“I mean, Christ, Dix. You think we can just show up when we feel like it? This is it, little sister. Our shot. This is it.”
“I’m sorry,” I answer, but I’m not really. I’m not sorry and I’m not really in this van on the way to Nashville. I’m still in a hotel room in Austin with Gavin.
Dallas slams on the horn when a maroon Acadia pulls out in front of us. “Damn it.”
“We’ll get there, D. I checked my GPS and it’s only—”
Dallas looks away from the windshield long enough to throw a pissed-off look of barely leashed fury at me.
“Oh, your GPS? Because your phone knows the traffic conditions on the interstate? Or it has an app for telling the future? That a new model? You get an upgrade I wasn’t aware of?”
I smirk at him in the rearview mirror, feeling bad that I put us behind. But if this is the price for my last time with Gavin, I’ll pay it happily.
“No,” I say, tucking my legs up on the bench seat beneath me. “I was just saying that—”
He huffs out an exasperated sigh. “Well don’t just say, okay? You saying we’ll get there on time doesn’t mean that we will.”
“Neither will your bitching about it,” Gavin breaks in, the fierce undercurrent of violence flowing in his words. “So give it a goddamn rest already.”
Dallas turns his attention to Gavin and I swallow the urge to smile. He’s always been the peacemaker, but he never takes sides. The look he’s pummeling my brother with says this time he has. And it’s mine.
“Easy,” Dallas warns, the tension in the confined cab of the van growing heavier among the three of us. But then my brother laughs. “Dude. I thought you got laid last night. No luck?”
Oh no. Every cell in my body goes on high alert. Dallas is grinning good-naturedly, but Gavin looks like he wants to jump out of the van and into oncoming traffic.
“None of your business, dude.”
“My bad.” My brother laughs as he weaves into the fast lane. “You said you were crashing with a friend, so I just assumed—”
“Lark, I’m dead serious. Shut it the fuck down.”
I swallow hard, pulling my arms around my knees and trying to pretend they’re talking about something else. Someone else.
“All right, all right. Shutting.” My brother shakes his head. “Guess this one actually meant something for a change. I’ve never seen you so worked up over a one-nighter. Any chance I’ll get to meet her? Or you too afraid she might actually have taste and ditch you for me?”
Holy disgusting incest, Batman. Shut up.
Despite my urge to plug them, my ears perk, both anxious and dreading Gavin’s response.
Gavin ignores him. “I’m taking a nap. Wake me up if you want me to drive.”
I can see from the space between the seat and the window that he’s shoving his duffel against the glass and using it as a pillow. My voice leaps into my throat to tell him we can switch places and he can sleep on the bench seat, but he’s practically radiating anger and frustration and I’m still too wound up and raw to risk being snapped at by him.
It doesn’t take long before I’m dozing in that murky area between sleep and reality. I’m vaguely aware when the boys change places somewhere between Little Rock and Memphis. They hand me a bag of drive-through food that gets cold before I eat it.
Somewhere in strange daylight hours that feel oddly bright for almost dinnertime, we’re stopped when I’m roused from restless napping and I see Dallas practically hurdling Gavin to switch seats with him once again.
Sitting up, I blink myself awake just in time to see a uniformed police officer walking to where Dallas is now sitting. I sit upright and try to look like a willing participant in the van instead of a kidnapped hostage. Pretty sure my bedhead in the middle of the day isn’t helping. The officer leaves with Dallas’s license and proof of insurance.
I glance out the windshield but all I can see is the highway and trees. “Where are we?”