Chapter 32 Amy
I’m hanging around outside my building, waiting for my ride.
For the first time ever, my driver is late.
I’ve hated having the Campus Drivers hovering around every single time I step out of the house, yet here I am now, staring glumly down the back street, wondering where the hell they’re at.
I guess I got used to having them around.
“Okay,” I mutter to myself.
I check the time. Glance down at my cast. I’ve been dragging this thing around for over a month now, and I wish I could just shrug it off and hit the sidewalk.
My physical therapist seems to think I’m on the right track; the muscles in my thigh are in good shape, and according to him, I should be back to kicking ass in no time.
I smile to myself. Didn’t take him long to get the measure of me.
“How come you’re still here?” RJ asks as he shuffles out of the shop.
“Waiting for my minion of the day. How’s the Pontiac?”
“Challenging.” He shoots me a look. “Like mother, like daughter, I guess.”
I snort. “Gimme a break. I’ve been squeaky clean since I moved here.”
“That’s pushing it—but I like who you’re becoming since you left New York.”
“Bet Dad’s turning in his grave.”
“Bet he isn’t. He’d be as proud of you as I am.”
“Watch it, Ronny! You get any sappier, you’ll be hugging me and shit.”
He shakes his head. “I wanna live. Unlike that guy…”
He points to the road. A Dodge Challenger is heading straight for us, and I don’t have to look twice. I haven’t seen Lewis since he ditched me under the Firebird. What was it I called after him? ‘We’re not done here!’ I cringe inwardly.
RJ gives my shoulder a quick squeeze. “At least give the guy a chance—he’s a good kid.”
A chance at what?
“Why is everybody so obsessed with him?” I mutter, but RJ just laughs, before sloping back into his man cave.
When the Dodge pulls up in front of me, Lewis leaves the engine running while he jumps out and leans against the hood.
“Someone order a ride?” he drawls.
Why is he so damn sexy…
“Nope.”
“Good thing I’m not working, then.”
He straightens, opening the door and gesturing at me to get in, and I’m confused—he’s never taken me to PT before.
“What’re you waiting for?”
“How come you’re on duty today?”
“The others have crochet.”
I eye the seat undecidedly. Taking this ride with him will only mess my head up even more. It’d be smarter to turn it down and just move on from this guy once and for all.
“Don’t make me have to kidnap you,” he adds.
“Make me not make you.”
“You don’t scare me, Amy Hitman. Not anymore.”
There’s something about the way he says it that makes me shiver in anticipation. I whip the crutch into his ribs.
“Ouch!” He grimaces. “Step away from the crutches, lady!”
“You think that hurt? I’m just getting started, buddy…”
“Ow!”
“That’s more like it.” I drop my weapon and duck into the car.
One hand still resting on the roof, he bends down, leaning into me.
“I missed you, Hitman.”
And with that, he slams the door shut.
It’s just one small, simple line, but the way he says it sparks something wild in me. No matter how many conflicting parts of me there are, all of them respond to this guy the exact same way.
He slips behind the wheel, turns up the radio and winks, while I tilt my seat back, reaching one hand out the window, letting the wind brush over my skin as I close my eyes. Music is blaring through the speakers, and Lewis Conley is right there next to me, yet somehow… I feel at ease.
“I’m g—”
“Quiet time,” I say, holding up my hand. “Just drive.”
I let the music wash over me for some time. Too much time, as it happens—I can feel the miles drifting by, and we’re nearing the PT office. My eyelids flutter open. And that’s when I realize he’s going the wrong way.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Yellow,” he says, without missing a beat.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Not, like, hard-core yellow, though—more of a mellow yellow.”
Hey, that’s my thing!
He’s teasing me, I realize.
“I don’t like where this is going…”
He clears his throat. “When you were in the hospital, I told you I planned to set a few things straight. You weren’t ready to hear me out, so I gave you a month—enough time to figure out that life without me straight-up sucks.”
Oh, honey… You think I needed a whole month?
“You’re pretty sure of yourself, Conley.”
“I tried to be cute. Gazed into your eyes every time I came down to the shop—that kind of thing. But it wasn’t working. So, I’m stepping things up a gear.”
My heart flutters in my chest, but there’s no way I plan on letting my guard down. He’s put in the work, and everything he’s done since the crash has definitely helped even out my edges. But we still have a whole lot of baggage we haven’t even looked at.
He sighs. “What you heard me say to Adam when I got back from Atlanta… You’re missing a bunch of context. All those times I said you were helping me blow off steam? That’s exactly right—that’s exactly how it was.”
Deep, man. I bang my head against the window in frustration.
“That’s really insightful,” I say flatly. “Can I get out now?”
“At the same time,” he continues, “I was wrong. I wasn’t getting it—I mean, really getting it.
I didn’t want to think it was anything more than hooking up.
The way I wanted to see it, that rebellious streak of yours was the perfect way of balancing out how hard-core my schedule is.
You were like some kind of fleeting moment; like coming up for air, or something.
An opportunity to be someone different, just for a while.
” He glances at me. “It was good, it was easy. It was pretty spineless of me, too. I freaked out, and I was wrong, Amy. There’s nothing fleeting about you—nothing at all.
Sure”—he shrugs—“I need you when I’m about to lose it.
I like how it feels—being inside you when everything around me is spinning out of control.
You’re like this breath of fresh air when I’m suffocating. You make me laugh when I’m pissed.”
Slowly, I turn to look at him, my lips parted in surprise, and he gazes back at me, before focusing back on the road.
“You scare me sometimes, too—but I’ve got a feeling that with time, I can tame you.”
“You’ve been trying to keep me under control from the start,” I hear myself say.
“I was trying to keep you under control because you stand for everything I’ve denied myself. But the truth is, we make perfect sense.”
The breath is snatched out of my lungs. I’ve been waiting so, so long to hear him say this, and now that it’s actually happening, he’s saying more than I ever dreamed of.
He’s right. Everything he says is true. Suddenly, all those thousand different parts of me fall into place, and for the first time, I know what it means to be whole.
“All those times I wasn’t there for you… I fucked up.” He shakes his head. “And you know, there’ll be other times when I’ll just be too damn busy to be the perfect boyfriend.”
“That’s not what I want.”
“But it’ll be different now that I know that—”
“That what?” I murmur, my heart pounding in my throat.
“You know…”
“I don’t.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“I really, really don’t.”
No way am I filling in the gaps for him anymore. We’ve gotten this far—I need to hear him say it.
“Shit, help me out here, Amy!”
I turn back to the window. “It is such a beautiful day.”
I have no idea where we’re going.
He pulls over by the side of the road, cuts the engine, and drums on the steering wheel, while I keep my eyes on the trees ahead of us, and count to ten. Twice.
What the hell?
I’m about to throw myself out of the car and limp my way along to the nearest service station, when I sense him leaning into me, muttering something that gets lost as he buries his face in my neck. I turn to him, eyebrows raised.
“What did you just say?”
He rolls his eyes. “You heard!”
“Nope.”
Of course I did. I heard him just fine—I just can’t believe my ears, that’s all.
“You really want me to work for this, don’t you?”
“Don’t you try to wriggle out of this one!”
“I just said that I l—”
I clamp a hand over his mouth.
“I’m Amy Hitman, buddy. Nobody whispers this kind of thing to me—especially not in a baby voice.”
He blinks a few times, before shoving my hand away.
“I’m pouring my heart out to you here, and your solution is to go gangster on my ass?”
“Just say you want us to be a thing—no need to go in heavy with the smoochy-woochy!”
He grins at me. “Is someone feeling awkward?”
“Honestly, it breaks me out in hives.”
“Tell me you love me, Amy! Let me hear you say it!”
“Any last words?” I shoot him a look.
“Why are you so fucking perfect?” He laughs. “I have to listen to the Wolinskis gushing at each other all day long—that crap makes my stomach turn.”
I focus back on the cars in front of us, turning his words over in my mind, playing them back on loop. My heart feels so full… I can hardly believe this is happening.
“So…” He looks at me. “You wanna spill your guts, too? You can’t leave a guy hanging like this.”
“You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”
“Okay…”
I want him to understand how much this all means to me. I’ve never truly been in love before, and he needs to understand—once he opens that door, it’s never swinging shut.
THE MINUTES FLY BY, THE trees growing taller and broader with every passing mile, until a board surges into view. Welcome to West Virginia.
And just like that, everything clicks into place.
“You’re taking me to your house?”
A smile plays on his lips. “Don’t actions speak louder than words?”
We turn off at the next exit, passing through a town and veering off down a tangled lane, when suddenly, we’re in the middle of nowhere. He pulls up next to a gate, leaps out of the car, and opens his trunk. By the time he circles back to open my door for me, he’s strapped into a hiking backpack.
“Follow me.”