When a girl approaches a guy’s car, his most prized possession, with the expression I had and armed with a heeled shoe—whether a five-inch pump or the chunky one incher I was aiming—what did they think was going to happen?
Pulling my arm back, I crouched into position right behind the Jaguar’s right taillight, and I swung my arm down hard. It took me a few hard stabs with the heel to get the taillight to break, but it worked.
Ford dropped a series of curses while the other guys in the car watched me like they were both appalled and enraptured. I was making my way over to the other taillight when the Jaguar’s wheels spun out right before the car sped away.
Ford stuck his head back out the window and hollered, “Crazy bitch!”
I didn’t take my eyes off of the car until its one intact and one broken taillight disappeared. From the look and sound of Ford, he was in no condition to be driving. I should have done the honorable thing and called Charlotte to let her know her fiancé was about to drive himself—and the rest of his soon-to-be extinct kind—into a tree, but I didn’t.
I believed in natural selection, and it clearly hadn’t caught up to the Ford McBrides of the world yet. Tonight might have been the night.
“Glad he finally figured that out,” I said as I slid my shoe back onto my foot.
“Figured out what? That he’s a dead man walking?” Boone moved up beside me in the middle of the dirt road, staring at the spot where their car had disappeared.
“That I’m a crazy bitch,” I shrugged.
Boone’s shoulder brushed mine. “Did you just do that because you hate Ford or because you like me? Because I’m pretty sure what you just did could be charged as a crime.”
So much adrenaline was surging through my system from what had just happened and what had just been about to happen before Ford and his gang of future dodo birds showed up, I felt drunk with it. “I might hate Ford McBride, but I just went ‘crazy bitch’ on his taillights because I like you.”
Boone smiled at the ground, kicking it with the toe of his boot. “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“I’m not sure I just like you, Boone . . .” The adrenaline was giving me courage, making me heady with power.
Boone’s shoulder tensed right before he moved toward the car, leaving me straddling the middle of the road all alone. “We should get going,” he said, his voice flat. “We don’t belong here.”
I was in my bedroom, sitting on the edge of my bed, wringing my hands in my lap, and waiting for Boone. The sensation of déjà vu was so violent and intense, it almost knocked me over.
A lifetime had passed since that day seven years ago, and even though I wasn’t the same girl I’d been then, she was still a part of me. I’d waited for hours that afternoon, not giving up hope until I woke up the next morning not having remembered falling asleep. Boone hadn’t come that day. He’d left me waiting.
Part of me felt like I’d been waiting for seven years, but for what, I wasn’t sure. An answer, maybe? An explanation in the least? Some reason that would justify why he left me after what he’d found out.
That was what I felt like I was waiting for now, on the edge of my bed again. Answers. Yet another part of me wasn’t waiting for answers that might explain the past, but answers for right now. What had happened between us only a short hour ago. What had been about to happen between us. What might happen between us going forward.
Answers. That was what I needed.
That was what I hoped Boone would be willing to give me.
The shower shut off, and I heard him step out of it and pad across the bathroom. Unlike the past few days when he’d left the bathroom door cracked open, tonight it was closed. I didn’t have to test the handle to guess it was locked as well.
Another closed and locked door hanging between Boone and me. Another one to add to the pile. I was a fool for believing we might have a chance for something different. Our pasts might not have predestined our futures, but they certainly made it predictable.
He took his time in the bathroom; I couldn’t be sure exactly what he was doing, though I guessed it had plenty to do with avoiding me. We hadn’t exchanged a word since sliding into my dad’s car, driving back here, and trudging up to my bedroom. We might have had plenty of things we wanted to say to one another, but I wasn’t sure where to start, and I guessed he felt like he’d already said too much through his actions.
When the door did finally open, I heard the click of the lock clicking free first. He’d locked me out, as I’d suspected. Why? Had I gotten too close? Had he let himself get too close?
It was all such a clusterfuck of confusion, I felt like I was staring at a never-ending field of wheat and expected to find the single stalk made of gold.
Boone emerged from the bathroom, the usual billow of steam missing from the portrait.
“Enjoy your cold shower?”