Chapter 26
twenty-six
PRESENT DAY
brANDON
“Did it break or something? Your motorcycle?” Kate asks as we stride from the museum toward my Chevy Camaro.
“Don’t worry, I still own it. But a five hour road trip doesn’t exactly warrant a bike.” I round the car, pulling the latch to my door before sliding in. “Why, do you miss it?”
“You wish.” She opens the passenger door, bending to shove her gym bag into the backseat. I glimpse a paperback that almost topples out of Kate’s purse. Whatever the book is, I think it’s got a man’s naked pecs on the cover.
“What book is that?”
Kate straightens lightning fast, smacking her head on the door jamb in the process. She shoves the book farther in her purse, rubs a palm over the back of her head, and pins me with her annoyance.
“Nothing,” she says.
My grin widens. The pinch of her narrowed eyes, her furrowed brow, and her terse pink lips are a recipe of adorableness. Plus, the fact that she hasn’t threatened to unalive me yet is significant progress.
I start the engine and signal our way out of the museum parking lot. Kate stares fixedly out the windshield, more than reluctant to break the silence.
I bite back another laugh.
Kate hates silence almost more than being alone. I make a bet with myself that she cracks within ten minutes.
She only makes it to eight.
“Are we—” she starts, but I raise a hand to cut her off.
“I’m gonna stop you there, Katie Cat. If you start this early with the whole ‘Are we there yet,’ I might have to ditch you on the side of the road.”
Her lips twitch in my peripheral vision, and a familiar heat pools proudly in my stomach at cracking her mask. But irritation quickly rides the coattails of my pride. Because Kate has made it clear that she doesn’t want me.
She’d rather date a walking coma like Tanner over me.
So what am I even doing?
I grip the wheel, channeling my focus on the southern-bound interstate.
Tom’s cabin is five hours away, and I cringe at how long this travel day is going to be. But we’ve gotta get him to sign off for Amantha to use his mural in the exhibition.
Kate continues, still trying not to smile. “As I was saying, are we gonna stop for lunch?”
I laugh. “Kate, it’s barely eight a.m.”
“I need something to look forward to if I’m gonna be trapped with you.
” Her smirk is almost playful—an expression I rarely get to see these days.
She neatly folds her legs beneath her and rests against the headrest. Kate has on those dangerous black leggings again with striped crew socks pulled up over the cuffs.
Sexy, somewhat sporty, and entirely too tempting.
The conversation fades. Snow borders the highway, but the roads are clear. Hopefully it will stay this way, because navigating Chicago traffic on slick roads sucks.
“Are we really gonna just sit here?” Kate says.
“What, did you wanna chit-chat?” I waggle my eyebrows. “Reminisce?”
I get a flat-handed palm for that one, but a tiny laugh slips out of her.
“No,” she says, “but I’m gonna go crazy just sitting here. Don’t you have music or something?”
Before I can stop her, Kate pushes a button on the control panel of my car. “Past the Lights” by Accidentally On Purpose floods the speakers. It’s on my Tuck & Brando 4-Eva playlist and is the same song I performed for the elderly women on our first date.
Kate’s hand freezes. A half second later, she snaps out of it, shutting off the song like the knob burned her. Flame crawls across her cheeks as she again pins her beautiful eyes on the road.
The silence is unnerving. A million words hang between us, yet there’s nothing to say.
I grimly reach out, turning back on the music and flipping to another song on the playlist. Tuck’s favorite hiking song comes on, and it’s pretty mellow. Something about sunrises and treetops. The music pulses in time with Kate’s chest.
“You good?” I ask quietly.
“I’m fine,” she says, snatching her purse to her lap and rifling through it. She yanks out a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. But thanks to her sloppy movement, the mysterious paperback book falls onto the center console.
My eyes widen at the cover as I pick it up. “The Blacksmith and The Orchardess?”
The heat in Kate’s face increases tenfold. She grabs for it and misses.
“Wow, Katie.” The cover is obviously dated, but the woman’s cleavage and man’s naked abdomen make it clear what kind of book this is. The man, whom I assume is the blacksmith, holds a glowing forging iron as his long hair floats in some invisible breeze.
A growl rumbles out of Kate’s throat before the book disappears from my hand.
“It’s not mine, it’s Liza’s,” she mutters as she shoves it back into her bag.
“And you carry it around for her, why exactly?”
“In…case she needs it.”
A laugh puffs across my lips. “Does she need emergency romance novels often? Like an inhaler, but with muscles?”
Kate scowls.
I flip my blinker and switch lanes on the highway. “How is she romance-deprived anyway? Isn’t she engaged?”
Strike one.
Kate’s face falls.
Regret is bitter on my tongue, and I want nothing more than to coax that scowl back onto her face.
“Yeah.” Kate’s voice sounds small, but all I can see is the back of her head as she stares out the passenger window.
“Good…” I clear my throat. “Good for her.”
Her small shoulders lift. “I guess.”
“What, you don’t like the guy? I mean, I know I never met Liza, but it doesn’t seem like she’d fall for the douche—y type.”
Kate snorts, and I earn a view of her side profile as she settles back into her seat. “No, Cameron is a great guy. It just felt…” She lifts a handful of her straight hair and scrutinizes the ends. “Sudden.”
“Do your parents like him?”
Strike two.
Kate’s face falls further. “Love him.”
I try to defuse the situation. “Good…for Liza. And for you too, I guess.” Jealousy stiffens my words. “With Tanner and everything. I bet they like him too.”
Strike three, apparently.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Kate mutters. “Take that exit.”
“Okay.”
Less than two minutes later, Kate disappears into the gas station. Frustration prickles my skin as I shove the gas pump handle into my car, tapping my foot as I wait.
Why did I bring up Tanner? Why fish for information? What did I hope would happen? That she’d suddenly realize by mile marker fifty-three that I’m the one for her?
Pathetic.
I grind my teeth, pay for my gas, and return to the driver’s seat. Watching through the windshield, I see Kate exit and stalk toward my car holding what looks like a salad container and a small plastic bag.
“What’s that?” I ask once she plops into her seat.
She yanks the seatbelt across her green sweatshirt and buckles it. “We’re not stopping for lunch. Let’s just get this trip over with.”
“Fine by me.” A few minutes later, I leave the gas station with my own bag of food. Kate’s eyes are haughty as she glimpses what I bought.
“Junk food?”
“Yup,” I say. “Because—” I snatch the book from the purse by Kate’s feet. “I can eat whatever I want and still look like this guy.”
Kate’s scowl splotches pink.
“Uncanny, isn’t it?” I smirk, patting my hard-earned abs beneath my knit black sweater.
She yanks the book out of my hands and stuffs it away.
Winding our way toward Shawnee National Forest, a tiny part of my brain wonders if the complicated girl beside me is still worth all this trouble.
But my heart is another story, and it isn’t concerned one bit about Kate’s worth.
It’s about mine.
KATE
Shawnee National Forest looks like a snow globe beneath a heavy gray sky. The skeletal trees are dusted with snow, and the few pines dotting the road are sprinkled with more. I check the map on Brandon’s phone, which hangs suspended on a mount on the dash.
Forty minutes left.
What was supposed to be a five hour trip has turned into six—thanks to Brandon missing an exit—and I really have to pee again.
The gas station tofu salad I inhaled was barely edible, but it was one of the only nutritional choices at that forsaken establishment.
An echo of hunger continues to twist the edges of my stomach, but I would rather run barefoot through the snow than ask Brandon for a bite of his chemical-soaked junk food.
I examine Brandon on the periphery of my vision. His jaw is tense, his eyes laser focused on the road. Earbuds poke out of his ears. I assume he’s listening to music, or perhaps an audiobook. There’s no indication across his phone screen of what media is playing.
Closing my eyes, I squirm against my backrest. My bladder pulses like it has a heartbeat, and my butt has gone numb. I wasn’t kidding when I said I didn’t want another stop, but I’m wholly regretting that decision. But pride keeps my mouth shut and my pelvic floor straining.
I crack an eye and peer at Brandon again. He’s about thirty-eight ounces deep into a soda, so unless his bladder is made of the same reinforced steel as the rest of his muscles, he probably needs to pee too.
I smirk, but it vanishes as my bladder wrenches again.
I long for the gas station we stopped at after Brandon brought up Tanner. Yeah, I was already sad from the mention of Liza and Cam, but him speaking about Tanner pushed me over the edge.
Because thanks to Brandon’s little speech before the Winthrop dinner, I’m all alone.
Again.
Echoes of congratulations glitter in my mind like the crystal at Liza’s engagement party last week. I had a first row seat to her epic love story and my parents’ glowing admiration of them both. And like the coward I am, I chalked up Tanner’s absence to him working late.
Running from my problems is making me exhausted. Not to mention, returning home to an empty condo at night with Hopefully Yours still out there doesn’t exactly warrant a good night’s rest.
The novel I’ve been reading for research winks up from the purse by my feet. I aim a tiny kick at The Blacksmith and The Orchardess for filling my brain with optimistic ideals of love, and my empty salad container beside it squeaks in alarm.