Honeytrap (16 page)

“A lobotomy, just to get that last image cleansed from my brain?”

He smiled and didn't even bite back the pain from the bruise near his mouth this time. “We should get a hot fudge sundae or a strawberry shake. It's a scientific fact that chocolate or pink food comforts a person.”

“Sounds like you know your science.” He had to need cheering more than I did, and I wasn't about to reject his offer.

He walked me out of the shed, manually opening the house's garage door where the Camaro sat in all its glory. I grabbed my purse from my pickup as he opened the door that led inside the house and shouted that he was taking off. Then he let me into the car.

It was like I'd entered a scene out of
Fast and Furious
. Everything was leather—the seats, the wheel, the scent—and when he climbed in and turned on the engine, the dash lit up in blue majesty.

I tried to hold back a dazzled smile, but he caught me with it, and
that
made him smile as well as he could. Honestly, seeing him distance himself from that story he'd just told made a bolt of happiness strike me, crashing against my chest.

Everything was going to be fine, even if his dad would inevitably come around again. I truly believed that because he was okay and I was okay.

He backed out of the garage and drove off, peeling onto the lane as I held on for dear life, smiling even wider, giving in to the night.

***

A strawberry shake really was the best medicine, and I nursed it as Micah zoomed down the road back toward his house, a sign for Miller Dock Lake swishing by us in a flash.

We'd gone through the DQ drive-thru, where I'd kept to the shadows of the car, doing my best to avoid the gaze of the high school fast-food worker who'd waited on us. Micah had devoured a whole burger in an empty parking lot down the road while he'd hooked up his iPhone to play vintage Merle Haggard. We didn't listen to very much of the music, though, seeing as it took him about five minutes to wolf down his food and skid out again.

That's when I started to suspect he had more than just a shake in mind. And when he drove on the turnoff for the lake, I had no doubts whatsoever.

“What're you doing?” I asked, talking around the straw in my mouth.

“It's a clear sky, a full moon. Good night for gazing at it.”

“Micah . . .”

“Hey, I got punched for you.”

Oh, so he was going to play
that
card. But in spite of myself, I was having fun, just like I did whenever I was around him. Except for that weighty conversation we'd had earlier, he was a spirit lifter. It was good to see that he'd left his troubles behind.

He drove on the dirt road past the dock and into a thick copse of pines that would shelter his car. After he parked, he reached into the small backseat, grabbing two blankets and getting out, shutting his door.

Always prepared like an oversexed Boy Scout
, I reminded myself.

“Why do you think you'll need those?” I asked once I was outside, too.

“I keep my company comfortable.”

Leaves rustled under his work boots as he moved to the edge of the trees, where a patch of moon-beamed sky spread to the ends of the earth. To our left, a bunch of big rocks piled on one another to form a lookout where we'd be able to see the dock. It also shielded us from it.

He shook one blanket out, laid it down, tossed the folded one on top of it, then sat and patted the ground next to him. I put up a moment of token resistance and took my place next to him. Not too close, but near enough so that I caught a whiff of the cigarillo smoke that still wove through the threads of his clean shirt. Near enough so my pulse was dancing.

“How many girls,” I said over the croak of frogs, “has this blanket met?”

“Enough. And if you're about to ask if Jadyn spent any time on here, let me reassure you by saying . . .” He left off, teasing me.

I gave him the side eye. His profile was almost beautiful, with a perfect nose and pouty lips and the sexy way he tied back his hair. He turned to look at me, and my heart blasted against my ribs.

“. . . no,” he finished.

“Jerk,” I said, laughing.

I let a moment slide by, hugging my bent legs and looking up at the moon. It wasn't exactly full, but it was entirely silver and bright, the air crisp with the scent of pine and water around us. This was something I'd missed about Aidan Falls. At school, the sky was never this bright.

I kept my gaze trained upward. “Can I ask you a question?”

“What's ever stopped you?”

The conversation we had tonight
, I thought. I'd been throwing insults at him since I'd met him, mostly because I'd had no idea what he was about. But I didn't want to do that anymore—I was seriously curious about what made him tick.

“Why do you go for so many girls?” I asked, following up on the questions that'd been running through my mind earlier. “Is it the only way you can feel something, after having to feel nothing for so long?”

As usual, he wasn't offended. “I've never cared to investigate emotions, Sunshine.”

“Do you . . . have emotions when you're with them?”

He focused on me, brushing me with a good old Micah Wyatt hot look. Phew.

“I'm happy when I can make them happy, when I see the way they look at me while I touch them, make them moan and come.”

Oh, man, he'd just said that. “So you don't have to have some deep connection with them. Just something physical.”

“That's how I like it.” He laid back on the blanket, looking at the moon, his head resting on his bent arms.

His chest seemed to expand with every breath, making me long to run my palm over him, feel his muscles beneath me.

“I should tell you there was more to Jadyn than just wanting to nail her because of Rex,” he said.

“Great. You nailed her. That's definitely emotional.”

Unstoppable, he went on. “I knew in my gut that she wanted to feel something that night, and that's what made her easy. She looked sad, and I knew I could make her forget whatever was bothering her. I didn't stop to think about the consequences. Usually I'm not the one who suffers them.”

“Because you already have a bad reputation and your women don't.”

He fixed his gaze on me. “I like bringing something out in someone when she hasn't felt it before. You don't get that with experienced women.”

“What about the married ones?”

“There's unhappiness in marriage, too. But I told you I don't work trouble on any woman who isn't looking for it.”

I nudged him with my hand. “Are you saying I'm looking for it?”

“I'd say you discovered it pretty well before you got here. I'm just another level of trouble that you can't stay away from.”

“You are unbelievably cocky.”

“So I've heard.”

“Did your first woman tell you that, too?”

“My first.” He smiled up at the sky. “I wasn't so cocky at that point. I was thirteen but still recovering from what my dad had done, and she was a high school junior in Dallas. She invited me under the bleachers after the team had finished football practice and broke me in.”

“A junior?”
Wasn't that predatory?
“You were only thirteen.”

“I needed it. I liked it. And I couldn't get enough of it from that point on.”

No wonder he thought he was the giver of sex joy—he'd been schooled on how to make someone unhappy happy.

And to think I'd thought this guy was simple to figure out.

As we sat there in silence, the water lapping nearby and a low wind combing through the trees, I shivered, but not with the cold. The lining of my belly was trembling, quivering deep inside me.

“Hey,” he said, pulling at my Angel's Seat T-shirt, bringing me down to the blanket until I was lying next to him. He took the second blanket and spread it over us. “Is that better?”

Was it? Because Lana Peyton was stretching inside of me, like she was being pieced together, shiver by shiver, growing by the second. If I wasn't careful, she was going to take me over.

Even scarier, I realized that Micah was a honeytrap; he was testing me right now, drawing me out and seeing how loyal I was to my own convictions. He was making me wonder if I could remain faithful to who I thought I was.

But much to my surprise, he hadn't made a move on me yet—not unless you counted him slipping an arm under my head, making a pillow for me.

I was tense, and he knew it.

“Lighten up,” he said. “I'm not going to take advantage of you.”

The moon seemed to glide slightly in the sky as minutes passed, me holding my breath because I was afraid to move, him lying there so casual and relaxed.

Finally, I spoke. “Micah?”

“I'm still here.”

“Why did you really tell me about your dad tonight?”

He stayed silent, and I thought he was going to let the subject pass by. But then he said, “I figured I could be honest with a person who knows how damaging idle talk is. You'll never tell a soul because you've been through the gossip grinder yourself.” There was that wistfulness in his voice again. “With you, I felt free to be honest about who I am. And, hell, if I can't be honest, what can I be?”

I wasn't cynical enough to question if he was still luring me in by using every trick in the book—honesty, vulnerability, creating a connection, and pulling on a girl's heartstrings with the power of all of them combined. What he'd told me went beyond all that.

He chuckled. “You're thinking of that Valmot . . .”

“Valmont?”

“Yeah. That Valmont guy again.”

“Actually, I wasn't thinking of him.”

“Well, if I told you that sometimes I think it'd be nice to mean more to someone than only a nice lay—you know, like Valmont says when he talks about deserving someone and not just having them—would you believe me?”

I closed my eyes, liking the sound of his voice, liking how I could feel him breathing as I let my head relax against the hard cushion of his arm. “I'd believe you. I think everyone needs to be appreciated at some point in their lives.”

He cupped his hand to the side of my head, cradling me. “Words of wisdom.”

“Yeah, that was real deep.”

“I mean it. No matter what you did to Rex, Angel, you're one of the good ones.”

He said it like
he
wasn't good enough for me, and he never expected to be.

I whispered, “No matter how much you don't want people to know it, you're pretty good, too, Micah.”

I'd gotten very comfortable with my cheek against his chest now, riding the smooth rise and fall of him. I listened to his heartbeat pound through him while he played with my hair.

“Thanks for saying that,” he murmured, “but I can't change who I am. You, however, will go back to college and have a whole life ahead of you.”

Did he sound . . . sad? Couldn't be.

“You've got a life.” My energy was sapping with every stroke of his hand. “And I blew a scholarship, so we'll see what's ahead of me.”

“You'll recover.”

I laughed, but it barely came out. “It sounds like you're pushing me out the door back to school already. Like I'm one of your conquests and you're preparing for the next.”

“Now, now,” he said, just as kiddingly. “If you left before I nailed you, I'd never win any bet.”

I opened my eyes, my lashes brushing his T-shirt. Even if we were joking, there was an undercurrent of something serious going on. And when he spoke again, I was even surer of it.

“When you go off to college, you'll never come back here. Not really. You'll leave this place behind you, along with whatever comes with it.”

Did he come with it?

He was confusing me again, because it sounded like he was laying some corny lines on me. But hadn't we gotten past that? Even more odd, I thought I heard that sadness again . . .

Neither of us said anything afterward. We only listened to the frogs, an owl's hoot, the night deepening around us, and I closed my eyes, enjoying this while I could.

Micah wasn't forever. He was right—I'd get back on my feet, go ahead with all the plans I'd made in life to be successful, to be an entrepreneur and a woman no one would ever insult again.

I floated off into a space where all those dreams could come true, and the next thing I knew, the sound of yelling made me bolt up, the blanket falling off me.

Splashes in the water. Cheers. Running footsteps on the dock.

Micah had started awake, too, and we both listened to whoever was out there on the dock in the dead of night.

“Shit,” I said, looking at him.

Micah smiled like the rascal my mom said he was, and I got the feeling that he wouldn't care if we were discovered on a blanket on the other side of the rock that hid us.

Not a rascally bit.

It was bad enough that we had a bunch of town kids blocking our way out of the lake, but when I heard a girl yell, “Take it off, Rex,” my pulse stabbed me.

“Skinny dipping at midnight?” I whispered harshly. “Why'd they have to pick
now
?”

“At least they'll be distracted by their naked selves, and when I drive off, they won't see you in the town slut's car.”

He seemed amused enough, but I knew a little bit more about Micah than I had known a week ago, and I noticed the chafe in his tone. He didn't like all this secrecy stuff. But didn't he know that if the kids and
Rex
saw me with their nemesis, I'd be in an even deeper social hole than I was already? They'd crucify me.

Rex's rebel yell carried above the others from the dock, then there was a mighty splash, accompanied by girls cheering.

Micah's gaze lit up. “If we had any guts, we'd run right out on the dock in what God gave us, too. What do you say, Angel? Can we get as sexy as Rexy?”

“Don't even joke about it.” I was already folding the blanket that'd been covering us. In a flash of strange realization, I was reminded that I'd woken up cuddled in Micah's arms, and there was something beautifully innocent about that.

He'd never made a move on me.

As I cleaned up our site, there were more splashes, more catcalls. In another world, I would've been out there with them. Shelby Carson was shy about taking off her clothes, even in the still of a wild Saturday night. But it would've been Lana out there, not me.

Micah stood and stretched, totally unconcerned. “I really do have half a mind to join them, just to stir their night up. If you want, you can wait in the car to hear them get ruffled at the sight of me.”

Jeez, he wasn't kidding. “You know what would happen if you showed up at their skin party, right? You'd have another black eye because the guys”—probably ones like Doug Markowski and Chance Gutherie—“would beat you silly for daring to check out their bare asses. And their girlfriends' asses.”

Shrugging, Micah began to peel off his T-shirt. “How do you know I haven't seen most of them already?”

I stopped him from taking off his shirt, holding on to the hem. It tore, a small sound of resistance, but he only grinned in spite of his injuries.

“What happened to being a lover and not a fighter?” I whispered.

“Why, Shelby, it's as if you'd be affected if they gave me another black eye. Less than a week ago, you probably would've applauded.”

“No, I wouldn't have. How can you say that?”

He got that intense look in his eyes, making me uncomfortable yet so awake, making me clamp my lips together so I wouldn't say another word, because God knew what might come out.

I don't feel the same way about you as I did back then. I don't know what the hell to do with you anymore, Micah . . .

He skimmed his hands over mine, which were still grasping the bottom of his shirt. Then he coasted them up my arms until I trembled.

Voice low, he said, “I'm still a lover, not a fighter, but I'll tell you what else I am.”

With a burst of mischievous energy, he tugged me toward the bank of rocks, scrambling up them until we were on our knees, hidden by a sweep of pine branches and cottonwood leaves.

Micah's bruise near his mouth didn't keep him from wearing that shit-eating grin. “What I am is a fan of revenge.”

A slow thrill was rising in me as he took his phone out of his front jeans pocket.

“You're a college girl,” he whispered. “A business major to boot, right? So you've got to know what leverage is.”

He peered over the top of the rocks, aiming his camera down below.

“I can't believe you're doing this!”

But I joined him in peeking above the rocks to the view just below us: clothes strewn on the dock; cheerdevils in the water with the moonlight shining down on their vague, naked forms while they treaded water; Rex's high school football buddies—Chance, Doug, and Dante Rhodes—still in their boxers and watching the girls; Rex in the water, bracing his hands on the dock and pulling himself up, raining water on the wood.

Naked as a jaybird.

I looked away, even though I was familiar with that much of Rex.

“Damn,” Micah said, nodding as if he was impressed as he clicked his shutter app. “No wonder he's hopping around naked out there, showing it off. He's got something to show.”

I gave him a
what?
look, and he laughed, sucking in a breath because he'd obviously forgotten that it hurt to smile as wide as he'd been doing. “Locker rooms, urinal stalls . . . guys are used to being around one another's junk. We give credit where it's due. Besides, I've got nothing to worry about.”

Oookay.
“What're you going to do with those pictures?”

“As soon as Rex's friends take off their shorts, I'll click away again, then send the shots to you so you can do what you want. Leverage, Angel.”

“You mean blackmail?” I shouldn't have thought that this was a good idea, but I was quickly warming to it. Shockingly quick.

“If you wanna shut people up, you need to give them a reason.”

“So I should post embarrassing photos on a website or something? I can't do that.” Could I?

No. Absolutely not.

Down below, Chance, Dante, and Doug finally stripped all the way to their skins, and before they could make quick runs for the water and cannonball in, Micah snapped a photo. Rex joined them in the water with another yell.

Micah showed me what he'd captured so far—butts and floppy ding-dongs that you could barely see in the night.

“So I'm no artist,” he said, “but just let Rex know that you've got rough proof of him exposing himself in public with his friends. Maybe then he won't send you more messages that bother you, like he did the other night.” Micah lowered the phone. “Has he been sending more?”

“He's moved on to texts.”

“Yeah, I suspected he wouldn't leave well enough alone.” Micah stuffed the phone away. “Guys like him . . . once they know what bothers another person, they keep at it. Texting is
his
leverage, his reminder to you that he's got the upper hand, and don't mind my saying so, but you're probably giving it right over to him.”

“I've gotten better about facing up to my issues.” Kind of. I didn't mention the clothes store incident, though, but that wasn't about Rex. That was about everyone else. “Rex doesn't have any kind of moral upper hand with me, seeing as he was the one who strayed with Lana. Why should he have leverage?”

As the kids carried on below, squealing and splashing, Micah reached over and gently took my chin between his finger and thumb, turning my face to him. Warmth rolled through me.

“I wish you really believed that,” he said.

Didn't I? Or would I always be my own worst punishment, beating myself up for honeytrapping Rex?

“Just imagine,” Micah said, “how much grief you saved yourself with him in the long run by being Lana Peyton. You ask me, I'd say you had a feeling about who Rex really was, and you only proved it. Your biggest mistake was in choosing an asshole like him in the first place.”

What was Micah telling me? That I should choose someone like
him
?

Luckily, I wouldn't have to make that decision, because I'd be out of here at the end of summer, back in my college world, piecing everything back together there.

I almost told him that, but out of the blue, he lowered his lips to my cheek, kissing me softly. My mind went on the fritz, my vision cut with needful static.

He didn't take things any further, drawing back from me, keeping his fingers on my chin. Maybe fully kissing me would hurt with his wounds.

“You falling for me yet?” he whispered.

“Never.” But I smiled, unsure of whether I was lying to myself or not.

At the dock, the boys had put their boxers back on, holding out blankets for the girls as they got out of the water. Micah took me by the hand again and led me off the rocks. He pulled
his
blankets off the ground and we headed for the Camaro.

“Are we just going to motor out of here, right in front of them?” I asked. “They'll know whose car this is.”

“Good.” He opened my door, then went to his side. “Just make sure you keep a low profile in that passenger's seat, Sunshine.”

We both hopped in, and when he started the motor, the sound zoomed through the woods.

He drove out of the trees and onto the dirt path, and when he braked to a stop, I almost threw a fit. Then he revved the engine extra hard, but Rex and his friends were already staring at us from the dock, frozen.

Something crazy inside me almost rolled down the window, almost hung out of it and waved to the crowd with my own rebel yell. I was pretty sure Micah was giving me the chance to do it, too.

But the glimmer of rebelliousness poofed away in me, and I slid down in the seat.

Micah didn't say anything. He only tightened his jaw and took off, fishtailing on the dirt and jamming forward, leaving the devils in the dust.

***

May 20, 3:02am

Subject: Leverage

[Attachments]

Doubt you'll use these pictures, Angel, but they're here if you want them—along with many other things . . .

I'd gotten the e-mail ping on my phone from ParlorFly soon after falling into bed, but I'd put off looking at it, thinking it'd be Rex trying to resurrect Lana Peyton's account from limbo again. But when I checked the message in the morning, I realized that Micah had dug up my alter ego somehow, maybe because he knew my screen name. Or maybe he'd sent the pictures there in secret, thinking I'd be erasing the account soon and this would be a good way for him not to have the evidence traced, if anyone ever cared to look into it.

I wasn't going to use the pictures, because everyone would know I'd been with Micah since he'd made such a big show of tearing out of the lake in his car.

At any rate, I left the leverage alone, torn between sending Micah an answer as Lana and not. I was almost wondering if he'd been making a bigger point in messaging Lana instead of trying to get a hold of my phone number or my regular e-mail.

As it happened, I didn't have to stress too much about how to contact him, because he took care of that all by himself.

I'd decided to skip church service. Mom had never been a fan, and neither were the café girls, so I'd occasionally gone on my own with Evie. But church definitely wasn't my thing now, because I couldn't bear the thought of walking in and having all those Rex-loving faces turning my way, frowning at me as they had in the clothes store yesterday. Sure, some of them might smile and welcome me back—I didn't think all churchgoers were hypocrites, just the ones who adored Rex—but maybe I'd work my way up to going some Sunday.

That left my morning open and free. Mom and the girls were sleeping in before heading to the café, but I'd decided I would do some housecleaning so Mom wouldn't have to do it tomorrow, on a rare day off. I thought it might be nice if she could go to a matinee at the Ritz instead, which was a luxury that Mr. Carmichael had told me she didn't take much anymore.

Since most of the neighborhood was churching, I fully opened the pool house windows to the utter morning quiet, then tidied my space before going in the main house to dust everything but the rooms the girls were staying in, since it was part of their free rent to clean up after themselves. I even scrubbed the kitchen. Three hours later, after Mom and the girls were ready for the café, they hugged me for the work I'd done and left for the Angel's Seat.

After that, I took a shower and, with my hair wet, put on some mascara and lip balm. But just as I was going to dry my hair, I heard a noise from our driveway—the sound of metal hitting pavement and echoing from the carport.

Crap.
I'd left my pickup unlocked last night. So much for the security of a small town . . .

I went through the side yard and out the gate, and when I came around the corner to the carport, my mouth gaped.

Micah was underneath the hood of my pickup, his toolbox on the ground.

He must've heard me coming because he raised himself from the engine, reaching into his back jeans pocket to get a rag and wipe his hands on it. His grimy T-shirt told me he could've chucked that rag for all the good it'd done.

“You're fixing my truck?” I asked.

“I figured now would be the time, while all the saints are in the pews.” He gestured toward the Deacon & Darwin truck he'd parked across the street. “Don't worry about being seen in public with me—I'm making a house call.”

“The shop doesn't do cars,” I said, panicking ever so slightly. Why was he taking this kind of risk, letting us be seen together?

“Maybe we should start.” He shoved the rag back in his jeans, gesturing toward my engine. “Your PCV valve was stuck, and that's why your exhaust smoke was gray. The part isn't expensive, and the labor wouldn't be intensive, so I can take care of this for you.”

Hold up.
“Micah, you're sure going through a lot of trouble for me.”

“You mean for a girl I have no stake in?”

He'd said it, not me. But as he closed the pickup's hood, I thought I saw the muscles in his jaw bunch, then relax. “I wouldn't want you breaking down somewhere, Shelby, so consider this the work of a Good Samaritan. It's Sunday, after all.”

“Well . . . thank you.”

Was he expecting me to say something about those pictures he'd sent to Lana?

“By the way,” I said, “I got your e-mail. Why did you use that address?”

He merely smiled at me, and I knew he'd contacted Lana on purpose to stir something up.

“Just when I think I'm understanding you . . .” Disappointed that he was playing games again, I waved him off, going around to the side yard and toward the gate.