Trouble was, for the first time since I was ten, I didn’t know precisely what Ididwant.
The bell over the door to the diner jangled so loud I heard it across the parking lot, but I kept my eyes closed and tried to prepare myself.
Rafe was either going to say something snarky about me flirting with him, or he’d lecture me about being nicer, or he’d remind me how spoiled I was. And I vowed to myself that no matter how sexy he looked with his one quirked-up eyebrow and that little smile that played around his lips, I would react with nothing but polite amusement. We werenotfriends. He didn’t want to be friends. And neither did—
“Here,” Rafe said in a gruff voice, and I opened my eyes to find him standing right beside me. He shoved a plastic bag at me, and I took it without thinking.
Without another word, he opened the driver’s door and pushed the button to start the car. I blinked and got in the passenger’s seat.
“What’s this?” I demanded.
Rafe busied himself with his seat belt and didn’t meet my eyes. “Pancakes. Blueberry. And I got her to put some blueberry topping in a cup in there, too.”
I stared at him like he was speaking pig Latin. I mean, he might as well have been. “You… bought me pancakes.”
“Has the lack of adoring fans in the vicinity affected your comprehension? Yes. Pancakes. For you. Yum yum. Sustenance.” He sounded crankier than usual.
“Why?”
“Because…” He rolled down the window and shifted the van into reverse with his big hands and still didn’t look my way. “You seemed to like them well enough when you were stealing mine. And you hardly ate any of your own breakfast. And your highly functioning metabolism requires real food at regular intervals.” He swallowed. “But if you don’t want them—”
“I want them!” I insisted, holding the container with two hands like he might try to take it by force and throw it out the window.
“Good.” He pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the highway.
A long minute—and maybe half an order of pancakes—later, he spoke again. “You said, back there, that it was a challenge to flirt with a guy who hated your guts.”
I frowned, licking blueberry juice from my fork just like I’d done in the diner. The blueberry shit was really good.
“Well, I don’t. Hate your guts, I mean. And I don’t think you’re spoiled. And I… I should not have said what I did about you having it easy.”
He looked at me finally, like he wanted to see if I was paying attention. Like there was a way in hell I couldnotpay attention to him.
“I don’t trust you,” he continued quickly. “Atall. You destroyed that trust when you walked away from our friendship years ago—and don’t tell me you didn’t because youdid. Also, you drive me insane, because you don’t take no for a damn answer, which is why I’m in this van, which is one hundred percent a kidnap van, even if I’m driving. But… I don’t hate you. I told myself I did, but I could never quite get there. And that seemed like something you should know.”
He turned up the radio, signaling that the conversation was over, and I clutched my plastic fork tightly, thinking maybe,maybewe could be friends after all.
7
Rafe
We absolutely couldnotbe friends.
“I told you, Gage, we are not doing festival decorations based onConstellations,”I insisted, bracing my foot on the dash in what I hoped was a casual way and not an “oh my God, Jay, if you got us any closer to that moving truck, we would beinthe truck” sort of way, which required a supreme act of will. “Not happening.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Jay muttered from the driver’s seat. “In case anyone’s forgotten.”
I definitely had not forgotten.
And not just because my life had been in jeopardy thirty unique times in thirty minutes.
Gage’s sigh filled the car through the speakers. “Rafe, dude, be reasonable. Jayd’s playing the concert. There’ll be all sorts of merchandise thereanyway—”
“Which is more than enough. Surely there’ssometheme someone can come up with that’s not dicks or stars. Don’t people have other suggestions that are island related? Like… like… seashells? Or scrimshaw?”
Legit anything that would not put Jay Rollins in my face and force me to think about him more than I already was.
“Scrimshaw.Now that’s the kinda crazy genius I expect from you,” Gage enthused. “Perhaps you can lead us in a rousing sea shanty chorus, as well.”
