Chapter 24
Biology Class
Day 48
He leaned closer, his eyebrows raised. “It sounds like the Senator’s got your life all planned out for you.”
The bite stung, but I refused to examine why. “No, it’s what I want.”
His brows lifted. “Okay. Let me ask you this. You know what really happened last night. Why does anything else matter? The police didn’t catch us. You know that you didn’t steal it. Why are you mad?”
“Because my dad thinks I did. Or at least thinks that I helped you.”
“Well..technically,” he began to say until I kicked at his foot underneath the table. He rolled his eyes as laughter spat from his mouth.
“You know what happened,” he said again. “So why does it matter what your dad thinks?”
“Because he’s my dad,” I said.
“And the fact that he doesn’t believe you isn’t a problem for you?”
“He doesn’t care who did it. It’s the fact that I was involved at all that makes him mad. It can mess with his public image. It can mess with our public image.” I told myself to stop talking, but the words came anyway.
Understanding settled on Dax’s face. “That explains it. I thought the whole fake persona was just the politician stuff, but looks like it runs in the family. ”
We chose two a.m. for our drive time.
Caffeine, Sun Chips, and Dax’s teasing made the wait until the middle of the night bearable. We didn’t talk about the reasons why I was doing this, those would come later. I was certain of it. This was a last hurrah. The perfect ending to my summer with Dax Miller.
After I’d made my declaration, we hung out in the garage together. I definitely put in a few more hours, but this time, I was helping Dax in his shop, filling out invoices while he worked on a fishing boat he’d pulled inside on a trailer from the marina.
“It’s time,” Dax said, as he turned off the lights before hitting the button to open the third garage door. One yellow bulb hanging from the ceiling was our only source of light.
He paused, his hand on the door of the orange car he’d hand-built in this garage. “You having second thoughts, Books?”
“No.”
And I wasn’t, strangely enough. I wasn’t a daredevil by any stretch of the imagination, but nothing was going to stop me right now. After a life of rules and regulations, I was determined to do this. I held my hand out in front of me. There were no shakes, no tremors. No guilt. This could potentially be the biggest mistake of my life, maybe my career, but I knew with absolute certainty that it wouldn’t turn into a regret.
He held open the driver's side door, motioning me closer. “You ready?”
“Obviously, I was born ready.”
He huffed out a laugh, his dark eyes flashing with intrigue, taking in my short overalls and t-shirt with small red hearts all over it.
“Okay, Trouble. Let’s go over the rules.”
“Rules?” I walked toward him, trying hard not to internalize the fact that he looked like James Dean, in his jeans and white shirt with a really cool car behind him. “I’ve influenced you more than I thought.”
“Number one. If you harm one hair on this car’s head, so help me…” he said.
I folded my arms and gave him a look.
“Number two. I drive first.”
“You think because you spent two years of your life building this car, you get to drive it first?” I said.
“No. I just don’t trust you backing out of this garage.”
I glared at him, but since I had smashed into his building earlier this summer, I let it slide.
“Number three. We’re not doing the whole route. It’s too risky with your history of driving on this island, so we’re going to just go up to the resort’s entrance road, and then back down to the north end of the town square, then back to the shop. About one mile total. It should take three minutes.”
“You sure that’s worth it for one hundred hours?” I asked him.
He studied me for a moment too long before saying, “Yeah. Everybody on this island has their windows open, so we can’t draw attention. We’ll drive slow so it sounds like it’s a golf cart going twenty-five miles per hour past their house. Got it?”
“Your rules make you sound like a little old lady,” I said.
He shot me an annoyed look. Before he could change his mind, I ran around to the other side of the car and slid onto the bucket seat of the dark interior. The smell of leather oil and the snug proximity of the seats inside the car drew me in like a moth to a flame. Dax slid in beside me and shut the door, enclosing us. Almost reverently, he put the keys in the ignition.
“Moment of truth,” he said.
He turned the key. The engine growled to life with a low purr, producing a smile on Dax’s face, and some sort of manly moan of pleasure spewed out of him .
“Should I leave you two alone for a minute?” I asked, running my hand along the dash, taking in all the details.
Dax grinned, leaning his head back against the headrest with a sigh. “I did it.”
I watched him with a smile. “Dax?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s pretty freaking cool,” I said, pride for him practically billowing out of me, which I, of course, had to tamp down with some teasing. “Just remember who handed you the wrench to put in that driveline.”
He blinked before rolling his head toward me, as if he were coming out of a daze. “We’re about to take the car of my dreams, that I built, on a test drive, Caroline. That’s a pretty bold move to be talking dirty to me right now.”
My hands lifted to cover my heated cheeks while the hum of his low laughter scattered goosebumps around my skin.
Dax put his arm around the back of my seat, his fingers brushing past the hair at my shoulders as he looked behind him and ever…so…slowly…backed out.
I let out a dramatic gasp, my hands flying to the dash.
Dax swore, slamming on the brakes while his hands flew off the wheel. “What?!”
Laughter in the form of nervous, high-pitched giggles erupted from me. Leaning forward, I hid my howling face behind my hands while he swore again. If this was living on the lam, sign me up, because so far I was having a great time.
He growled lowly before he backed out of the garage, closed the door, and crept toward Main Street. Just before we entered the street, he stopped, looking down the road illuminated by a row of yellow lamp posts.
“Last chance to back out, Ivy.”
The use of my name on his lips jarred me slightly, grounding me for a moment when I had been somewhere lost in the clouds .
Were we actually doing this?
As Dax’s eyes waited patiently on mine, my mind raced to find the turning point that had brought me to this moment. The crash had been the tip of the iceberg to a summer I had no idea I needed. The list. The tattoo. Dax. Learning to separate myself from who I was and who I’m becoming. The baring of souls while sparks flew above us.
And between us.
Life was messy. Jobs were messy. People were even messier. But for the first time since I’d left the island ten years ago, I had an attachment to my life that I’d never felt before. One filled with connection and friendships and people I loved. Other than a job, I had nothing in Tennessee to go back to. Before now, my existence had been more about marking things off of a checklist—hoping what I accomplished measured up to an unknown standard. My decisions had always been controlled and concise—black and white. But tonight, I was dipping my toe into the gray.
Maybe tonight would end up just being a funny story to tell. Or maybe there would be consequences. But my heart was ready to leap from my chest, the smile on my face refused to fade, and I knew there was nowhere else on earth I’d rather be than driving Dax’s car around the island. Come what may…I was here for all of it.
I mean…obviously I hoped nothing would happen in three minutes.
“Wait,” I said, my fingers fumbling with the radio dial on the dash. “We need theme music.”
Since it was Dax’s maiden voyage with his car, I set the dial to the oldies station—the kind I imagined grandparents everywhere listened to in their cars. And when “Centerfield” by John Fogerty began playing, it just felt right.
“Now I’m in,” I said.
He still looked unsure. “You don’t have to do this. I’m giving you the hours either way. The car started, and that completely rocked my world. That’s enough for me.”
“I want to do it.”
“Are you sure?—“
“GO!” I yelled.
He waited a beat, still looking at me, before his excitement to be driving his car refused to be contained any longer. His grin grew even wider as he turned onto the main road heading toward the resort and got his baby up to the agreed-upon twenty-five miles per hour.
It was a bit…anticlimactic, to be honest. I mean, the car was amazing, but we were crawling.
“How bad is it killing you to go this slow?” I asked. The beat to the song on the radio was going faster than we were.
He rubbed his hand along the wheel trimmed in red. “In my mind, we’re flying down an empty freeway right now.”
“How do you plan to get the car off the island?”
“I’m sure Beau will help me, but I’d probably have to let him drive it on the mainland for a while after.”
We approached the entrance road to the resort where Dax turned the car around and threw it in park.
“It purrs like a dream,” he said, as he unbuckled his seatbelt. “Alright, you’re up, Books.”
I went to open the door, and nothing happened. I jiggled the handle and pushed my shoulder against it, but nothing budged. Dax leaned across the seat and tried it himself. After several attempts with his body half leaning against me, Dax reached his hand below, feeling around the door frame.
“Is this… Did you bring your purse?”
“Yeah.”
“The strap is stuck in the door.”
It must be noted that, by this time, parked so long in one place, Dax’s car began to feel like a sitting duck. Though I was still happy to be doing this with Dax, my heart rate was picking up...just a smidge.
“Why’d you bring your purse?” Dax gave it one more tug to no avail before sitting up.
“It has my license.”
We waited a beat, the words hanging in the air for about five whole seconds while we both registered my incredibly dumb thought process. Dax broke first, a snicker bursting free, before I followed suit.
There was a smile in his voice when he said, “Alright, I can’t open it. Just come out my side.”
It took some finagling in the bucket seats, but I maneuvered my way to Dax’s side of the car. Then I stepped out and allowed Dax to get in before me.
It was about the time when Dax was attempting to maneuver his six-foot frame across the seats of a confined muscle car that I began to glance around the darkened streets. My self-awareness heightened the longer we sat here. And then Dax’s leg went haywire, accidentally pressing the horn for what seemed like ten years, blaring a distress signal to the entire island.
We both froze. My hands covered my mouth.
“Did that sound like a golf cart horn to you?” Dax asked, his voice frantic.
One lone chortle escaped my mouth before I clamped it shut. And then another came, and it was hopeless. Soon, I was leaning on my knees, sucking in air as tears began falling down my face.
Dax poked his head out of the car. “Hey, Crazy Girl. Rein it in. We’ve gotta move.”
Right. Yes. I swiped at a few tears before I climbed inside and closed the door.
“Okay, we’re going to head back to the shop.”
“Wait. You said we could drive down to the square.”
“Well,” he checked out the window behind him. “That was before I blasted the horn for the entire island to hear. We can’t go anywhere near the square, we?—”
“We’re doing it, Grandma!”
The dark look Dax shot me filled my rebellious little cup to the brim.
I began laughing and pressed on the gas, growing bold enough to punch the speedometer up to a whopping thirty miles per hour.
I was just past the bend in the road next to Dax’s shop, heading toward the town square, when he leaned forward, peering out the window.
“Hold up,” he said.
“What?”
“There’s lights coming our way. In front of us.”
I squinted to see where he was pointing. Sure enough, just past the streetlights of the town square, a lone golf cart was idling up the road, headed toward the east side of the square, directly in our path.
“What do we do?” I asked, my heart picking up speed while I watched the lights slowly growing closer. “If we go back to the shop, he’ll see us pull into your garage.”
Dax looked all around. “Okay, punch it, and we’ll go around the square on the other side and wait for him to pass.”
I brought the car up to a breakneck speed of forty miles per hour, the nerves in the air heightening the exhilaration I felt. “Maybe from a distance he’ll think we’re another golf cart.”
“The car is twice as wide. They’ll know,” Dax said. “Turn off the lights. There’s enough light from the street for us to see.”
I immediately began pressing buttons and flipping switches around the car while my heart began to thrum chaotically inside my chest. The blinkers and windshield wipers began blinking and flapping in disordered mayhem, which resulted in me pushing levers and buttons at random. Dax leaned forward and caged my hands against the wheel while he turned off the lights .
Without the headlights, the streetlights became more visible, lighting corners of the town square and casting a golden hue as far as the light could reach.
“Turn here. We’ll go around the square this way,” Dax whispered.
“Why are you whispering?” I teased as we passed the cafe. “That guy can’t hear you.”
He looked at me, his mouth slightly aghast. “I need you to answer me seriously. Are you on something right now?”
I swatted his arm, but didn’t answer. I was too busy checking my rearview mirror while racing down the street, making a dash for the corner to hide out before we were spotted. We were playing the ultimate game of hide and seek, and it was completely exhilarating.
“Not bad,” Dax said, flipping around to watch out the back windshield. “I could have used you back in high school.”
I put the car in park, with the back bumper barely visible, as we both watched out the back window for signs of the golf cart. Eventually, it appeared and kept ambling up the road toward the resort while Dax and I released a sigh of relief.
When we no longer saw the brake lights from the cart, we turned back around in our seats. My fingers drummed the steering wheel.
“Where to next? Should we cruise the whole island?”
“Let’s get you back to the garage, Hot Rod.”
Somewhat reluctantly, I put the car into drive and was about to move again when Dax cried out.
“Hold up, another cart’s coming. From the resort.”
“What are these people doing? It’s two in the morning!”
“Hold on, let’s see where he’s headed. If he’s going south, he won’t see us.”
I waited, my body tensing slightly, though not as much as I would have expected. Dax even made the thought of probation violation insignificant .
“He’s coming this way! We gotta move.”
“What?! Why?”
“Go! Go!”
It was killing Dax to not be in the driver’s seat. I knew that, but we also didn’t have time to switch. I threw the car into drive and circled the south end of the square, passing the Book Isle and pausing at the stop sign near the Cut and Curls Salon, where I pulled out far enough into the road to look both ways. My stomach dropped with a thud.
“There’s another cart!” I gasped, pointing at another set of headlights making their way from the southern tip of the island.
Dax swore. “We’re going to get boxed in.” He whipped around, looking up and down the tiny island for a place to hide a car.
“Flip around, and we’ll try hiding at the baseball field. We’ve got to get off the road.”
“Won’t they see us?” I asked, taking a hard right and following the road as best as I could without our headlights until we came to the empty field at the south end of the island.
“Hopefully with our lights off we’ll stay hidden,” Dax said.
“I just…drive on the grass?” My foot slipped off the gas as I hesitated, pointing in front of me.
Dax was busy looking out the window for any sign of the oncoming carts. “Yeah! It’s fine! Go!”
His frantic gesturing caused me to gun the gas pedal even as I squinted at a dark spot on the grass in front of me. “What is th?—”
“Watch out for the ditch?—”
The car lurched forward and stuttered as I suddenly remembered the small ditch-like dip full of grass that surrounded the field, creating a barrier between the field and parking. A low groan shuddered through Dax’s body as the packed dirt and weeds scraped hard underneath the car.
“I’m sorry!” I shouted, my panic and the forward jolt of the car making me step on the gas even harder. We flew from the dip, possibly catching air, while Dax buried his face behind his hands in horror until I rolled the car to a stop. Glancing out the window, I gathered that we were somewhere out in left field.
I felt that hard.
Without a word, Dax put a hand on my arm and pointed directly in front of us as one of the golf carts pulled up to the side of the bookstore. Whoever it was, if they were looking into the distance, they would have a perfect view of Dax’s car.
The moon wasn’t too full, and we were in the middle of a field, so I was sure we’d be fine.
But still, we leaned forward, watching out the window, awaiting any sign of movement from the cart.
“It’s probably Briggs,” Dax said, his voice low. “He lives above the bookstore.”
We waited for him to get out of the cart, straining to see movement. But the cart remained dark. Had he gotten out already? Though I still wasn’t as panicked as I probably should have been at this moment, even I was feeling ready to get back to the safety of Dax’s garage.
“Maybe he’s looking at his phone or something,” I said.
We were silent as we both stared out the window, daring something to move inside or outside of the golf cart.
“He’s probably inside,” Dax said after a long moment. “We don’t have a good view of the back door into the shop, so he could have slipped inside without us seeing. But let’s wait it out for a minute, just in case.”
I sat back in my seat, my tense shoulders relaxing slightly. I sucked in a full breath through my nose and willed my heart to calm. The quiet hum of the car seemed a direct contrast to our plight only moments ago. We weren’t out of the woods yet, but for a moment, we needed to be still. The cart that had been coming down from the resort ambled past the field without braking or slowing, causing us to breathe easier .
“Are you nervous?” I asked Dax.
“Not for me.”
“Why not?”
He met my gaze. “What are they going to do to me?”
“Probation? Fines? Jail? How bad on the island’s sin scale is driving a car?”
He shrugged. “It’s illegal, so they could do a lot of things.”
“But you’re not worried?”
He laughed. “The judge has been breathing down my neck to get his lawnmower back. He’s not sending me away. It’s you I’m worried about.”
We faced forward once more to watch out the window. In the quiet, my ears tuned in to more things. The light tap of Dax’s fingers on the arm rest, the plastic sound the seats made when we adjusted our positions, and the radio…which had been background noise most of our time in the car.
Our attention stayed locked on the cart next to the book shop while a song with a familiar tune began to play. It needed no introduction, really. Even I knew this song. Everyone in America knew this song. My shoulders swayed to the beat. I made it through the entire first verse, singing along in my head, but as the lyrics began working their way to the chorus, my hand gripped the steering wheel in anticipation of everyone’s favorite moment of the song. My fingers gave the three distinct taps at just the right part when I stopped.
My body froze.
It was a facepalm kind of moment. I wanted to laugh and cry and start the song over. I wanted to memorize every word. Of course it was this song. It perfectly captured my entire summer with him. But mostly, I sat in awe and wonder at the song Dax had dubbed mine when it was really a song Neil Diamond had written long ago about a girl he’d named “Sweet Caroline.”
The song was nearly over before I gained the courage to look at Dax. He was leaning back in his seat, one arm resting near the window, holding his head with one hand, watching me, waiting for me to figure it out in his calm, patient way. Something flashed across his face just then. Something dangerous. Something alluring. Something that made my breath hitch and my stomach tighten with nerves.
“Sweet Caroline,” I whispered, turning to face him, my head leaning on the back of the seat.
“It’s your song.”
Was his voice always this low? The deep rasp and the overtly casual tone had the same effect on me as someone skating their fingers down my spine. His face was illuminated only by the sliver of moonlight through the window.
“Do you want me to drive back?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
The lyrics of “Sweet Caroline” raced through my head as I moved to unbuckle my seatbelt. The words washed over me. What in that song made him think of me? The title? A verse? Or was it…everything? I wanted it to be everything. But wanting and having were two very different things.
I had just stepped out of the car when he said, “My seatbelt is stuck. I can’t get it at this angle.”
Confused, I leaned down, my hand resting on the open door as I peered inside, trying to see what the problem was. He had a whisper of a smile curling his lips. That should have been my first clue. He wore a t-shirt today. Only the barest hint of tattoos peeked out from the bottom of his sleeve. I loved the ink on his skin, but seeing him without them in this moment softened him somehow, even as my heart bid caution.
“It’s stuck?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
The prickles on my skin flared as I crawled back inside, kneeling carefully on the driver’s seat in an effort to lean forward and examine his seatbelt. The air in the car vibrated with energy. My body trembled with anticipation .
There were so many moments in life that a person could miss because of overthinking. Over-analyzing. My time up until this point had been full of weights and measures. Bars and graphs. Everything compartmentalized and in its place. I hadn’t had a place in my life for Dax Miller. My time with him had been a constant state of calculating, analyzing and rejecting. No matter how hard I tried to spin it, X plus Y could never equal Z.
Therefore, I couldn’t have it. Him.
But this…
This.
I leaned in close and pushed his seatbelt button. It released immediately. As did the thundering of my heart.
“Liar,” I whispered.
He brushed back my hair from my face before cupping my cheeks under his palm. His thumb trailed across my lips and cheeks and every freckle, leaving me feeling exposed and tingly and flooded with a craving that threatened to consume me.
His lips found a corner of my mouth. My toes curled.
“Every word,” he murmured.
“What?” I whispered, his proximity snatching the breath from my lungs. My hands moved to his shoulders to keep me upright.
He pulled back, his eyes half-lowered with heavy lids. “Every word of that song belongs to you.”
The sentence hung in the air, his sweetness cracking the wall that had always been between us. I was done. He was done.
Our resistance had been breached.
It happened too quickly to think. Too fast to stop. Or had it been more like a crescendo, slowly building up pace and tempo over the summer? At this moment, there was nothing left to reject. Maybe I could have it all. I could refigure the sequence. I could?—
His hands slipped to the back of my neck and pulled my mouth to his. The tug and slide of his lips tangling with mine sparked a fire low in my belly. There was no hesitation on my part. I met fire with fire.
Growing impatient with our position, Dax’s hands found my hips, lifting and pulling me across the seat before settling me across his lap. I pressed in close. My hands, now free to wander, slid up his shoulders before slipping to the back of his head, losing themselves in the curls at the base of his neck. We were insatiable, giving in to the thing we’d both denied ourselves for so long.
He pulled back slightly, his lips wandering across my jawline before I pulled his mouth back on mine. His arms pressed and cradled me closer while my body relished in the feeling of being completely cocooned in his arms. Those arms that had protected and defended me all summer long.
There was something about being with Dax in this moment that calmed my nerves and eased my fears. And then I realized why I hadn’t been nervous to be in this car with him. To be risking this moment with him. Because with him, I was safe to fall. I had always been safe to fall. Safe to be less than perfect. The feeling was both addicting and liberating. There was a power in feeling safe with someone–safe to make mistakes and to be completely yourself. Safe to trust someone that much.
We’d been trying all night to not get caught. Who knew that getting caught would be the best part?
As if the universe had heard my bold thought, flashes of blue and red lit up our cozy oasis. A tap on our window had us pulling apart, blinking in confusion, me still on Dax’s lap and his hands around my waist.
“What in the—” Beau stood, gaping at us, as he began to yell. His words were muffled by the closed door between us, but we had no trouble interpreting his meaning.
He was ticked.