80. Chapter 80
The answer to one seemingly obvious question kept Jase from crossing the line Lindsey drew that she seemed intent on crossing herself.
What was more important: three million dollars or sleeping with her again?
In New Mexico, after she kissed him outside her tent, it had physically hurt his balls to walk away, but he’d chosen the money. He mostly hadn’t regretted it since then.
In Arizona, there wasn’t any flirting or hints of sex after a night with the Desert Demons, and Jase had gone to bed without having to choose.
Then, Lake fucking Havasu. If he’d been alone when Lindsey dropped talking wasn’t what I had in mind on him, he would’ve pulled her into his room and bent her over the bed, money be damned. What was three million anyway, compared to Lindsey in black leather?
There’d been a moment, a single beat between them in the car when his name coming out of her mouth sounded like permission to put his hands anywhere other than her ankles, when he almost lit the check on fire himself. If she hadn’t just almost left again…
Three million bucks.
He’d sung the words in his head to the beat of different songs, his favorite being Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” to drown out the thoughts of taking her with his mouth in the way, way back of the Squire.
It had taken many hot, agonizing hours with Lindsey’s feet in his lap for the blood to fully recede from his erection.
Three. Million. Dollars.
The money wasn’t real yet. Her body, on the other hand…
Jase adjusted his pants. It would take more than an iron will and mantras set to classic rock to keep the blood out of his dick with nothing to look at today besides miles of desert and Lindsey’s legs in a pair of short shorts in the passenger seat.
The Mojave rolled out endlessly in front of them, harmless compared to biker clubs and British backpackers, except for the blistering heat and whatever new tricks Jase figured his father had planted in the sand.
Graham must’ve been thinking the same thing, leaning forward from the back seat every couple of miles to check the dash, probably watching the gas gauge.
There were no farms, or anything else, within walking distance.
Santa Barbara, then one more envelope. Behind the wheel, grease from breakfast coated Jase’s mouth.
If he had made different decisions last night, he’d be tasting Lindsey on his tongue.
Jase glanced to his right. Her face was buried in her phone, unaware of how often his attention strayed to her bare legs.
“You get service out here?” he asked.
“No,” she said without looking up. “I’m going through old junk.”
Graham’s bearded mug filled her phone screen. One picture after another.
Old junk for sure.
“Oh my gosh,” she whispered, an epiphany.
He looked away from a selfie of her kissing Graham on the cheek and his brother barely cracking a smile. Idiot.
“What’s up?” Jase asked.
“Nothing.”
“Okay,” Jase said, squinting. The yellow line down the center of the road went blurry. He drank what was left of Lindsey’s coffee after he drained his own, thinking he should’ve let Graham—who’d slept a full night in an actual bed and probably wasn’t coursing with unspent sexual energy—drive.
Movement on the dash caught his eye, but he couldn’t make sense of the gauges. He rubbed his eyes, squinted at the needle, and cursed.
“What’s wrong?” Graham leaned over the front seat as Jase flicked the heater on full blast. “Why are you doing that?”
“Turn up the heat,” Jase murmured. Their dad’s message in the letter took on a new meaning.
Along with hiding keys behind license plates, Jase remembered his dad running the heater to cool the engine down on their last family trip, after more than tempers ran hot.
What Jase forgot was to keep an eye on the temperature needle while they baked like a tin can in a microwave with the air conditioner maxed and barely keeping condensation off the water bottles.
“We’re overheating,” he explained.
Lindsey straightened and reached for her coffee. Shaking the drops at the bottom of the cup, she looked up at the white smoke pouring from under the hood.
“Son of a bitch,” Jase said. Nadine took a final, clunking breath and died on the shoulder.
What was his dad thinking? A person didn’t brave this kind of heat if they didn’t have to.
Jase stuck to northern routes after the first of June and didn’t venture south of Colorado until September.
Since leaving Ohio it had been getting progressively hotter the farther south and west they traveled, but this?
It would take less than three days to die in this desert, even without a Demon.
For a few beats no one spoke other than Elvis singing about a feeling so right it couldn’t be wrong to a car full of people who had done all the wrong things and were still paying for them. To Jase, who wanted to know what Lindsey had in mind last night if it wasn’t talking.
Jase pushed the eject button on the tape player.
It had never worked before, but he pressed it anyway.
Once, twice. Mashed it with his thumb. The King kept on taunting.
And Jase fucking lost it. He punched the chrome tape deck.
Lindsey flinched. Graham started to say something and must’ve changed his mind.
Jase kept punching until his knuckles split.
“You son of a bitch,” he seethed.
Elvis wasn’t going to win. Jase shoved his fingers into the tape slot and pried at the edges until veins bulged in his neck.
Lindsey handed him the screwdriver he’d borrowed from the bar in Havasu, and he worked it underneath the tape.
With a pop to the handle, the tape came out and Jase snapped the goddamn thing in half, dropped the pieces on the floor, and stomped them to ribbon and splintered plastic under the heel of his boot.
Then he sat back and sucked in lungfuls of too-warm air. It was finally fucking quiet.
Her laugh broke it.
“You killed the King,” Lindsey said.
Everyone, including Helen, laughed while the car billowed smoke.