Wreckless (6 page)

Tanner and Leah both knew how I felt about upsetting my parents. Of all the people I knew, my parents didn't deserve that type of worry.

I guess when you're a lying, cheating, backstabbing, and who knows what-else’ing you-know-what, getting me grounded is pretty low on the list of your sins.

And obviously my parents weren’t on the Do Not Worry list for the cheating cheaters. Upsetting them with that note probably hadn’t crossed Tanner or Leah’s mind.

Jake turned the truck to face a gate with a very prominent NO TRESPASSING sign on it. He eyed me and then eyed the gate again.

“Can you drive a stick?”

I rolled my eyes. I could drive anything. Not legally yet, but if it had an engine, I could drive it. My daddy’s favorite photo of me from when I was little was of us sitting on a John Deere baler.

“Great, slide over.”

He climbed out and walked toward the front of the truck, the lights hitting him right across his butt as he climbed the fence to reach the gate peg on the inside and push it open.

Once he’d walked the gate out of the way, I slid across the bench and shifted the truck into first, careful not to grind the gears. I'd seen too many boys flip out about their trucks to know it was the fastest way to get yourself left on the side of the road.

After I cleared the gate, Jake pushed it shut and threw the hook back into place. He locked the gate behind us and climbed back into the driver’s seat as I tried to scoot across the cab. When my leg got stuck on the gearshift, he tossed his arm behind me across the back of the bench.

“Don't worry, we're almost there.”

I peered through the darkness and the strip of empty land cut through by the headlights. “
Where?”

He just grinned again and pulled me closer to his side so he could shift to second, a move too practiced for me not to question how often he’d had a girl practically on his lap as he drove.

Apparently seatbelts rated lower on his To Do list than they did on mine. Or anyone who didn’t have a death wish.

In a few minutes we came across a cluster of trees and Jake shut the truck down.

“Here we are.”

Again. “Where?”

He opened the door and hopped out before helping me down. “Trespassing.”

I glanced around, waiting for the bright lights of someone's truck or the distant wail of a siren to end my night on an even worse note.

But nothing came, just the quiet call of the crickets picking up where they'd left off when he'd cut the engine.

I tried to move, tried to figure out what to do. My hands shook a bit and I wiped them on my skirt, afraid they were getting clammy. We shouldn't have been there. We were breaking the law, which would easily equal a night in jail. Or, if the owner was anything like Old Man Dalton, shot with salt rock.

“It's okay, Bridget. We're not going to get caught.”

I don't know what made him so sure. But as a new Dangerous Woman Living Dangerously, this seemed like a good place to start for a small rebellion. If only I could stop shaking.

I followed Jake around the back of the pickup and let him pull me up into the bed. He laid out a blanket and lowered himself to sit with his back to the cab. I stood there in the back of the truck looking down at him until he patted the blanket next to him.

“Come on, Bridget. This was the smallest rebellion I could come up with.”

Okay. So. Trespassing.

I was doing pretty well. We were about ten minutes past the gate. No cops. No angry farmers. I checked Jake out again. A hot guy. Not the right hot guy, but still.

Of course, the right hot guy was no longer the right hot guy, so I couldn't really be picky, could I?

I settled in next to him as he pulled out his phone and checked the time.

“You said you needed to be someplace?”

“Yeah, but not 'til later.” He stuffed his phone in his front pocket. “We're good.”

“You can go. You know...” I wasn't sure how to say this without sounding even more pathetic. “You could just drop me at my drive. It's all good.”

Jake turned his head against the back window to look at me as I stuttered through my lameness.

“Bridget, it's not even nine. I've got nowhere to be this early.”

Of course he didn’t. That was just more proof of my lameness. If I wasn’t careful I’d be going to the early bird specials with all the senior citizens before I was a high school senior.

I nodded and laid my head back, too. It was one of those nights where the moon gave just enough light so you could make everything out, and yet the stars were so bright you wanted to reach up and touch them. They shone as if they were just right over... there.

If I'd been in a good mood, if my world hadn't fallen apart thirty minutes ago, I might have said it was a magical kind of night.

But magic was only for those who knew how to grab it.

After a moment, I heard the spritz of a cap coming off a bottle and looked over to see Jake handing me a drink.

“Here's to your freedom.”

It figured. Only a guy would see getting dumped in the most public and humiliating way possible as
freedom.

I took a sip and almost spit it out on him. “What is this?”

“Becks.”

“What? Is this beer?” The bitter taste tainted my mouth, a thick feeling coating my tongue.

I couldn’t believe I’d just poured that slog down my throat. I could still taste the harsh hops like they were glued there. If only I was one of those girls who carried a purse with her whole world in it. I could brush my teeth, rinse with Scope, then chew some gum.

“Yeah,” He grinned, like this was a special treat. “Becks.”

“You gave me a beer?”

Jake laughed, a low, gravelly sound that seemed to rise up from deep in his chest like he was keeping it in, keeping it to himself. “You said you'd never drank. You said you wanted to stop being boring and not taking chances.”

There wasn't much I could say to that.

Except, “You could have warned me.”

Jake took the bottle from my hand and downed a long swig from it. “Would you have tried it, or would we have argued about you taking a little sip for the next twenty minutes?”

“That isn't the point.” I watched him take another swig as if he drank beer all the time. He probably did. He had one of those grins. My dad called them devil’s grin.

Jake knew. He knew I was already backing out of everything I'd said while fueled on hurt and rage. Somehow, worrying about wandering the countryside with a stranger had unfocused reality a little for me.

“What's the point?” He took another swig as if to challenge my complaint without words. “If you’re going to do it, just do it.”

“The point is, from now on I want to know I'm about to break a law before I do it.”

He stared at me, our heads resting side by side on the back of his cab, turned to face one another.

If he were Tanner, if this were a date, I'd be thinking about when he was going to kiss me. About how romantic it was out in the quiet with the stars and the moon and nothing around but the two of us. But this wasn’t a date. It wasn’t even someone I’d
want
to date—you know, if he had even wanted to date me. Nope. This was just someone with nowhere to be just now.

“I've never met anyone who had rules about how to break rules.” He rolled his neck, his gaze forced away from me for the moment. “There’s a whole lotta gray area running up to being reckless. You’re not even near the area near the area.”

“There's nothing wrong with rules.” Rules kept society on track. It was a hard lesson, but one I’d learned young. Anarchy was never a good idea. Even personal anarchy.

He kept looking at me as if he could see the answers to everything if he just watched me long enough. “Good enough. No more surprise law-breaking.”

He held the beer out, clearly a dare he didn't think I'd take.

Breathing through my nose, I took another sip. The cool, light liquid washed though my mouth contrasted with the bitter aftertaste it left behind. That aftertaste? It was just plain yucky, for lack of a better word.

Looked like I didn't like beer.

Shocker.

I wasn't sure what to do when he opened a second one and drank from it. I was glad not to have to share a drink with him—that seemed a bit too personal at this point—but I wasn't sure he should be drinking one on his own if he was going to drive.

“So,” he started, setting the beer on his raised knee, “What’re you going to do?”

“Maybe just dump it out?”

Jake laughed again, letting that gravel sound rumble from the back of his throat.

“No. About the boyfriend and best friend thing?”

What
could
I do? It wasn’t like anyone cared. If anyone had cared, I'm sure I would have heard about it days ago…maybe weeks ago. Causing a scene would just embarrass me. If they were hooking up in public, there wasn't anything that would embarrass them. They’d proven that.

I was definitely feeling like this was the perfect time to cut my losses.

“Nothing, I guess.”

“Nothing?” It was the first time I'd said anything that really seemed to surprise him. “You're just going to go to school Monday and pretend nothing happened?”

“Well, I'm not going to hang out with Leah anymore or date Tanner. But what can I do? I was literally the last one to know. Any attempt at public humiliation would only backfire.”

“Bridget, you can't allow a guy treat you like that and let it slide. That's a bad habit my sister would never agree to. You've got to draw a line in the sand, or guys are going to use you for the rest of your life.”

As if there was going to be another guy. I just had to make it through junior and senior year, and then all this teen social anxiety would be over. I’d already been taking business classes through my homeschool group so I could get a job doing the books at one of the local businesses like my mom and not worry about the rest of the world.

All I wanted was a clean-looking future and to grow out of that whole Poor Larson Girl thing.

That was one of the things I had loved about Tanner. He never acted like he saw a tragedy when he looked at me.

“We'll see.” I wasn't sure what Jake expected me to say, but I took another small sip of the beer and thought about all the ways Monday was going to stink. “This is really gross. Why do you drink it?”

“It's an acquired taste.” He took another long sip off his bottle.

“Why bother?”

He stared out over the bed of the truck to the trees below us. “At first, just because. The guys get together. They have a beer or two. Then, after a while, I actually started to like it.”

I started to worry that I was trapped in a truck with a drunk. It was a darn good thing I could drive, even if not legally.

“You let me drive your truck.”

Jake looked surprised again. “So?”

“Tanner never let me drive his truck.”

He smirked behind the bottle. “Technically, I only let you move it through a gate.”

“He would have made me open the gate.”

“Jackass.” The word came out low and under his breath, but I was positive that's what I'd heard. He’d said it before, but I’d been numb to everything at that moment. Now, the word kind of jolted me.

Even Tanner—who I'd heard swear like a trucker when he was with his friends—rarely swore in front of me. Whenever he did, he’d always apologized.

I waited of Jake to apologize. After a minute, I realized he wasn't going to.

There was something nice about him not thinking I couldn't handle
hearing
a curse.

I might not curse myself, but I wasn’t twelve. I could hear a curse word without going into a full swoon.

“What are you grinning at?”

I hadn’t realized I was grinning. There was something about someone not treating me like a five-year-old that made me a bit giddy.

“Jake, I have to confess something.”

He looked my way. I was a little nervous what he was going to say to this.

“I don't have my license.”

He kept looking at me. I wasn't sure what he expected me to do. Should I apologize?

“And?”

“And I should have told you before you let me drive your truck.”

“
Move
. Move my truck. Through a gate.”

I wasn't sure what his point was.

“You went, what, twelve feet total?”

“I guess.”

“I think it's going to be okay. Chalk it up to your grand rebellion.” He took another swig of his beer.

I looked at my own. I'd managed to almost finish the neck, but it still looked like no one was really drinking it. Poor beer. Jake’s was closer to done, but he didn't look like he was rushing through it.

We sat like that, enjoying the quiet for a while. I knew Jake was thinking of taking me home when he pulled his phone out to check the time again. He ran through the texts he'd gotten since we'd left the fair. After he shot a couple back, he pushed the phone back in his pocket and finished his beer.

Then he said the one thing I couldn’t believe a complete stranger would know about me.

“Why don't you tell me what this rebellion is really about?”

Chapter Five

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I forced the words past my lips, but at the same time, I thought I might know exactly what he was saying. I thought this guy—this guy who was pushier than any four people put together—might see more than just Tanner and Leah messing me over.

But that wasn’t something I even wanted to think about, so there definitely wasn’t any way I was going to talk about it. Not with him.

“Listen, you're adorable. A complete mess, but still adorable.”

“What do you mean I'm a mess?”

Jake took the beer out of my hand and finished off half of it in one gulp.

“You've got this boyfriend-best friend fiasco, and that's just the lid on the pot. Darlin', you're dressed like a fifty-year-old nun, you panicked when I went five miles over the speed limit, and you've got so many rules you're making my principal look laidback. If you don't chill out soon, you're going to give yourself and everyone within six miles of you an ulcer by the time you’re twenty.”

I had absolutely no idea what to say…to any of that.