Chapter Twenty-Eight
Serenity
Friday morning, my car won’t start.
‘Want me to come pick you up?’ Jake asks when I call him.
Last night felt liberating. Confessing all my secrets to people who weren’t there to judge me, who all had my back. And telling people that Jake is my boyfriend? Magical.
From Dalton and Ally’s house, he walked me back to my car. Knowing now I was barely gonna make it back to Temptation Heights in one piece, I wish I’d taken him up on his offer of sneaking me into his bedroom to spend the night at his place.
‘As much as I wanna say yes, it would take you forty-five minutes to get over here in morning traffic, plus another half hour to drive me to The Bounty.’
‘Yeah, but that’d be a whole half hour I got to spend in your company.’
I find myself grinning in my front yard. ‘You’d be late for training.’
‘I’d think up some excuse.’
‘In case you forgot, we still have to be careful, you know.’
I hear him laugh at the other end of the phone. ‘I know, I know. I just… I wish it could all be out in the open. I want everyone to know you’re my girl. No more sneaking around.’
‘One day,’ I sigh, because after last night, it feels like we’ve had a taste of freedom, and now we both want more.
‘So, what about later?’ Jake asks. ‘How are you gonna do the thing if you don’t have wheels? You won’t let me drive you to work, at least let me pick you up after your shift.’
I’m nervous about later. The possibility of seeing Brody Conway again.
‘Alright, I’ll let you do that part. Pick me up at my place. Tonight. Around seven fifteen?’
‘Already counting down the hours, baby.’
‘See you tonight.’
‘I love you,’ he says, and I swear I’ll never get over it.
‘I love you too,’ I tell him, and I mean it with my whole heart.
I’m finishing giving Dad his dinner when Jake’s pickup rolls into the driveway after dark.
‘You seem to have a visitor,’ Dad mumbles. ‘That the same boy as before?’
‘Daddy, I’m not seventeen,’ I remind him. ‘Jake’s more of a man than a boy.’
Dad snorts. ‘He’s a football player is what he is. He your boyfriend now?’
‘He is,’ I say dreamily. ‘But I’m in trouble if anybody finds out about that. So don’t go telling the neighbors. He can’t stay.’
‘Won’t say a word, sugar. So long as he treats you right.’
I could tell him a thing or two, about men not treating me right, but instead I stay silent. ‘You got everything you need? I won’t be late back.’
His eyes are already trained on the baseball game on TV. It’s a rerun of last year’s World Series.
‘Say howdy to Jake.’
‘I will. Call Mrs Oakley if you need anything. I’ll see you later.’
I kiss him on the cheek, grab my bag and leather jacket and head out the door. When I made it home, I changed into a floral skirt, a lightweight tee and a pair of brown and black cowgirl boots.
Inside the cab, Jake smells freshly showered, his hair still damp after his training session. He leans over and I kiss him enthusiastically on the lips.
‘How you feelin’?’ he asks, when I pull back, not wishing to get carried away, though it’s hard when he smells this good.
I bite my lip. ‘Honestly? I’m a little nervous.’
‘Dalton will be with you the whole time. And I’ll be close by. I won’t let anything happen to you, I swear it.’
I smile at him. ‘Do you know where we’re going?’
He looks at the sat nav screen. ‘Already put in the address. Dalton sent me a map pin that’s one block away.’
I nod. ‘Then let’s do this.’
He starts the engine. In the shadows, he smirks at me. ‘Hey, guess what? Hudson was an hour late for training today. Coach tore strips off o’ him but he still had a huge grin on his face.’
My eyes widen. When Hudson left his brother’s house last night, he definitely wasn’t smiling.
‘You think…? Did you ask?’
Jake pulls away from my house. ‘I asked. He definitely wasn’t talking. But he looked pretty darned pleased with himself.’
‘Oh my god. Do you think they…?’
‘He looked pretty pissed at her when we left. I don’t know what went down after that but today he looked like he’d literally had no sleep. Like he was drunk on something.’
I sink my teeth into my bottom lip, reach across and take his hand, which is resting on the wheel. ‘Maybe if it comes out that we’re not the only ones…’ I say hopefully, and he squeezes my fingers tight, ‘they might drop the clause from our contract?’
He presses his lips to the back of my hand while keeping his eyes on the road. ‘We can’t hide it forever. Besides, I wanna take you out. Have the whole world see that Lemon Conway and I are most definitely not an item. And that I’m in love with the most beautiful girl in the whole of Canyon.’
The curve of my ear touches the headrest. ‘Shut up, I am not,’ I argue softly.
‘That’s a matter of opinion, and respectfully, I disagree.’
I watch the road for a second, the familiar streets of Temptation Heights passing us by.
I want what he wants. I want to be out in the open, not sneaking around after dark.
And I find myself wondering if maybe I’m willing to give up the thing that I thought I wanted most in the world, just to say that I’m his.
Because there’s an indescribable force that pulls me to him, and there has been for weeks now.
‘I need to tell Jewel before anybody else finds out,’ I tell him. ‘I owe her that.’
He nods. ‘I get it. Look, I know I said we can’t hide it forever. But it’s complicated. So, for now, like I said the other night, we keep it on the DL, until we work all this out.’
I study his face. ‘You’re gonna hate me for saying this, but you really are the fabled golden boy, you know that? You have the biggest heart of any guy I ever met.’
He looks pleased with himself. ‘We’re all like this where I come from.’
‘Well, even so, your momma raised you right.’
‘Speaking of my momma. I’d like to introduce you one day.’
I nod my head. ‘I’d like that.’
‘I should warn you, she can be a little… like, she has a very specific type of girl in mind for me.’
I raise my brow. ‘Lemme guess, if I switched out taking off my clothes for a college education, she might give me the time of day?’
I see him wince. He indicates, turning at the next set of lights. ‘She’s gonna love you, I promise. Especially when I tell her you’re the angel I’m gonna marry someday.’
About a half hour later, Jake’s pickup pulls up on a side street near the oceanfront behind a white sports SUV. I know it’s Dalton and Ally’s vehicle because she sent me their license plate.
Jake kills the engine, then in the silence, he exhales. He slides one hand around the rim of the steering wheel. Throughout the journey, he’d grown quieter the closer we got to our destination. ‘Are you alright?’ he asks.
I nod my head. ‘I won’t be alone, remember.’
He lets go of the steering wheel and massages the knuckles on his left hand. ‘I wish I could go up there with you. Show that clown what I think of him.’
‘I know. I know you wanna protect me. But he can’t know about us. That would make things even worse. He’d have more hold over me than ever.’
He shifts in his seat. His fingers cup my cheek.
‘I know you’d be there in a second if you could,’ I add for good measure, because I can tell by the look on his face that he doesn’t wanna let me go.
‘I’ll be there, waiting for you when you get out. I talked to Dalt. He won’t let Brody anywhere near you. He’s the cap, I trust him.’
The truth is, I can’t get enough of Jake Walsh.
In his presence, my insides turn to goop.
And now we’re edging closer, caught up in a moment.
The second our lips touch, I almost jump out of my skin when behind me somebody knocks the window of the pickup.
My head whips round and I see Ally Briar’s face in the darkness, staring at us both, her blonde hair pulled into a high ponytail.
‘Hey there, lovebirds,’ she hums as I open the door.
‘Sorry,’ I mumble as I get out. ‘Are we walking over?’
‘Dalt thinks you should walk,’ Ally says. ‘Hey, Mr MVP, you know where we’re going?’
‘Yup. Follow behind me.’
‘Are you alright?’ Ally asks me.
I give her a nod and she squeezes my hand. Nerves tangle in my stomach.
I give Jake a small wave.
Either tonight is gonna fix things, or my CMC career is well and truly over.
‘Are you alright?’ Dalton Briar asks as we walk side by side toward the oceanfront condo at the bay where Brody Conway is expecting me.
My forced smile belies my true feelings. ‘Everybody keeps asking me that.’
‘I get it,’ Dalton says, pushing his hands down further into his pants pockets. ‘You shouldn’t even be having to do this in the first place. I feel like a part of this is my fault.’
For a brief second, I stop in my tracks. ‘How is any of this your fault?’
‘When Ally told me what Brody had done, I was advised by those around me not to approach him and to avoid confrontation. I still had significant time left on my pro contract. I knew at the time that if I did what I wanted to do, I would have landed myself with an assault charge. But if I’d known then what I do now…
that he was gonna go after other women? Let’s just say I regret my actions from four years ago.
That asshole needed to be taught a lesson.
But I’m not an idiot. Jake’s in the same situation I was.
He just got drafted. He’s at the beginning of his career.
Brody’s not worth throwing away that level of talent on. ’
‘Brody Conway is your typical trust-fund kid,’ he continues as we cross a road, ‘who was never told, no you cannot do that, or, that’s not how you behave.
He’s always gotten away with doing whatever he wants with impunity.
He stands to inherit his grandfather’s fortune, and he’s never done a proper day’s work his entire life. ’
When we reach the condo, we walk through double glass doors into a lobby. We cross direct to the elevators.
‘Can I be honest with you?’ Dalton asks me as we wait for an elevator to arrive.
‘Of course,’ I say, looking up at him.