I had every intention to pull his hands from my face. His touch left me reeling, and I no longer knew which end was up. The walls I’d built, all the lies I’d told myself, all came tumbling down. Instead of pulling away, I clung to his wrists. I was drowning. “I’m not okay, Jordan.”
“I know, baby.” He pulled me into his arms, all my mental warning bells sounded at once. I should pull away. I couldn’t find what I needed like this, not with what had happened between us.
“Don’t.” I shook my head against the warmth of his chest, “Don’t call me that.”
The need to stay there in his arms was too great for me to try to break free. I’d wanted this for so long, needed his embrace for weeks. He’d denied me that, of all the things he’d done that was the worst.
I loathed myself for needing his touch, for needing him.
“Jordan…” I pushed against his chest, putting some space between us. “I can’t do this.” I looked at the dry grass at my feet, unable to look at his face. I feared what would happen if I really looked at him. “I can’t…because I want it too much.”
He sighed and moved around me, leaving me standing there at the door. I stayed frozen to that spot, stuck in that moment torn between desire and survival, until he called at me from the passenger side. “We gonna do this?”
“Yeah.” I tried to smile but it didn’t happen. I couldn’t find that calm place I’d had before I’d climbed from the truck. Jordan had left me stripped bare, feeling every emotion at once. I put a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel to keep from shaking.
“You taught me how to drive in this.” My smile was grim, though the memory was a bright happy one. “God, I was so scared.”
“Are you scared now?” The low rumble of his voice was as sexy as the growl of the engine.
“Not of the truck.” Sparing him a glance in that moment cost me a lot. So much that I had to force my eyes forward to focus toward the pink glow over the horizon. I wasn’t over Jordan Slater, I never would be.
“Didn’t take much teaching.” Sensing my need to move on, Jordan quickly continued. “You caught on quicker than Aiden.”
“No way!” I was genuinely surprised. That I’d done anything with cars better than Aiden or Breanna was unheard of. Like always, he’d read me perfectly. I thought of my brother and sister, instead of Jordan and me.
“Fact. You took off on your first try, every time. He stalled out first try, at least twenty times. He about jerked my neck off my shoulders.”
All the Casey kids learned to drive on Old Man Slater’s old Chevy. It was beat up and rusted out then, a cast off hand-me-down farm truck. At one point, I’m pretty sure we sat on upturned buckets instead of seats and bounced through the fields behind the house. There were memories in this old truck, good memories, the sort that made the bad ones hurt less.
The way he was watching me stole my breath. I closed my eyes on an inhale in a desperate battle to cling to the happy memories and forget everything that hung between us.
With nothing left to do, holding on to the happy times, I opened my eyes and put the truck in gear. When my foot hit the gas, it responded like a dream, sliding from one gear to the next in a smooth rush well past sixty miles an hour.
I didn’t turn my head, I didn’t need to. I could sense his nearness, breathe in the intoxicating scent of him from the hoody. In that moment, I was cocooned in all things Jordan, pushing the truck faster and faster into oblivion.
I found a flat stretch and stopped the truck, looking at him only long enough for a nod of approval.
I couldn’t ignore the tingling sensation in my legs when his arm brushed my skin as he turned on the nitrous bottle. He turned completely in his seat and reached over me, pulling the seatbelt across my lap and fastening it. Jordan was so close, one turn of my head would have put my lips against his.
I didn’t turn. If I did, I would have lost more of myself than I could afford.
There was no burnout, I didn’t lay rubber for grip. I’d probably never go fast enough for that to matter. I wasn’t a racer like he was. But, I could still appreciate the power of the truck, find the excitement of putting my foot to the floor and letting her eat, as they said.
“Remember how to do this?” he asked as he pulled the belt across himself.
“Oh yeah.” I gave an excited smile and stomped it. I left off the clutch smoothly, without any barking of the tires. I grabbed second before I’d had a chance to think about it.
Then, I hit the button.
The speed the nitrous produced from the engine, the pure adrenaline garnered from it, was as good as sex. Better even, in some ways. I got gooseflesh, chills ran right down my spine and took my breath away.
I held it like that, my body tossed back against the seat until the unadulterated rush of adrenaline spiked to fear and my control started to slip. Only then did I lift off the gas, dried corn stalks passing so fast they were nothing more than whipping blurs in my side view.
“Oh my God!” I shouted as I slowed the truck to a manageable speed. The pure rush he’d spoke of earlier soothed my soul. For those few seconds, I was somewhere else. “Now I know why you do it.”
“Yeah.” He blinked at me, his face drained of most of its color. “But, I like it better from over there.”
I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you scared.”
“I’ve never ridden shotgun when someone else was making a hit. Much less someone who doesn’t race.”
“I learned from the best.” I winked at him. “Yeah, your dad was something else.”
“I wasn’t talking about Dad.” I laughed.
“God, you’re beautiful, Raelynn.” He said the words so quietly, I thought for a moment I imagined them. When I turned to him, he ducked his head away. I couldn’t recall a time when he’d done that, hidden his face from me. This was a side of Jordan I didn’t know, I wasn’t sure what to do with it.
I parked the truck on the shoulder and put it in neutral. There were years where I’d have given anything to hear him say things like that to me. Even now, there was a familiar tightness in my stomach at the knowledge he thought I was beautiful.
There was something else too, a sickening dark feeling that I couldn’t place. I could still see the way he’d looked at me when he fought Hunter, hear the derision in his voice. It had been so much worse than his rejection years ago.
“Take me home, Jordan.” I slid from the driver’s seat and made the trek around the truck for the last time. He wasn’t waiting for me at the door, he’d walked around the back of the truck. I let out a breath of relief I’d held. The space he’d given me, allowed me a moment to bolster myself.
“I wish I could take it all back.” He told me point blank when I shut the door behind me. “I can say I’m sorry a dozen times, but it won’t change anything. I was in a dark place, a broken place, I still am. I don’t think I can find my way out of it without you.”