“Maybe I should’ve. I would have, if I ever thought you’d cave,” he jokes, raising an eyebrow. He gently plays with a lock of my hair. “And sometimes you have to learn on your own that your parents aren’t right about everything.”
My parents. I let out a sigh. They would kill me if they could see me now. But the funny thing is, I don’t care. My father has been saying forever that he knows what’s best for me, and that someday, I’ll thank him. But if I’d listened to him, I never would have had this amazing night with Dax. “Maybe they’re not right about a lot of things,” I mumble.
He trails his warm finger on my collarbone. “Law school?”
I nod. “My father thinks it’s the key to my happiness. But what does he know about happiness? I thought he knew everything, but obviously not. He and my mother are miserable together.” I think of the way I left my dad, snoozing away on the couch. “They’re getting a divorce, you know.”
He raises an eyebrow but seems less than shocked. “Why?”
I sigh. “No clue. They won’t tell me. They suddenly hate each other. And sometimes I think it’s because of me. You know I’m their world. Maybe I was the common thread holding them together, and without me to look after, they just fell apart.”
“That’s their business, not yours,” he says simply.
But it’s not that simple for me.
It’s different for Dax, though. He hasn’t really had parents to depend on, ever. I try to explain what I mean. “I’ve never seen my dad look so down. He’s used to laugh and smile all the time. Now he’s like a totally different person. I feel like if I disappoint him with the law school thing, he’ll unravel completely.” I close my eyes. “I wish I had a real passion that I followed with my whole heart. I mentioned once to my dad that I might like to be a lawyer. I also said I might like to be a princess or a rock star or an astronaut, too. But he took the lawyer thing as gospel and now here I am. Stuck.”
“You’re not stuck. You need to tell him.”
Again, he makes it sound so easy. “But I need to have a solid back-up plan. I don’t even know what I want to do.”
He looks puzzled. He’s always loved cars. Tinkering is in his blood. I guess it’s hard for him to understand how a person can be born without passion like that. “Haven’t you ever had anything that stirred you up? Made you excited to wake up in the morning? Something you couldn’t not do?”
I don’t even have to think. I know I’ll come up blank. The only thing that’s ever made me feel out of control excited is, well . . . him. Maybe that’s pathetic, but it’s true. “I wish I could be like you. You know exactly what you love to do, and you do it.”
A smile quirks up one corner of his mouth. “Nah. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love cars. But the garage is the garage. It’s small, falling apart. I’ve been toying with the idea of opening a real high-end shop. Even got myself pre-approved for a loan. But my father tells me that Friesville ain’t the place for that. People have sent their cars to me from as far away as Connecticut, Virginia, Ohio to have me work on them, but he thinks it’ll fail. The last thing I want to do is sink what little our family has into it and prove him right,” he says.
The way he talks about it, his eyes blazing with such fierce intensity, I have a hard time believing anything he attempts will fail. “You should do it. I think it would work. Even in a small town like Friesville.”
He rolls over onto his back and plants his hands behind his head. I nestle myself in the crook of his arm.
“Parents,” he mutters. “Can’t live with ‘em. Can’t be born into this world without ‘em. I guess they did something right, though. If ours hadn’t decided to settle in Friesville, we never would’ve met.”
I swallow hard as I remember something else. “My parents are selling the house and leaving town, though. Soon I won’t have a home there. And I won’t have . . .” I stop, the words a reason to come back on the tip of my tongue.
Because now I have every reason to come back. Now, I have the biggest reason in the world.
He tucks a finger under my chin, lifting my head so I have no choice but to look into his eyes. “You’ll always have a home with me,” he tells me. “You got that?”
“But your family . . . your friends . . .” I start. If he’s my home in Friesville, there will be no sneaking around. And surely they’d all have something to say about us being a couple. That was the reason everything fell apart when we went public before.
Everyone turned on us, everything blew up, nobody supported what we had.
And worst of all . . . “My parents. Are you saying we just . . .”
He nods. “Fuck ‘em.”
It feels like such a huge step. But when I think of it, it’s like a heavy weight, released from my shoulders. We’re adults now, capable of making our own decisions. And everything about this feels right, and real. If he’s willing to take that major step, then I am, too.
I smile. “All right. Fuck ‘em.”
Chapter 9