Love and Relativity (8 page)

I clutched my wet halter dress and purse to my chest, hoping we’d make it to his truck before anyone caught me in his t-shirt, boxers, and my black heels.

I was a hot mess.

As we rode the elevator to the lobby, I pulled out my phone and sent Whitney a quick text to let her know I was taking off.

Please bring my bag home?
I asked.

What? Why?

I’m driving home with Jackson now. Will explain later.

#kjs8kj!!!

Love you too. x

My phone started buzzing. I flipped the power off and stuck it back in my purse. We reached the parking lot and Jackson opened the passenger door for me, his eyes lingering on my bare legs as I climbed into the truck, then landing on my heels.

He whistled in appreciation and slammed the door behind me, and the cab’s space, although roomier than the ride up, felt smaller now. Jackson jumped in and rested his free arm across the back of the seat. I put on my seatbelt and gripped the passenger door handle, leaving the middle part of the seat wide and clear. We pulled out on the highway, and for the first time ever, I was at a loss for words in his presence.

“Weird right?” He asked, as if reading my mind.

“Ha. Yeah...very.”

“Gotta say, holding you hostage has its advantages.” He slid me a lazy glance, his gaze traveling greedily down my thighs.

I crossed my arms and shifted closer to the door. “Are you going to try to make me deaf again?”

“How can you not
love
loud music?”

“Oh, I
love
loud music. When it’s
good
music.” I smiled smugly.

“ ‘Good’ is open for interpretation. ”

My eyes snapped shut when I felt the weight of my tiny purse and remembered how quickly I’d packed it for our night out. All I had was my phone, keys, license, and credit card. “Damn.”

“What is it?”

“My Kindle is in my bag.”

“Ah. No escaping my music now, Pumpkin.” He lifted his hand from the seat and patted my head. “Too bad.” He reached for the radio, but I caught his arm, returning it to his side.

“So?” I said. “We’re in the car. You can tell me what happened now.”

He leaned back and sprawled out against the seat, hitting the gas harder. “Well, for starters, those two dumbasses you were dancing with were friends of Chase.”

My cheeks burned at the mention of Brian and Jace. He was watching us dance? “
That’s
what you were fighting about? I thought it was over your dad.”

“It was. But I saw you with them when I ran into Chase, and I couldn’t help myself. I had to say something.”

“So you made it worse.”

“They wanted in your panties, Emma.”

“Your point being...”

“They’re scumbags. Do I really need to elaborate?”

“How can you be so judgmental? That’s the most hypocritical thing I’ve ever heard.”

His relaxed posture went rigid, his fingers clenching the steering wheel. “What are you saying?”

“They were only doing what you, Ruben, and Jeff do all the time.”

“No. That’s different.”

“What? How can you say that?” I turned toward him, pulling one of my legs up on the seat and tucking it beneath me, my black heel digging into my calf.

“We don’t just...mess around with anyone.”

“I believe it’s my turn to call bullshit on that one.”

“We don’t.”

I raised a brow and crossed my arms.

“Hey,” he chided. “The girls I hook up with are under no false pretenses—they’re not steady, like you. They want the same exact thing and they know exactly what they’re getting into with me. I’m not parading around, confessing my undying love, or waving around promises of a ring on their finger.”

“And that’s what Brian and Jace were doing? Trying to deceive me? I think their intentions were pretty clear.”

“Yeah, well, so were yours.”

My lips parted and I couldn’t help but scoff at his tone. “So what if they were? Why were you watching us, anyway? You just said it yourself—the girls you hook up with are under no false pretenses. Neither was I when Brian and Jace came on to me. I was just having fun.”

“Well it wasn’t like you.”

“It wasn’t like me to have fun.”

“Not like that, no. You never lead them on like that. Guys come on to you all the time at Pete’s. You don’t do casual.”

“You’re right. I don’t like sleeping around. I can see why you’d have a problem with that.” Wrapping my arms tighter around my torso, I turned to look out the window, finding nothing but blackness as we rolled down the interstate. I couldn’t believe his audacity, implying that because I was letting Brian and Jace hit on me, it made me just like all the other girls he fooled around with.

My head whipped back to his.

“This may come as a surprise to you, but I like to let my hair down every now and then. Women have just as much of a right to do that as men do. Just because we choose to go home with someone, it doesn’t mean we’re all waving the flag of promiscuity.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Before you start burning your bra over there—if you were wearing one—I’m not insulting you, or your gender. I’m simply stating a fact. You don’t have casual flings.”

“If I did choose to have one tonight, it wouldn’t have been any of your business. You don’t see me making comments like that to you every time I see you take a girl home. So stay out of it. You don’t know me, Jackson.”

“Yeah, I think I know you better than most, Emma, as much as you don’t like admitting that to yourself. And I know you want the real deal, not some frat boy one-night stand. Just forget it.” He huffed and turned on the blinker, shifting lanes to catch the next exit.

“Good idea. Let’s get back to the fight. So you started insulting this Chase guy’s friends, he started insulting your dad, and—wait, where are we going?”

“I’m fucking starved. I’m about to eat my shoe.”

“I can’t go in a restaurant like this.”

“I’ll go through a drive-thru.”

“Fine.”

“
Fine
.”

We pulled into a hole-in-the-wall Mexican joint somewhere off the interstate, nothing but farmland and the smell of hay surrounding us. Jackson parked at the far end of the lot.

“There’s no drive-thru,” I said. The lot was pitch dark, only illuminated by the faint glow of the storefront’s yellow and green neon sign, and a string of ratty Christmas lights that dressed the roof’s overhang. ‘Order Here’ was written on a shoddy piece of cardboard and plastered above the counter window.

“Hang tight.” Jackson got out and strolled over to the restaurant window, leaving the key in the ignition. Hands on my lap, I fidgeted with my fingers, the quiet pricking at my skin. I thought about turning my phone on and calling Whitney, but my mood was pensive, and like Jackson, I wasn’t really up for chatting about the fight or why I cut the trip short. Especially when I still had no more information than before. Whitney would want details, I didn’t have them, and after the night’s unexpected turn of events, I was flat-out tired.

What was it about Jackson that made me so crazy? Sure, we were both stubborn. Temperamental. Different. But there had to be more to it than that. There had to.

I stared at him through the windshield, studying his loose stance at the restaurant counter. He fished out some cash from his pocket to pay for the food, then raised his arms and stretched while he waited, pulling his elbows behind his head. His shirt rode up just above his pant waistline.

I looked away.

Was it really just resentment? Did he unhinge me so drastically just because he knew my deepest, most shameful secret? And how was that his fault? He’d helped me that night, saved me from things he knew I’d regret later. How could he make me feel so uncomfortable, yet provide me with so much comfort at the same time?

I sighed.

Jackson strolled back to the truck and set the tray of food on the hood, then came around to open my door. “Come on and eat with me.” He held out his hand.

“Can’t we just eat in the truck?”

“We’re the only ones here. No one will see you, come on.” Not giving me a chance to object again, he reached in, gripped me by the waist, and lifted me up off the seat and over his shoulder, then slammed the passenger door shut.

He set me down on the truck hood and smiled. “Dinner under the stars.”

My gaze followed his as he gestured to the sky above us, and my whole body relaxed at the sight. It was beautiful. One advantage of being out in the middle of nowhere was the lack of light. You could make out nearly every star in the sky, and the breeze was fresh and sweet like springtime.

I slid further up the hood toward the windshield and leaned back, resting my head on the glass with a deep breath. “It’s gorgeous,” I said.

“Yeah, it is.”

When I turned to face him, he wasn’t looking at the sky.

“You have to try this,” he said. “It’s the best Mexican food I’ve ever had. This place is a local gem. My dad and I used to stop here when I was a kid, every time we drove up to Orlando.” Pulling something warm and gooey from the paper tray, he blew on it and held it to my lips. “Taste.”

I opened my mouth and bit down, surprised to find I actually liked a food he’d picked out. “
Mmmmm
.” I shut my eyes as the spicy, melted cheese ignited an explosion of pure pleasure on my tongue. “That is amazing.”

“What’d I tell you?” He pulled his hand away and sucked his thumb before wiping his fingers on his jeans. I wrinkled my nose.

“Crap!” I slid off the hood and darted around to the passenger door, opening it to fumble through my purse.

“Let me guess. You don’t have your hand sanitizer.”

“Yes, damn it.”

“Guess I’ll have to feed you.” He turned and smiled through the windshield.

“Right, because your fingers are so much cleaner than mine.”

“Look at you,” he laughed. “You’re getting the shakes over there. Emma Pierce, crack is wack.”

“Oh, shove it, Jackson.” I let out a laugh of my own, slamming the door and jutting my lip out into a pout. I walked back around to the front of the hood and proceeded to pick at the food, not eating the parts my fingers touched.

Jackson tore open packets of three different kinds of sauces and dumped them on top, then sloppily shoved a huge portion into his mouth, the sauce trickling down the side of his chin. He pulled the collar of his t-shirt up to wipe it away.

“What?” he asked, catching my smirk.

“Your eating habits are truly a grotesque work of art, do you know that?”

“So are your finicky eating habits.”

“Finicky?”

“Finicky. And persnickety.”

“
Persnickety
? I hate that word.”

“Well, it loves you.”

“Persnickety and finicky are the same thing. And how are my eating habits persnickety?”

“Would you look at the food on your lap?” He pointed to the chunks of cheesy goodness on my paper plate. It was heaped into a mangled mass of sludge, looking as if it’d been massacred. “You don’t eat the ends of things. Sometimes, you
only
eat the ends of things. I see you pick at your food at Pete’s. It’s never consistent. It’s mind boggling.”

“And persnickety.”

“With a capital P,” he said with a tone of finality.

“Well enough picking on me.” I stuck out my tongue and took a sip of my drink. “Why were you so desperate to drive home tonight?”

“You mean besides the fact that I’m a bloody mess, the guy I beat up is back at the hotel, and Kayla skipped out on me?” He shrugged. “It killed my mood for the weekend, what can I say? I didn’t want to stay there knowing Chase and his idiot friends were lurking.”

“So it had nothing to do with what he said about your dad.”

His gaze turned distant. “My dad’s in jail. Chase threw it in my face and it set me off.”

I stopped eating. Finally, he was ready to talk. “He’s...in jail? How have I never heard this?”

“Because people back home know not to talk about it. And I don’t talk about it. He’s locked up in Fort Myers. I visit him sometimes.” His voice was softer now. “I don’t have a lot of money. Never did, never will. When my mom got sick, my dad lost his job and he couldn’t keep up with the medical bills, let alone anything else.” His grip tightened around his plastic cup, the sound of crickets and frogs filling the space between his breaths as he spoke. “So, he started stealing.”

Too stunned by the way his face fell and the crack in his voice, I forgot how to use my big-girl words. When he looked down to crumple up his food wrapper, I found them again. “He stole...what did he steal?”

He ran his thumb over his bottom lip. “All sorts of stuff. One thing led to another...and eventually he was knee-deep selling drugs and shit.”