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I nodded. Sensing goodbyes were futile around this joint, I saved myself the effort and went straight to his truck. We drove off, the dwarfdom sinking into the moonrocks, becoming nothing but a speck in the valley as we got farther away. The distance felt shorter, the highway came faster than it had when traveling in. I blinked and missed the boneyard of scraps and car parts, although it was miles long, and quicker than I could say Wizard of Auto, we straddled the line to the 1.

Perspiration slicked my palms and my hairline, even though both windows were down, and a cool ocean breeze filled the cab. I thought I’d been ready for this, to address where I came from, but I was moments from screaming Stop! Or Turn left! Or some inarticulate version of Let’s not go through with this.

The blinker was like an ice pick chipping into my skull; every click had me closer to the edge. I let out a gust of breath, squinching my eyes shut, when rough, heated skin slid over my hand and snaked between my clammy fingers.

“Hey.” The low drawl of an accent. “You ready to do this?”

No. But I couldn’t turn back now, or I’d never go through with it.

Unclenching my eyelids, I met his wary, green stare.

It gave me the courage to say yes, and we turned right, towards our next destination, Madame Myrian’s.

Chapter 25

“What’d my brother say to you?” Ryder casually inquired a few minutes into our drive.

“He just wanted to know where we were going.” Not a lie, but not the whole truth. The whole truth entailed Leif’s scheming eyes across my collarbone as he tried to decode my body language for secrets. I still kicked myself for that slip of impulse when he’d asked about my necklace.

“And what’d you tell him?”

“I said we were going to Año Nuevo.” The gentle clinks of the keys swinging against one another filled the silence that followed. I knew he was smirking without even looking at him. “It was the first thing that came to mind!”

He laughed and slapped the leather seat with his palm. “I’m not that wholesome.”

“That’s what he said,” I grumbled.

“But you planted it in his mind.” Ryder sighed. “So, we should at least do a drive-by.”

My head swiveled towards him, but his attention didn’t leave the two-lane road.

Confusion brought my brows together, flipped my lips into a frown. “Don’t we have to get to Half Moon Bay?”

“We can spare a few minutes.” He shot me an infuriating wink that made my heart race. “For our alibi.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but that word had me thinking, watching the mirror for a certain motorcycle trailing in our exhaust. I hid the lapis, as if the cup of my hand could shield it from any threats. Leif’s concern about our whereabouts started to feel more and more suspect as I replayed his interest in it—and the fact that we had to divert from our route in case he came to check.

I gazed at the flurry of trees on my right, green buds blooming between the red-black branches marred by a recent fire, the woodland broken apart every few miles by acres of lush golden farmland. Suddenly, the truck swung towards the crushed grass that lined the roadside and idled parallel to the lane’s white line.

My stomach knotted as I glanced left, right, behind. “Why are we stopping?”

Ryder hopped out and strolled around the hood, coming to the passenger side. The sun highlighted the curve of his muscles as he crossed his arms and rested them on the base of my window. “It’s your turn to drive.”

For a second my heart stopped. “What? Now?”

“Yes, now. You need all the practice you can get. Now scoot.” He shooed me with a flap of his fingers, then slid in. Panic swaddled me in a sheet of sweat as I brought my hands to the wheel. Groaning, I shot him a look that said, Really?

He patted the gear stick, waiting to blanket my hand with his. “Just to Año Nuevo. It’s no more than fifteen minutes away. Although…” His chuckle was a harsh reminder of the last time we did this, and I went twenty miles per hour in a forty zone. “It’s an easy, uncongested road. You’ll be fine.”

My pulse tumbled from my chest to my gut, drumming up an emotion almost identical to what I was already feeling but was too stubborn to admit: excitement.

A quick review of the basics—clutch, brake, shift—and this time I didn’t wait for him to tell me to press on the gas and release the other pedals. This time we didn’t stall or rev or lurch. Okay maybe we lurched a few times; the rolling hills were new. But for the most part we coasted, weightless and toasty from cruising with the speed and the wind. The ocean sparkled on my left, and the forested hills dotted the horizon on my right. And Ryder’s stare, as vast as the world in front of me, danced over my body, my face, like the tendrils of light pouring in from the baby blue sky. The tension slowly eased from my jaw and my shoulders in the heat of his gaze, and the beautiful calm of the drive.

His thumb stroked my pinky, and I realized abruptly that he had never removed his hand from mine. It circled the side of my palm, providing a whole other sort of rush—one that had me contemplating looking for a turnout and putting this bad boy in park.

Which I eventually did, but not because of my completely inappropriate thoughts. We’d arrived at Año Nuevo, purple and pink lupine and heavy cypress bordering the empty visitor lot.

I hadn’t even realized we’d made it. “That’s weird,” I said.