I tried to read his lips, but I still could only make out the gist of what he was saying… and me focusing on his lips was a dangerous thing. “Roll up the windows.”
Jay shook his head stubbornly. “Admit it.”
I leaned over the low console in the center of the van so I could yell in his ear, which was also dangerous, since it meant I was breathing in the honey-citrus scent of him. “Doesn’t matter if I’m going to see her. We’re not doing this together, Jay.” We couldn’t if I wanted to protect Aimee’s secrets and, what seemed like a more pressing concern at that moment, mysanity.
“It matters,” he shouted back. “Because if you’re going to save my sister, even after everything that happened between you two, it means you’re still the guy I knew, deep down. A good person. My best friend.”
Ugh. My stomach must’ve still been weak from earlier because hearing that made it roll over. I couldn’t deny how relieved I was not to have to get on a plane or how nice it felt that Jay’s motivation had been, at least partly, to look out for me. Not drive-to-Wyoming nice, but still.
“And that being the case, it’s maybe possible that I didn’t start things off on the right foot yesterday. I was pissed off, and hurt, and worried. I got… aggressive.” Jay pushed impatiently at his overlong blond-brown hair, which the wind kept snapping across his face.
Hismaybe possiblysweresonot cute.
“And maybe that makes it hard for you to trust me or want to help me. So, okay. I thought… what better way for us to get to know each other again, to trust each other again, than on a road trip where it’s just you and me alone in a van for thirty hours? Plus, this way, you don’t have to fly, and I get to stay under the radar and not let the media know where I am.” He gave me a tentative smile. “And I’ll even let you pick the music when you’re driving… which will be, like, twenty percent of the time.”
I shook my head.
“Fine, twenty-five. And you don’t gush about Ari fucking Friedrich. Final offer.”
My stomach burned with something like panic when I didn’tdopanic. Hadn’t it been just yesterday that I’d vowed never to be in a car with him again? And now he wanted me to be alone in a van with him for days, with absolutely nothing to do but stare at the angle of his jaw and the way his lashes fell against his cheek and the way his thick thigh muscles flexed in his jeans, and wonder how they could be so familiar even after all this time?
Thirtyhours, steeping in that gorgeous, sweet smell of him and trying not to get a contact high, or listening to him doing something as mundane as ordering drive-thru off the dollar menu in that fucking voice of his and trying not to get hard?
Two thousand miles of me remembering on an endless loop all the things I used to like about him—his sweet, slow-burn smile, his quick laugh, his weird sense of humor, his curiosity about the world, his random acts of unreciprocated kindness, the way he tapped out a tune on whatever happened to be in his hand like he was keeping time to a rhythm only he could hear—when what I should be remembering was how he’d cut me out of his life for years when he started getting even a teensy bit famous.
It sounded like acute psychological torture. The kind guaranteed to break me. I wasn’t sure what would happen to either of us when I broke.
“This sounds like the worst idea anyone’s ever had,” I said truthfully.
“Ugh.Fine. You drive a hard bargain. Thirty percent of the time. The Ari rule remains, but I won’t even complain if you put on that EDM shit you used to like that made me feel like my ears were buzzing.”
“Jay.” I stared at his profile, his sharp jaw and strong nose, and shook my head once more. At this point, I felt like a bobblehead that moved from side to side rather than up and down. “Listen to me.No.Besides, what would your…Oak… say? About the two of us traveling alone together?”
“Oak helped me come up with this idea!” Jay shouted. “We can get there in three days. And maybe you and I can, you know, try to be friendly again.”
Since my current feelings for him vacillated between fury and longing, this seemed unlikely.
“You thought the best way to resurrect our friendship and make me think you werelessof a shithead was to get your boyfriend—friend, whatever he is—to help you kidnap me in an unmarked van,theninsult me, then force me to accompany you to Wyoming?”
“He’s myfriend, not that it’s any of your business—”
He was right. Itshouldn’thave been any of my business. So why did it feel like it was?
“—and it’s not kidnapping if you agree.”
I set my teeth. “But I don’t.”
“You what?”
“Idon’t.” I pulled at the lever to make the passenger’s window slide up. “God. Why do you want us to have to scream this conversation across the—” I broke off with a cough as my eyes began to water and the scent of a hundred dead flowers pummeled my nose. “Holy shit. Did someone’s grandma die in here?” I pulled the collar of my T-shirt up over my face.
“Not by my hand. Pretty sure that’s eau de baby puke overlaid with Shalimar? See, when I saw you in the bathroom and went back to the rental desk, this completely unhelpful woman told me my Escalade had already been rented out again. This was the only car left in the lot, and I didn’t have time for them to steam clean the upholstery, so… Here we are.”
Yeah. Here we fucking were. With him being nice to me, smiling that bright smile.Fuck.
“So yesterday when you forced me in your car and assured me youweren’tplanning a murder-kidnap spree,” I yelled, “you were lying?”
“I told you, kidnapping is a wild exaggeration of what’s happening here. And I haven’t murdered anyone. Yet.”
