“West,” Jax decided. “We’ll just drive west. Pick up odd jobs wherever we stop.”
“And then what?” Joey asked, hiding her smile. A chorus of frogs serenaded them as they sped past Diller’s pond.
“L.A.”
Joey shot him an incredulous look. “You want to live in Los Angeles?” As far as she was concerned, L.A. was a horse-less wasteland of boob jobs and overpriced real estate.
“Why not, Jojo? I wanna be someone. I’m not going to be anyone but John Pierce’s son or Carter or Beckett’s brother here.”
Joey reached out and put her hand over his t-shirt. She could feel his heartbeat strong and steady under her palm. “Jax, you’re never just going to be a Pierce.”
“That’s all that’s here for me.” He said the words quietly, heavily.
Her mood shifted from quiet amusement to pissed off in less than a second. She dug her nails into his chest. “That’s all that’s here for you? What the hell am I, jackass? Some high school distraction for you until you can start living your real life?”
Jax was used to her flairs of temper, and was practically immune to them by now. He squeezed her thigh, hard enough to leave fingerprints until she quit stabbing him in the chest.
“Joey.” Her name on his lips had the effect it always did, goose bumps on her skin and a warm, melty feeling in her stomach ... like drinking hot chocolate on a cold night.
She crossed her arms over her chest, trying to hold on to her mad.
“You’re everything to me. There’s no future without you.”
“You know I’m not going to throw away college and all my dreams to live out of a car with you and take showers in gas station restrooms, right?”
Eyes on the road, Jax grinned. “I know. And I’ll be right there with you.”
“Promise?”
“I promise you.” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “But maybe we could take a road trip this summer? Just the two of us. No parents, no brothers, no school.”
Placated, Joey relaxed in her seat. Her horse fund could probably spare a few hundred dollars for a road trip with Jax. She’d be eighteen, an adult. She would find a way to smooth things over with her dad, who’d hate the idea. Anything would be worth spending her nights wrapped in Jax’s arms, waking up to that sexy as hell face.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
“Seriously?” He was back to her lighthearted Jax again.
“Yeah. Let’s figure it out. Maybe we could leave right after graduation.”
“I love you, Joey.” He laid a hand on his chest over his heart.
“I know.” She smirked at the dark outside her window and he gripped her leg again.
A flash of brown on the side of the road caught her eye. It was moving fast, too fast for her to get Jax’s name out of her throat.
The headlights caught the glow of the deer’s eyes as it burst through the trees onto the road. Jax braked hard, cutting the wheel to the right. And for a split second, as the deer bounded safely across the road, Joey thought they were out of danger. But the gravel sent them fishtailing.
She had less than a second to feel the sick, icy fear in her gut as the colossal oak loomed before them. Jax’s name exploded from her in a scream of dread. His arm slammed against her chest pinning her to the seat just before the sickening crunch of metal and glass.
And then her world went dark.
Pain woke her. And with it dread.
“Jax?” In her head it was a scream, but somewhere between her head and her lips it came out as a strangled rasp.
“He’s not here, honey. Remember?” Her mother’s voice and the scent of her Vanilla Fields came to her, floating on the fog of fluorescent lights and grief.
She went under again trying to remember why Jax wasn’t with her.
Joey was discharged on her birthday with a concussion, seventeen stitches running from wrist to elbow, and 50 units of a stranger’s blood coursing through her veins. Her chest and stomach were a mottled purple from the seatbelt that had saved her life.
There was no celebration.
Jackson Pierce was gone.
She’d heard her mother and Jax’s mom, Phoebe, talking in hushed whispers at the foot of the bed when they thought she was asleep.
He’d vanished from the farm in the middle of the night, leaving behind a note and most of his possessions.
He was heading west, the note said.
Joey’s father said in no uncertain terms that he preferred to think the boy who put his precious daughter in the hospital was dead.
So did Joey.
Read about the eldest Pierce Brother!
No More Secrets: A Small Town Love Story
Carter Pierce is a man who believes in signs. He just doesn't know what to do with this one.
In the small town of Blue Moon Bend, where everybody is a matchmaker, Carter wants to be left alone to tend the family farm. After returning from Afghanistan with scars, his only goal is recovery. He doesn't need any distractions, and definitely not one with silver-blonde hair and lips that beg to be kissed.