’ve known each other.
“Did she raise you?”
I hedge for a second as I switch my attention to the mirror. Relief floods me when I find Phoenix staring out the window, still not listening.
Good.
The duck story—whatever. I don’t care about him knowing the little, seemingly meaningless things about me. But if what Theo said is true, then his knowing something like this…is just different.
Too personal and intimate.
“She helped, yeah. And she became my guardian after my parents died.”
My gaze slices to Noah as I wait for the look of sympathy I’m used to getting whenever someone finds out about my parents’ passing. And sure enough, there it is, written all over his damn face.
He’s silent for a second before asking the second-most fundamental question. “How long ago?”
I glance at Phoenix—once again grateful to see him tuning us out—before answering. “It’ll be six years the first week of May.”
“Shit,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry, man.”
“Thanks, but it’s fine.” I swallow down the knot encroaching on my vocal cords, but the rest of my response still comes out a little gruff. “It was a while ago.”
“Still doesn’t mean it’s easy.”
I nod, knowing that truth all too well. Even if it feels like the time that’s passed should have lessened some of the pain. Or I’d have learned to cope better, at the very least. But if I’ve learned anything, there’s no timeline for something like this.
Silence fills the car again, the only sound being the cadence of the engine and the quiet lull of music coming from the radio. I’m grateful for it. For having a moment to think. Except thinking and talking about them steers my mind straight back to the night I can’t remember.
To Phoenix, and the memories of him that continue to evade me.
My eyes find the mirror again subconsciously, only to discover him already staring at me. Not in contempt or irritation like normal, though. There’s a flash of empathy in those dark depths, an emotion so out of place, I almost miss it entirely before he looks back out the window.
But it was there, making me realize one thing.
He was listening, after all.