Page 4 of Crew Girl

He could feel his dad hard-staring him. He ripped off the rest of the tape and dumped it in the trash. “I’m not going to compromise my scholarship, okay?”

“I’ll fire you on the spot if you do,” Oren threatened. In a loving kind of way, but Cam knew he meant it. There was a real chance Cam could go to college, and he knew his dad would happily sell a kidney to get him there.

“I’ll go when I get back,” he called over his shoulder. If there was time. Once he’d fired up Walt’s engine and put him in gear, he began a slow reverse out of the shop forecourt, making sure to look right, left, then right again—BAM!

What the hell?

He slammed on the brakes, heart thumping like a jackhammer, doubling in pace when he caught a flash of something airborne in the rearview mirror that landed in the truck bed with a thunk. Whatever it was, it could swear.

Shitshitshitshitshitshit.

He tore off his seat belt and flew out of the vintage truck so fast a life behind bars didn’t have time to flash before his eyes.

The UFO was a teenage girl around his age. Living. Breathing. No fountains of blood. Phew. He wouldn’t be spending the rest of his life in prison for involuntary manslaughter. Thank god he’d put a pile of tarps on the toolboxes this morning. Which made him wonder if future him had known a hot teenage girl was going to endo into the truck.

“Hey!” She scrabbled to her knees without screaming in agony, which boded well.

“You need to watch where you’re going,” she sniped.

He had been.

Her fingers were shaking as she unclipped her helmet. Nerves. Adrenaline. Totally normal. If he’d done an up-and-over into a pickup truck, his would be, too. It wasn’t like he was calm either.

She had pretty brown eyes. Really dark brown. And they were currently trained on him, like she was trying to bore a hole in him.

“You’re not going to ask if I’m okay?”

He took a beat before answering. She was scared. So was he, if fear meant thinking she looked like the kind of girl he’d ask out for tacos if they’d met another way.

Errr… Earth to Cam. Tires? The Lake? “You look okay to me.”

Her eyes widened.

“Uninjured,” he clarified as he crouched down to grab her bike.

“Do people drive with their eyes closed around here?”

Ah. She was a tourist. Which meant she’d be gone soon. No taco dates for him. He stood, leaving his “customer is always right” filter on the ground.

“You hit me,” he began, and definitely would’ve kept on going if he hadn’t been caught short watching her negotiate the uneven terrain in the truck bed. Even though her cargo pants, T-shirt, and jean jacket were baggy, core strength and strong legs were the only way to explain why it looked like she was walking on water instead of navigating a seabed of mismatched toolboxes. Surfer, maybe? Something that required balance anyway.

She saw him watching and shot him a look like she was still waiting for him to beg for forgiveness.

No way. He wasn’t going to apologize for something that wasn’t his fault, but as an olive branch, he picked up her bike and slid it lengthways across the truck bed to make sure it was still rideable.

“What are you doing?”

“Stealing it,” he deadpanned.

She snorted.

At least she had a sense of humor.

Though obviously functional, the bike was not from this decade. Maybe even this century. And not in a retro way. Whoever this girl was, she wasn’t a washashore—one of the rich folks who tripled Eagle’s Cove’s population over the summer.

“Tick tock. Still waiting for that apology,” she said.

Talked like one, though.