Page 22 of Quarter Miles (Runaway 3)

I don’t love Cash.

From now until the end of this trip, I’d tell myself constantly.

I don’t love Cash.

“Where did you work? When you lived at the junkyard?” he asked.

I really didn’t feel like delving into the past once more, but the alternative wasn’t an option. I couldn’t sit here across from Cash with his unassuming smolder and pretend the sight of him wasn’t making me wet.

Talking was the lesser of two evils. “I worked at a car wash. Karson worked there too. The owner was kind of a jerk but he paid in cash and didn’t ask questions.”

When I’d filled out the application, I’d put the junkyard’s address as my own. Gemma had been listed as my guardian, Londyn a personal reference. Both had been listed with bogus phone numbers. If the owner had known, he hadn’t cared. He’d hired me on the spot.

“Is that how you met Karson? At the car wash?”

“Um, sort of.” This was why I didn’t want to open that box. One question led to another, then another, and I wouldn’t lie to Cash.

“Sort of?”

I sighed. “Yes, I met Karson at the car wash, but not as a coworker. I was on the sidewalk, begging for money.” It felt as pathetic to admit years later as it had at the time.

The easy look on Cash’s face disappeared as a crease formed between his eyebrows. “What?”

I lifted a shoulder. “I was broke.”

“Kat—”

“Don’t worry. It was just an experiment. That was the first and last time,” I said, cutting him off before he could ask questions. Maybe if I steered this conversation in the right direction, we could just avoid anything that would lead to a conversation about the pre-junkyard days.

Not even Carol or Liddy knew that whole story.

“Did you text your dad? Will he check on the house and water my plants while we’re gone?” I asked.

“Nice try, sweetheart.” Cash shook his head.

Sweetheart. As if Kat weren’t enough of a nickname. Why had he given me a pet name too? It was so endearing and affectionate and . . . sexless. Like I was an eight-year-old girl.

“There’s nothing more to explain. I didn’t have a penny to my name and I really wanted some money to buy a new pair of shoes.”

“Why’d you need the shoes?”

“Does it matter?”

“Kat.”

“Cash.”

His gaze drilled into mine, and that stare, combined with the stubborn set of his jaw, brooked no argument. His expression mimicked Easton’s more scrutinizing gaze. “Why did you need the shoes?”

“Because the only pair that fit were flip-flops,” I blurted. “And I was days away from turning sixteen so I could apply for a real job. I’d already talked to the manager at a fast-food place, but she told me I needed closed-toe shoes for work.”

It had always struck me as ironic that I couldn’t get a job to earn the money to buy the shoes without the shoes themselves. Asking my mother for money had been out of the question since I’d been lucky to have the flip-flops in the first place.

“I sat on a street corner with a cardboard sign and a chipped, green plastic cup that I’d taken from my house. And I earned seven dollars and ten cents.”

Cash sat perfectly still. Even his chest was frozen, like he’d forgotten how to breathe. But his eyes said everything he wasn’t going to voice.

“Please, don’t look at me like that.” I’d worked so hard to prove myself. To be