“Some dipshit trying to be an ass over one of those video’s Daisy keeps posting of me.” I groaned. “I told her to stop doing that shit.”
“Ah, she thinks you’ll be another Biebs.” He laughed. “That’s why she’s so gung-ho about beddin’ you. You’re her claim to fame, her ticket outta Rockford.” He turned his beer up and shook his head. “You ever fuck her; you better make sure you use a condom, or you’ll end up with a kid.”
“I’m not sleeping with her.” The thought disgusted me.
“Right, right. You’re all up on the preacher’s daughter.”
“I’m not all up on her.”
I could feel him staring at me and when I turned to look at him, his lip was slightly curled. “You got issues.”
“Why? Because I’m not trying to screw her?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not always about sex, fuckface.”
“You know why Max Summers had her cornered the other night in the bar?”
I didn’t care why, but he told me anyway. “She dated him. She’s not as innocent as you think, bro.” He tipped his beer back again, smirking.
My jaw set. That bothered me. “Why would a girl like her date a guy like that?”
Trevor shrugged. “Girls like the bad guys, Noah. You know that.”
“He tried to fuck an unconscious seventeen-year-old girl that night at Britney’s party.” I stared at him.
“And you beat his ass for it.”
I chugged the rest of my beer and leaned back in the lawn chair, staring over the fence. Why would she date a guy like Max? “I don’t get it.”
“For what it’s worth, not everyone knew what a piece of crap Max was. Hell, most people still don’t.”
My phone rang again. Same unknown number. I answered it and immediately hung up. “Look, man, you like her—you like her. It’s just girls like her, they want a relationship. They want commitment, blah fucking blah.”
The thing was, with a girl like that, I didn’t mind the blah fucking blah.
_
The sun slowly sank below the horizon. The crickets had started early that evening, and the air was unusually pleasant for a mid-summer day.
I finished rinsing the paint from the paintbrush then laid it on the old brick retaining wall to dry.
“You out, son?” John called, leaning over the fence and placing his boot on the bottom rung.
“Yeah, guess so.”
“Well, thank you for all your hard work. It’s been a mighty help to me and Bo.”
“Glad to hear it.” I wiped my hands on the leg of my jeans and had started to my truck when the front door creaked open. Hannah stepped onto the porch in a pair of running shorts and a tank, shaking out a tablecloth. She smiled when I stopped at the bottom step of the porch. “You look cute.”
“Thanks.” She looked over my shoulder at her dad’s shop. “The whitewash looks good.”
“Appreciate that.” I swatted at a gnat. “What are you doing tonight?”
“Nothing.”
Grinning, I took a step back. “Alright, I’ll be back around eight to pick you up.”
“What?”
“You said you weren’t doing anything.”
“Well, I—”
“Nope, you want to get outta doing something with me, you’ll learn to lie when I ask you what you’re doing. A nothings always a ‘something with you’ as far as I’m concerned.”
A smirk worked over her lips while she folded the tablecloth over her arm. “Wow, noted.” She laughed.
“Eight.” I pointed at her.
“I guess so,” she said before slipping back inside.
20
Hannah
Where are we going?” I asked as we barreled down the interstate.
“It’s a surprise.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Don’t mmhmm me, lady.” He pinched my leg and I swatted his hand away as I watched Exit 3 pass us by.
“Okay, so we’ve passed Auburn… so it’s not a frat party.”
His eyes cut over at me. “A frat party? Really.” An arrogant smirk flashed over his lips. “Do I look like the frat boy type?”
“Of course not, so”—I looped my arm through his and leaned my head on his shoulder—“where are we going?”
“Patience is a virtue; any preacher’s daughter should know that shit.”
“Wow,” I laughed. “You are just…” Everything I need and want and…
A few minutes later he veered off the interstate, taking a right down a two-lane highway.
“You’ll love it,” he said, tapping his hand over the steering wheel. “At least you better or I’m questioning our friendship.”
Friendship? My heart sank a little, but I shook it off. What does it matter anyway? It doesn’t. “Mmhmm.”
“God, you and that mmhmm.” We turned onto a dirt road, and half a mile down the headlights shone over a large No Trespassing sign nailed to a tree. Noah, of course, drove right past it.
“Um…”
“Yeah?”
I thumbed back toward the sign. “That said No Trespassing.”
“Yup.” There was a slight smile on his face.
“And…”
“I’m illiterate. What did you say it said?”
“Noah!” I slapped his arm, letting my hand linger over his bicep for a second.
“Ah, come on, country girl, don’t tell me you don’t know that anything they tell you not to do is more than worth doing.”
I sank down in the seat. A tingle of a thrill darted up my spine while my conscious whispered to me that this was not a good idea. I glanced over at Noah, all bad-boy smiles and tattoos, and I knew that wherever he was taking me might end with a night in jail, but when you’re with Noah Greyson, well, a night in jail doesn’t seem so bad.
We came to the top of the hill and he put the truck into park, cutting the engine. “Alright.” He grinned while he threw the door open. I watched through the windshield as he rounded the front and came to open my door. Without a word, he grabbed my hand and yanked me out. There was nothing around us but a field and at the bottom of the hill, a string of lights. “What are we—”
He placed a finger on my lips, shushing me. I was tempted to jab my elbow into his ribs, but he threaded his fingers through mine and dragged me to the back of the truck. There was that southern silence surrounding us: the cicadas, a plane humming in the distance. “Alright,” he said, placing his hand on my waist and lifting me into the bed of his truck. “Promise not to scream?”
A nervous laugh slipped through my lips. “Okay, I’m not so sure I like the way this sounds…”
“Nah.” He winked as he hopped over the side of the truck, climbing in and taking a seat next to me. “But really, don’t scream.” He grabbed onto me and pulled me back against his chest.
His fingers went to my hair, brushing through while he hummed in my ear, and just when I closed my eyes and relaxed into him, the roar of the plane grew louder and louder. I tensed, and he squeezed me. “It’s fine.”
The rumbling got so loud, I went to cover my ears and then—whoosh—my hair whipped across my face. The smell of jet fuel permeated the air as the plane whizzed right over us. The red flash of the landing lights danced over the top of the truck before the tires screeched against a runway. Adrenaline shot through me.
“Woohoooo,” Noah shouted. “That’s a rush!” He held me tighter. “Isn’t it? Makes you feel alive?”
“That thing was like a hundred feet above us… if that.” I was still clutching my chest, waiting for my pulse to calm.
“I know,” he said against my ear, excitement dancing in his voice. Most guys get excited over sports cars, money…the fact that living excited him was intoxicating and addictive. I’m not sure I’d ever met a person who simply enjoyed life the way Noah did, and it made me want to be around him. He was infectious in the best way, especially to my worried heart. He made me forget, all the while making me feel things I had never felt before. And that was the first moment where I felt unexpectedly safe in his arms. My chest went tight. Things like that, you just kind of wait for them to fall apart. Careless things never last. And we were careless…
“How did you find this place?” I asked.
“In high school, I worked for some guy that had a house right here. Airport bought it from him. His house used to be”—he pointed behind the truck,—“right there. Paid him like four hundred grand for this little shitshack. He died a happy rich bastard.”
“That’s sad.”
“What, that he died?”
“Yeah.”
“Nah, Cletus—that was his name—he was damn near eighty. He had a grand ole’ time before he died. Last thing he sent me was a postcard from Bali.”
“Bali?”
“Yep, someplace with a bunch of monkeys, evidently it was a bucket list item for him. He crossed off his bucket list from selling this land. You can’t beat that.”
“I don’t guess so.”
“So, what’s on your bucket list?”
“I don’t know…”
He huffed. “Come on.”