Not ten minutes later, Beckham’s rusty truck appeared on the main road. He’d already cut the headlights, knowing the drill. It was almost embarrassing how often I called him for comfort, ending with him coming to save me.
I walked along the driveway that was more mud than gravel as he rounded the front of the truck to open the passenger door for me. I stopped, lifting my chin to find him studying me from head to toe.
“You good?” he asked. He was standing there in a black T-shirt that hugged his growing biceps just right. The rain rolled off his tan arms, but he didn’t so much as shiver. A drop clung to the tip of his nose, more accumulating on the ends of his shaggy hair.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
He tipped his head to the cab, and I got in. Once he shut the door, he came back around, climbing behind the wheel. The truck was still running, so all he had to do was shift into drive and we were off.
The heater was cranked, wrapping me in its warm embrace as the wipers worked overtime to clear the relentless rain from the windshield. Once we were a safe distance away, he flicked his headlights back on.
He glanced over at me, hand adjusting on the wheel. “Wanna talk about it?”
I stared forward, ignoring the water sliding off the ends of my hair and onto his seats. “Not really.”
In my periphery, his chin dipped. It wasn’t long before we were pulling up to his parents’ house. As always, the porch was brightly lit—as if, even with the miserable storm looming over the fields, the Bronsons were untouchable.
Beck killed the engine, and we both opened our doors. He was at mine in an instant, holding it open as I slid off the now-wet seat. He paid the leather no mind as he shut the door and looped an arm around my shoulders, leading me up the steps. Crossing the large porch, he opened the front door for me, and we walked inside to a dimly lit kitchen. The light above the stove was always on at night. I knew because I was a frequent visitor in the late hours of the evening.
We didn’t linger as he led me down the hall toward his bedroom. Charlotte and Travis, his parents, never minded if I stayed over. This being a small town, everyone knew the type of people my parents were. Theydidn’t know exactly what went on behind closed doors, but it wasn’t hard to guess that my home life wasn’t the most fun. And the Bronsons being who they were, they’d never turn anyone away.
Even if it involved me sleeping in their son’s room on occasion.
Of course, we’d fooled around. Beckham and I had been inseparable for as long as I could remember. I wasn’t sure when we’d crossed that line. He kissed me once, in the small pond out on their property, and from that day forward, we just kind of…were. We kissed, we touched, we did a lot of things our parents likely didn’t know about. We felt safe with each other, and while we weren’t exactlyofficiallydating, there was a level of comfort where we knew there was no one else. The whole town knew: Beckham and Parker were off-limits.
They could go after whoever they wanted, just not the two of us.
Beck closed the door to his room behind me, tossing his keys on the dresser while I peeled out of my wet jacket. I laid it over the back of his wooden chair that sat a whole foot away from his desk. I wondered if maybe I’d been wrong when I called him, and he hadn’t been asleep but rather finishing his homework.
Without a word, he grabbed my hand and led me over to his bed. He laid down, pulling me with him. I rested my thigh over his, my cheek settling on his warm chest. I could still smell the rain on him, mixing with the hints of coconut and cinnamon that always wafted off him.
His fingers ran through my damp hair as he stared up at the ceiling. The small desk lamp cast the room in a gold glow, the distant strikes of lightning sending shapes flickering across the far wall every few seconds.
“My mom pawned her ring,” I told him, the words quiet.
“Her wedding ring?”
“Mhm. My dad wasn’t happy when he saw her bare finger.”
Beck was silent, so I looked up to find his jaw working, like he was clenching his teeth. He didn’t glance at me when he said, “Maybe if he’d get a job to pay the bills, she wouldn’t have to.”
He knew the position I was in at home. He just didn’t know it involved flashlights and buttered bread for dinner.
“I know.”
“Are you okay there?” He meant with food. With blankets and toothpaste and other necessities.
“We should be okay through winter,” I told him. “She just paid the gas bill.”
“If it gets shut off again, tell me.”
When I didn’t respond, his eyes finally met mine. Still, his jaw didn’t loosen. “I mean it.”
I’d tried telling him he wasn’t going to pay my parents’ bills before, but then he’d reminded me it wasn’t only them who were enduring the life they’d created. It was me, too. And he wasn’t going to let me live like that.
I only nodded, because he was right. I still didn’t put it on his shoulders, though. He could take care of mewhen we left this town. Not while I was stuck in my parents’ house. If they wanted to waste away, so be it. But I refused to let Beckham right their wrongs.
“I will,” I lied.
