No, I’m sorry. I can’t ask him that.
Why not?
Because Mia, Jake is a worldwide celebrity. He doesn’t make housecalls and he certainly doesn’t record birthday greetings to girls who call his sister a nepo baby. And don’t bother uninviting me. I already removed my name from the guest list. Have a great birthday, Mia
My face flushed with both terror and thrill as I pressed send and mentally prepared for the world as I knew it to end. And, strangely enough, I couldn’t wait to reclaim the part of me who had been a slave to their whim.
Turning off the phone, I tucked it into the cupholder just as movement caught my eye. I looked up to see Beats striding toward me, naked from the waist up and those buckets swinging with each step he took, like some hatless urban cowboy heading for a standoff.
Holy, holy hell. My untrained teenage eyeballs popped from their sockets upon his approach. What had I stumbled upon last night? I mean, Beats had been hot under the streetlights, but seeing him blazing in the sun was a whole new experience, one that every nerve ending in my body was screaming for.
My overstimulated brain focused in on his torso. So long and lanky and tan and sweaty. And dirty. Those off-roading trails cutting swathes over his stomach had now reached up to his chest and circled around his neck. And there were bruises mixed with road rash, like maybe he’d been dragged along the concrete at some point. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied by the needle pierced through one of his nipples, I might have questioned him on that as well. I wasn’t sure I liked the piercing, but I certainly didn’t hate it. That sort of summed him up. I shouldn’t like him. I shouldn’t lust after him. I shouldn’t invite him into my car. But I did like him. I did lust for him, and I was absolutely going to invite him into my car.
He approached with that squint in his eyes and that sly smile on his face. Oh wow, the tousled bad boy was on full display. I’d always fancied myself a clean-cut kind of a girl, but Beats was calling my bluff. He was a kind of sexy my racing heart had never experienced before, one of those rare breeds that looked better grubby and all scuffed up. Yet I was convinced Beats had the goods to transcend his setting. Drop him into my high school with a shower, a haircut, and some clean clothes, and every girl in school, including Mia, would be throwing themselves at him. He wouldn’t even look my way. But on this side of the tracks, with my trunk packed full of goodies to buy his love, I just might have a shot.
A dreamy smile jumped to my lips as Beats came to a stop at my passenger side window. I rolled it down, trying to remain calm. “You’re late.”
“You’d be late too if you had to tell time by the placement of the sun and the moon.”
“Wait, seriously?”
He smiled. “No.”
I laughed, his sarcasm easing my nerves. “Where’s your shirt there, Beats?”
“I was hot. I took it off. I didn’t think you were an establishment that required it.”
Yep. A sharp-mouthed cowboy.
Beats slid a hand over my freshly painted ride.
“Really, Melrose?” He grinned, waggling his brows. “You drive a Bronco?”
“I can explain.”
“Go ahead then. I’ll wait.”
He dropped an arm onto the roof and leaned his head into the open window, still grinning. Oh boy. What had I been thinking coming here alone? Last night, under the streetlamps, he’d seemed manageable, but in the daylight, Beats was clearly way more than I could safely handle. And what the heck was up with his hair? It was like the sweat from last night had dried into a cone on top of his head and then began to peel back like a jester’s hat. He was seriously the unruliest guy I’d ever laid eyes on, and all I could think was, where do I sign up?
“Before you assume I’m a spoiled rich girl, this Bronco is not straight off the production line. My dad has had this thing since the early nineties. He insisted on keeping it after the notorious sixty-mile long slow-speed car chase down the Los Angeles freeway, convinced it would one day become a collector’s item. But in the process, he basically drove it to the ground. Anyway, long story short…”
“Oh good,” he said. “It took two to three business days just to get to this point.”
“Shut up,” I laughed, speeding through the conclusion which included the car lasting long enough to become cool again and my dad putting in a new engine and giving it a fresh coat of paint so I would have a car to drive.
“The end.”
“So… just a piece of advice. If that’s the story you’re rolling with to prove you’re not a spoiled daddy’s girl, you might want to tweak the ending.”
That smirk—it was enough to lose my train of thought. “Do you want your underwear or not?”
He leaned all the way in. “I want.”
I drew in a gulp of courage.Ask, Grace. Just ask him. “Hey. You wanna get out of here for a while?”
“Uh…”
With his head still fully inside my vehicle, Beats took a quick scan of the area. Where was this hesitation coming from? Last night, he’d said he’d take anything I had to offer. Well, I was offering, and he wasn’t taking.
