I found myself wanting to tell him about seeing Bart. About how my heart didn’t hurt nearly as much as I thought it would the night he’d driven me home.
Maybe it was better if I didn’t confide in him, though.
I settled down at my small desk in the den, opened my computer and scrolled, finding the article I’d bookmarked a long time ago. It was an online piece from the Asheville Gazette about a girl who’d wrecked her car on the bridge overlooking Casey Lake right outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Posted three years ago, it described how a passing motorist had phoned in the accident. It didn’t give the motorist’s name or any identifying information. The paramedics and police had responded, but it wasn’t until the next day they’d got the equipment out to drag the lake. Once they found evidence of the car, divers had gone in to search for survivors. The article concluded with the statement that the search was on-going and the person driving was considered missing. There was no report of a young man on the shore, no report of someone pulling a girl from the water.
I closed out the tab and clicked my laptop shut.
I’d been absolutely terrified that night, but I ran through the woods until I came to a nearly deserted truck stop on the highway, where I begged some young college kids to give me a ride to Knoxville. They had. Once there, I’d bought a bus ticket to Atlanta with the cash I still had in the back pocket of my denim shorts.
The rest is history. Here I was, living and breathing and not doing bad. If I’d stayed on that mountain—I stopped.
Don’t, Sunny.
Then Max’s face popped in my head.
But he wasn’t good to think about either.
I exhaled and went to the kitchen to make sugar cookies. That’s just what I needed—something sweet to forget all the bad.
Max
TONIGHT WAS OUR LET’S GET to know each other better date. I’d been to her house a couple of evenings to study and we’d touched on personal things, but now I wanted to dig into her, get under her skin. There were resistant layers I’d yet to peel away. She’d told me about being from North Carolina and growing up as a preacher’s kid in a strict household. I knew her father was sick with cancer and their relationship was strained. Her mom had died years ago in a car accident with a man she’d been having an affair with.
I’d been thinking a lot about Sunny lately. Her lips, those long legs, and the way she looked at me when she didn’t think I noticed.
I had a proposition for her—one that had been clawing at me since the moment she’d stood on my front porch. I wanted her in my bed.
“What’s your favorite color?” I asked, gazing at her from across the table inside the Orion Coffee Shoppe—the place we’d supposedly met. A hipster place near campus, it held poetry readings and band night for amateurs. I liked it immediately, mostly because it was low-key and no one paid me any attention.
She sent me a side-eye over a bite of her club sandwich. “Blue. Who cares?”
“I do. I want to know everything about you.”
“Why?” she said with a noncommittal shrug, completely unconcerned that the great Max Kent was interested in her. I liked that about her. She made me work for it.
“Well, in case you were wondering, my favorite color is blue too.”
“Nice,” she said. “If a reporter asks me, I’ll be sure to let him know. What else you got for me?”
“When’s the last time you had sex?” I took a sip of my latte, playing it cool, acting like I wasn’t dying to know the answer. I did my best to keep my eyes off her assets. I’d been trying for the past hour, ever since she’d waltzed through the door wearing ankle boots, a pair of skinny jeans, and an I Let the Dogs Out shoulder-baring top. Simple. No makeup but lipstick. Hot as fuck.
“It’s none of your business,” she said around chews.
“Tell you what. Answer my question, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about the mysterious Max Kent.”
She scrunched her nose up. “You’re no mystery. You’re practically an open book. All I have to do is visit your Facebook or Instagram page.”
“Not true. People see what they want. There’s more to me than just a talented, intelligent, charming, easy to talk to guy—”
“Okay, fine,” she said, cutting me off. An elegant finger swirled around her soda glass. “I haven’t had sex since Bart—so since last spring.” Smoky gray eyes peeked at me through dark lashes. “He was my first.”
I hid my surprise by plucking a piece of bread off her plate and popping it in my mouth. Holy mother of all things. She was so damn innocent. My cock ached.
Why did it make me want her even more?
“You were a virgin?”
“I didn’t stutter.”
“Don’t be defensive.”
“I’m not,” she snapped.
I laughed. “God, I think I love you.”