“Jane, would you please open your door and let me out?” Lucas asked.
Jane looked around at the desolate area, but did as Lucas asked, leaning forward in her seat so the back could go up. Lucas got out then held his hand out to me. “Come on,” he said.
I took his hand. It was big and cold from holding his beer. I wiggled my way out of the car.
Jane lowered the seat and looked like she wanted to get out. Stick placed a hand on her arm. “Let’s stay here and make a dent on this beer,” he said. She looked up at me, silently asking me if I was okay being alone with Lucas.
I nodded and gave her a look—was she okay being alone with Stick? She gave a long-suffering sigh and nodded.
Yeah, I would owe her big. I saw a month of doing her laundry in my future.
Lucas shut the door behind me, keeping hold of my hand. I trailed behind him as he rounded the hood of the car and took the keys from Stick, who handed them to Lucas through the window, which he then rolled back up.
We went around to the back of the car and Lucas unlocked the trunk. He had to let go of my hand to rummage around. “Umm, you might want to not look in here,” Lucas said. Which, of course, made me want to look in the trunk.
“Dead body?” I said, then wished I hadn’t. Let’s face it, I didn’t know anything about Lucas Kade other than he had a brother named Andy Bell and he was going to be retiling my beloved steam room. And Stick? Well, for all I knew, therecouldbe a dead body in Stick’s trunk.
I turned away, looking at the wall that ran along what appeared to be some kind of freeway barrier. From the sounds coming from the other side, that was exactly where we were—on the other side of the freeway.
Which meant I was a long way from my safe, quiet dorm room.
I could hear metal shifting and clanging as Lucas searched for whatever he was looking for. I guessed I should be scared that he was going to come at me with duct tape and handcuffs, but I wasn’t.
The trunk slammed and I jumped. “It’s okay,” Lucas whispered as he came up behind me. “Sorry to startle you.”
“You didn’t,” I lied.
“Come here,” he said, motioning me to join him along the side of the car. We leaned against the metal just past the back seat window, and Lucas set something on the roof. It was a spotlight, I discovered when he flipped the switch, illuminating a very large section of the wall.
“What are we looking for?” I asked.
“Not for. At,” he said, leaning against the car. I leaned next to him and he put his arm on the car behind me, so that his shoulder brushed mine and his forearm was against my back.
I longed to snuggle into his side but I wasn’t ready to make that move.
“What are we lookingat?”
“The art.”
“The graffiti?”
He shrugged, and I felt it along my shoulder. “I think of it as art. Some of these guys—these taggers—are some of the best artists I’ve seen.”
I looked—really looked—at the wall again. He was right. Amidst the chaos were some really stellar works of art. Some Warhol-inspired sections. An area that had an awesome rendering of the president. Orioles’ and Ravens’ logos and stuff like that. And a bunch of small areas with just really cool designs and colors.
But my eyes kept getting distracted by the nonsense of penises and boobs, harshly done with black spray paint. “How can you focus on the good stuff through all of the crap?”
“Ah, Lily,” he said, taking a drink from his beer. His hand moved from the car up my back to curve around my shoulder. “That’s the secret of life, isn’t it? Focusing on the art?”
“And ignoring the penises and boobs?” I teased.
He chuckled. It was a nice sound, one I hadn’t heard before. And from his startled look, maybe one he didn’t make very often.
“Well, you don’t want tototallyignore boobs and penises,” he said. “They certainly have their place.” He gave a pointed look to my chest.
He pulled me closer to him and I burrowed into his side, a place I’d wanted to be since he’d climbed into the back seat with me.
Hell, a place I’d wanted to be since I saw him in the spectator area at the pool as I gave lessons to his little brother.
