Page 24 of Malaise
NINE
“Hey, what’s goingon?”
I slam the door of the Falcon behind me and stash my bag at my feet. “Can we get out of here first?”
Our principal strides across the back field, hot on my trail. It might not be a regular school day, but I’m still bunking. She hesitates when Carver puts the car in gear and pulls away from the curb, shaking her head.
“Should we be worried about that?” he asks.
I shrink down in my seat. “Nah. Doubt she’ll do much about it. I mean, it’s just the day where they hand out schedules. So what if I’m skipping school?”
“What happened?” Carver turns us toward the river. “You sounded upset when you phoned, and looking at you now I’m about ready to turn the car around and knock some fucking heads together.”
“Everyone’s on at me about delaying exams.” I swivel in the seat as we jolt over a speed hump, tucking my knees to my chest. “They think it would be best given the circumstances.”
“And you don’t think they’re right?”
I frown at him. “No.”
Carver looks every bit as gorgeous as I remember him to be, and yet again, I get the severe case of the guilts for being able to look at a man and find him ridiculously attractive when I should still be drowning in the rip tide of grief that sucks me in every other hour of the day.
But those arms, inked and strong, cutting a sharp contrast against his white T-shirt. Those thick thighs, pulling the denim of his whitewashed jeans tight across the groin. And those eighteen-hole boots, devoid of laces for the top half and sagging open at his calves. Everything about him is easy on the eye, and most definitely something to be appreciated, yet the way he dresses isn’t what gets my heart beating faster and my breaths coming shorter.
It’s his smile. That easy, lazy smirk that he’s gracing me with right now. The way one simple twitch of his lips has my chest a little less tight, and my next breath a little easier to grasp.
Shit—talk, Meg. He’s asked you something. “Pardon?”
“I said, are you hungry? I haven’t had breakfast yet, and my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.”
“I could eat.” Look away. Look away before this gets awkward. “What did you have in mind?”
“All-day breakfast at the truck stop.”
“On the highway?”
“Know of another one?”
“No. I’ve just never been there.” Classy.
He jerks his chin up in acknowledgement, the strength of his side profile as he does hypnotising. “First time for everything.” We take a sharp right and he redirects our course toward the highway. “You gonna tell me what happened other than pressure about exams?”
“Who says there’s anything else?”
Carver sighs and glances over as we glide through the last intersection before the access road, laying those baby-blues on me. “You don’t strike me as the studious type who’d get this upset over delaying exams.”
Bastard. I swivel back to face front and stare out the windscreen at the white lines flashing by. “I got told to stay away from Jasper Arden.”
“By who?”
“Amelia Dennis and her clone, Cassie.”
He snorts and shakes his head. “I wouldn’t pay much mind to them.”
“I didn’t. But they said something to me that pissed me off, the same thing Jasper said to me a couple of days ago.”
“Yeah?” I catch his eye as we near the end of the merging lane for the highway. “What about? Den?”
“No,” I murmur. “You.”