Page 125 of Off Limits
Don’t be, she mouths back with a shake of her head.
‘Nobody goes anywhere,’ Ally announces, and takes a seat next to her husband. ‘Not until we figure out what to do about Brody Conway.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Serenity
Friday morning, my car won’t start.
‘Want me to come pick you up?’ Jake asks when I call him.
Last night felt liberating. Confessing all my secrets to people who weren’t there to judge me, who all had my back. And telling people that Jake is my boyfriend? Magical.
From Dalton and Ally’s house, he walked me back to my car. Knowing now I was barely gonna make it back to Temptation Heights in one piece, I wish I’d taken him up on his offer of sneaking me into his bedroom to spend the night at his place.
‘As much as I wanna sayyes, it would take you forty-five minutes to get over here in morning traffic, plus another half hour to drive me to The Bounty.’
‘Yeah, but that’d be a whole half hour I got to spend in your company.’
I find myself grinning in my front yard. ‘You’d be late for training.’
‘I’d think up some excuse.’
‘In case you forgot, we still have to be careful, you know.’
I hear him laugh at the other end of the phone. ‘I know, I know. I just… I wish it could all be out in the open. I want everyone to know you’re my girl. No more sneaking around.’
‘One day,’ I sigh, because after last night, it feels like we’ve had a taste of freedom, and now we both want more.
‘So, what about later?’ Jake asks. ‘How are you gonna do the thing if you don’t have wheels? You won’t let me drive you to work, at least let me pick you up after your shift.’
I’m nervous about later. The possibility of seeing Brody Conway again.
‘Alright, I’ll let you do that part. Pick me up at my place. Tonight. Around seven fifteen?’
‘Already counting down the hours, baby.’
‘See you tonight.’
‘I love you,’ he says, and I swear I’ll never get over it.
‘I love you too,’ I tell him, and I mean it with my whole heart.
I’m finishing giving Dad his dinner when Jake’s pickup rolls into the driveway after dark.
‘You seem to have a visitor,’ Dad mumbles. ‘That the same boy as before?’
‘Daddy, I’m not seventeen,’ I remind him. ‘Jake’s more of a man than a boy.’
Dad snorts. ‘He’s a football player is what he is. He your boyfriend now?’
‘He is,’ I say dreamily. ‘But I’m in trouble if anybody finds out about that. So don’t go telling the neighbors. He can’t stay.’
‘Won’t say a word, sugar. So long as he treats you right.’
I could tell him a thing or two, about men not treating me right, but instead I stay silent. ‘You got everything you need? I won’t be late back.’
His eyes are already trained on the baseball game on TV. It’s a rerun of last year’s World Series.
