The click signaling that the car doors had been unlocked sounded, and I climbed into Jared’s warm car, the passenger side this time. My hands were shaking from my encounter with Nate, so I struggled as I tried to take off Jared’s shirt.
“Leave it on.” He didn’t even spare me a glance before turning the ignition.
I hesitated. His anger was visible as the muscles in his jaw clenched. “But I’m not cold anymore.”
“And I can’t look at your ripped shirt right now.”
I shrugged the shirt back over my shoulders, put my belt on, and slammed into the back of the seat as he peeled out of the parking lot.
What the hell was his problem?
Was he mad at me or Nate? Obviously, Jared didn’t want to see me hurt—not physically, anyway. But why was he being so curt with me?
The car fishtailed slightly as it left the gravel lot and pulled onto the paved road of the highway. Jared weighed down on the gas and shifted forcefully as we picked up speed. No music played, and he didn’t speak.
The highway was deserted except for the haunting trees that loomed over us on the sides. Judging by how quickly everything flew past my window, Jared was way over the speed limit.
Peeking at him through the corner of my eye, I saw that he was seething. He licked his lips and took several heavy breaths, while he tightened and retightened his grip on the steering wheel.
“What’s your problem?” I grabbed the bull by the horns and asked.
“My problem?” He raised his eyebrows as if I’d just asked the dumbest question. “You come to the bonfire with that idiot Ben Jamison, who can’t stay sober enough to drive you home, and then you traipse off into the woods, in the dark, and get groped by Dietrich. Maybe you’re the one with the problem.” His voice was low but bitter and spiteful.
He was mad at me? Oh, hell no.
I turned in my seat and looked straight at him. “If you recall, I had the situation under control.” I tried to keep my voice calm. “Whatever favor you think you were doing me only satisfied your own anger. Leave me out of it.”
He sucked in his cheeks and continued down the highway.
As I glanced at the speedometer, my eyes bulged when I noticed that Jared was driving over eighty miles per hour.
“Slow down,” I ordered.
He ignored my plea and gripped the steering wheel harder. “There’s going to be situations you can’t handle, Tate. Nate Dietrich wasn’t going to take too kindly to what you did to him tonight. Did you think that was going to be the end of it? He would’ve come after you again. Do you know how badly Madoc wanted to do something after you broke his nose? He didn’t want to hurt you, but he wanted to retaliate.”
Why didn’t he then?
Madoc had been humiliated, no doubt, at that party more than a year ago when I broke his nose. But he’d just let it roll off him, or so I thought, and hadn’t sought any payback. Thanks to Jared.
I guess Nate Dietrich wouldn’t be seeking retribution, either. Not with Jared involved.
I felt gravity pull my body towards the other side of the car, and my heart thumped wildly when I saw that Jared wasn’t slowing down as we rounded the soft turn.
“You need to slow down.”
Jared snorted. “No, I don’t think so, Tate. You wanted the full high school experience, didn’t you? Football player boyfriend, casual sex, reckless behavior?” He goaded me with his sarcasm.
What was he talking about? I never wanted that stuff. I just wanted to be normal.
And then he switched off his headlights.
Oh, God.
The road was black, and I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of us. Thankfully, there were reflectors that separated our lane from the oncoming traffic, but the country roads were busy with deer and other animals, not just traffic.
What the hell was he doing?
“Jared, stop it! Turn on the lights!” I braced one hand on the dash as I turned to confront him. We were zooming down the road at a frightening speed, and a lump formed in my throat.
The tattoo on his arm peeked out of his t-shirt, and it stretched with his tensing muscles while he gripped the stick shift. My legs were weak, and for the first time in a long time, I was too scared to think.
“Jared, stop the car now!” I yelled. “Please!”
“Why? This isn’t fun?” Jared’s voice was disturbingly calm. None of this scared him, or even excited him. “Do you know how many squealing airheads I’ve had sitting in that seat? They loved it.” His eyebrows pinched together as he looked at me with mock puzzlement. He was pushing me.
“Stop.The.Car!” I screamed, my heart pounding with dread. He was going to kill us.
Jared twisted his head to face me. “You know why you don’t like this? Because you’re not like them, Tate. You never were. Why do you think I kept everyone away from you?” His voice sounded angry, but clear. He wasn’t drunk, at least I didn’t think he was, and this was more emotion than I’d experienced from him in years, except for the night of the kiss.
He kept everyone away from me? What did that mean? Why?
The tires screeched as he rounded another turn, and we drifted into the other lane. I was breathing as fast as the car was speeding now, I was sure. We were going to hit something or flip over!
“Stop the fucking car!” I bellowed with the full force of my lungs, pounding my fists on my thighs before hitting him on the arm.
The last thing I wanted to do was distract him, driving at a speed like that, but it worked. Jared slammed on the brakes, using some choice words directed at me and down-shifted as he veered to the side of the road and stopped.
I scrambled out of the car, and Jared hopped out at the same time. We both leaned over the roof, eye to eye.
“Get back in the car.” Jared’s teeth were bared as he growled.
“You could’ve killed us!” My throat tightened, and I noticed his furious eyes graze over my ripped shirt that had poked out of the button down I was still wearing.
“Get back in the damn car!” He slammed his palm down on the roof, his eyes on fire.
“Why?” I asked, tears threatening.
“Because you need to go home,” he spat out like ‘duh’.
“No.” I shook my head. “Why did you keep everyone away from me?” He’d started this conversation, and I had every intention of finishing it.
“Because you didn’t belong with the rest of us. You still don’t.” Jared’s eyes narrowed in disgust, and my heart sunk. He was being deplorable as usual.
I hate him.
Without another thought, I ducked inside and grabbed Jared’s keys out of the ignition. Rounding the car door, I ran a few yards ahead and unfastened the twist oval key ring. Slipping one of his keys off, I held it in a fist near my face.
“What are you doing?” He approached slowly, annoyance evident in his eyes.
“One more step, and you’re losing one of your keys. Not sure if it’s the car key, but eventually I’ll get to that one.” I loaded my arm behind my head, ready to toss it at any second. He halted.
“I’m not getting in your car. And I’m not letting you leave. We’re not moving from this spot until you’ve told me the truth.”
Sweat beaded my brow, even with the temperature down to the mid-sixties. Lips pursed, I waited for him to start.
But he didn’t. He looked to be working something out in his head, but I wasn’t about to give him to time to think of some lie to distract me.
When I raised my arm to toss the first key, his eyes shot helplessly between me and my fist, while he raised his hand motioning for me to stop.
After only a moment’s more hesitation, he finally let out a defeated sigh and met my eyes.
“Tate, don’t do this.”
“Not the answer I was looking for.” And I flung one of his keys into the brush off to the side of the road.
“Dammit, Tate!” he snapped, looking nervously between me and the dark forest where his key had disappeared.
I quickly unhooked another key and stuck my hand behind my head ready to catapult it at any second. “Now, talk. Why do you hate me?”
“Hate you?” Jared breathed heavily and shook his head. “I never hated you.”
What?
I was stunned. “Then why? Why did you do all the things you’ve done?”
He let out a bitter laugh, knowing he was cornered. “Freshman year, I overheard Danny Stewart saying he was going to ask you to the Halloween dance. I made sure he never did, because he also told his buddies that he couldn’t wait to find out if your tits were more than a handful each.”
I cringed in disgust.
“I didn’t even think twice about my actions. I spread that rumor about Stevie Stoddard, because you didn’t belong with Danny. He was a dick. They all were.”
“So you thought you were protecting me? But why would you do that? You already hated me by that point. That was after you’d returned from your dad’s for the summer.” My confusion sprang forth with every syllable. If our friendship had ended by that point, and he didn’t care for me, then why did he care to protect me anymore?
“I wasn’t protecting you,” Jared said matter-of-factly, pinning me with a heated stare. “I was jealous.”
Flutters attacked my belly. It felt like something was circling a drain in my stomach, the tingles going further and further down.
I barely registered him inching forward, stalking closer as I tried to catch my breath. “We got to high school, and all of a sudden, you’ve got all these guys liking you. I handled it the only way I knew how.”
“By bullying me? That makes no sense. Why didn’t you talk to me?”
“I couldn’t.” He wiped his brow before stuffing his hand into his pocket. “I can’t.”
“You’re doing fine so far. I want to know why all of this started in the first place. Why did you want to hurt me? The pranks, the black-listing from parties? That wasn’t about other guys. What was your problem with me?” I accused him.
His cheeks puffed out as he sighed. “Because you were there. Because I couldn’t hurt who I wanted to hurt, so I hurt you.”
That can’t be it. There has to be more.
“I was your best friend.” Frustration pushed my patience further away from me. “All these years…” My voice broke off barely containing the tears that pooled in my eyes.
“Tate, I had a shitty summer with my dad that year.” His voice sounded closer. “When I came back, I wasn’t the same kid. Not even close. I wanted to hate everybody. But with you, I still needed you in a way. I needed you to not forget me.” Jared’s voice never cracked, but I could tell there was remorse in his tone.
What had happened to him?
“Jared, I’ve turned it over and over in my head wondering what I could’ve done to make you act the way you did. And now you tell me that it was all for no reason?” I looked up to meet his eyes.
His body inched closer, but I didn’t care. I wanted to hear more. “You were never clingy or a nuisance, Tate. The day you moved in next door I thought you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I fucking loved you.” The last was barely a whisper as his eyes dropped to the ground. “Your dad was unloading the moving truck, and I looked out my living room window to see what the noise was. There you were, riding your bike in the street. You were wearing overalls with a red baseball cap. Your hair was spilling down your back.” Jared didn’t meet my eyes with his confession.
We’d moved to a new house in town after my mom passed. I remembered seeing Jared for the first time that day. He remembered what I was wearing?
I loved you. A tear spilled over as I closed my eyes.
“When you recited your monologue this week, I ….” he drifted off with a sigh. “I knew then that I’d really gotten to you, and instead of feeling any satisfaction, I was angry with myself. I wanted to hate you all these years, I wanted to hate someone. But I didn’t want to hurt you, and I didn’t really realize that until the monologue.”
Suddenly, he was in front of me. Cocking his head to the side, his glistening eyes searched mine. I didn’t know what he looked for, and I didn’t know what I wanted to reveal. I hated him for the years of torment. He threw away everything we had because he was angry at someone else. Needles pierced my throat as I struggled to hold back more tears.
“You’re not telling me everything.” My voice cracked, as he reached up to cup my cheek and wipe the tear away with his thumb. His long, muscular fingers were warm on my skin.
“No, I’m not.” His husky whisper caused tingles to spread over my body, or maybe it was his thumb caressing circles on my cheek. I was becoming light-headed with everything that had happened tonight.
“The scars on your back,” I choked out, my eyes fluttering with the sensation of his touch. “You said you had a bad summer, and that when you came back you wanted to hate everybody, but you haven’t treated anyone else as badly as…”
“Tate?” His lips were inches from mine, and his body radiated heat. “I don’t want to talk any more tonight.”
I blinked and noticed how his body had drawn me in. Or maybe I’d drawn him in. We were like the positive sides of twin magnets again. He was so close now, and he’d eaten the distance between us without me noticing.
You’re not getting off that easy.
“You don’t want to talk anymore?” I spit out, not quite believing what I heard. “Well, I do.” And I twisted around to launch another key into the air, but Jared’s arms darted out and circled around my body, trapping me from behind.
I gasped for breath, while I tried squirm free. Thoughts swirled in my head, and it was hard to latch onto just one. He’d never hated me. I’d done absolutely nothing! Even though I knew that, part of me always thought there had to be a reason. And now he didn’t want to finish his story? I needed to know!
His solid arms secured me, his breath was hot against my hair as I struggled to move out of his arms. “Shhh, Tate. I won’t hurt you. I’ll never hurt you again. I’m sorry.”
Like that was going to erase everything!
“I don’t care about you being sorry! I hate you.” My hands gripped his forearms, which were braced over my chest as I tried to yank them loose. My anger turned to rage with his mind games and bullshit, and I was sick of the sight of him.
His hold on me lessened as he used his hands to peel the keys out of my fist. He let go of me, and I stepped forward before turning to face him.
“You don’t hate me,” he asserted. “If you did, you wouldn’t be this upset.” The cocky twist to his tone made my body stiffen, but I eased up when I felt the sting of my nails dig into my skin.
“Go screw yourself,” I snapped and began walking away.
Like hell was he going to get the upper hand! He wanted to me to forgive him in one night for years of embarrassment and unhappiness, and then he assumed that I cared about him. He thought he was coming out of this unscathed.
What a colossal douchebag!
The next thing I knew, my feet were being swept off the ground, and I was upside down. Jared had tossed me over his shoulder, and all the air left my body as his bone dug into my stomach.
“Put me down!” The heat of anger was like a blazing fire covering my skin. I kicked my feet and punched his back, but he simply held me tightly by the backs of my knees as he walked back the way we’d come. I knew my skirt covered nothing in this position, but we were alone out here, and I didn’t really care anyway, in my mood.
“Jared! Now!” I barked.
As if following orders, Jared swung me back up-right where I landed in a sitting position on the hood of his car. It was still warm under my thighs from when it’d been driven, but the heat was not a welcome comfort, since I was already burning with fury.
Jared leaned in slowly, probably afraid I’d hit him, and placed his hands on either side of me. His legs stood between mine, and I immediately flushed with the memory of the last time we were in this position.
“Don’t try to get away,” he warned. “As you remember, I can keep you here.”
I sucked in a breath. Yes, I did remember.
My toes curled at the thought of that kiss, but I knew it couldn’t happen again.
“And I know how to use pepper spray and break noses.” My voice sounded like a pathetic little mouse, squeaky and barely audible. I leaned back on my hands to maintain as much distance as possible, but my heart was pounding like the Rakes of Mallow.
“I’m not Nate or Madoc,” he threatened. “Or Ben.”
And his meaning wasn’t lost on me. I wasn’t attracted to them, and he knew it.
He leaned in closer, his black-brown eyes making my body want to do things my brain knew it shouldn’t. His lips were an inch from mine, and I could smell his cinnamon breath.
I hate him. I hate him.
“Don’t,” I whispered.
His eyes searched mine. “I promise. Not unless you ask.”
His mouth dipped to the side and lightly grazed my cheek. Unwanted pleasure escaped my throat, and I let out a little moan.
Dammit!
He never kissed me. He never put his lips together or tasted me. His mouth only glided along my skin leaving a delicious trail of desire and need. Down my cheek, his velvety lips caressed my skin before moving across my jaw bone and then descending to my neck. I closed my eyes, savoring the new sensations.
I’d never made love before, and I’d definitely never made out with anyone that made me feel like this. Hell, he wasn’t even kissing me, and I was struggling not to surrender.
As his lips moved over my ear, he asked, “Can I kiss you now?”
Oh, God. No. No. No.
But I wasn’t saying that. I said nothing. Giving in felt like letting him win. And telling him to stop was out of the question, too. I didn’t want him to stop. He felt too good. Like a roller coaster multiplied times one hundred.
His lips moved back over my cheek, inching closer to my mouth.
“I want to touch you.” His words were against my lips now. “I want to feel what’s mine. What’s always been mine.”
Oh, sweet Jesus.
Those words shouldn’t turn me on. But holy hell, they did. My mouth quivered with wanting to take him in. I tasted his breath and wanted to capture and taste all of him. I wanted to fulfill my need.
But my eyes snapped open when I realized that it would fulfill his need, too.
Shit.
I bit down on the corner of my mouth to stifle the ache between my legs, and used my weak muscles to shove him away.
I could barely meet his eyes. He knew he’d gotten to me. He had to know.
“Stay away from me.” I hopped off the car and walked to the passenger side.
I heard his chuckle behind me. “You first.”
