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Chapter 14

Afternoons are over.The father is convinced of your piety. Look to your window when the beast has succumbed to the sleeping call of vices. The next step awaits.

I’d read Kash’s note three times. At first, I was just confused, then mildly annoyed, then highly amused. Leave it to him to write an unintelligible poem rather than just tell me to sneak out tonight after my dad passed out. I shook my head at the note and chuckled.

“Good lord, Kash. The entire world is a stage, I guess?”

Honestly it was a relief. Squeezing time with Kash into my afternoons had dramatically impacted my schedule. I still had responsibilities at home, and between the chores and the grocery runs and beer runs and spending time with Kash I’d been running myself ragged. Sneaking out after curfew would free up my time immensely.

Besides, he was right. It had been days since Dad had even bothered to check on me at night, and the way he reacted the night before told me that he’d gotten over whatever it was that was bothering him before. Now as long as I could still fit through my window…

“Oh, shut up,” I muttered to myself as I locked the library. “It’s not like I’ve gained any real weight since high school, and I’m still mostly limber.” I rubbed the ache in my back, left there from the awkward way we’d fallen asleep in his truck. “Mostly.”

Excited anticipation spiced up my mood for the rest of the day. Kash had something planned, obviously, but what? I admit I was hoping for a hotel room down the road in Asheville. I’d been having all kinds of fantasies of having a real, grown-up romance with him, somewhere far away from my Dad’s sphere of influence. Far, far away.

That night I put my robe on over my clothes and climbed into bed to read the way I always did. As I’d expected, Dad didn’t bother to check on me. I waited until his drunken snores vibrated the trailer’s thin walls, then I left my robe on my bed and crept to the window. It opened silently—a feature left over from high school, when Kash and Hunter had oiled the thing within an inch of its life. I felt the same rush now that I had then, that spark of life which comes from grasping at a freedom which had been unfairly denied.

I wriggled through just fine and landed silently in the soft earth below my window but lost my balance and nearly fell against the trailer. Strong hands caught my wrists before I could thump against the trailer and I was yanked forward into Kash’s broad chest. I breathed him in, getting lost in the scent of my past and possibly my future.

“Come on,” he whispered into my hair. “Truck’s parked on Main.”

We snuck through the woods, avoiding the living room window. We probably didn’t need to, the glare would have rendered us invisible from my father’s eyes, but there was no sense in risking it. My heart thundered with delicious adrenaline, heightened by the briefest kiss of anxiety. Giggling breathlessly, clinging to his hand, chasing him through the forest, I felt like I was eighteen years old all over again.

“Made it!” He spun me around to face him and pressed my back against the waiting truck, lifting me to my toes for a deep, searching kiss. Already hot, I rippled my body against his and dragged my nails through his hair. How the hell I’d managed to live without him for so long, I haven’t a clue.

“Let’s get out of here,” I whispered huskily.

“Hell yes.” He smacked a kiss on my nose and slapped my ass, propelling me toward the passenger door.

I expected him to head for the freeway, but instead he drove straight down the gravel extension of Main Street, out into the wild nothing beyond.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“You remember when we were kids, how Hunter and I used to go exploring all the time?”

“Yeah, and you left me at home because I was a ‘little girl’ who ‘couldn’t handle man stuff’?” My air quotes were as heavy as my remembered annoyance.

He grinned. “I figured you’d remember. Well, I wanted to make it up to you. Where to first? Haunted B&B? Distressed drainage ditch? The old train bridge?”

I chuckled wickedly. “Depends. Did you bring spray paint?”

He laughed. “I’m trying to be good, remember?”

“So—yes?”

“No!”

“Aw. Okay, haunted B&B.”

“You got it.”

I giggled. “It better be real freaking haunted after all this build-up, Kash. I’ve been wanting to find it for years, but I had no idea where to look.”

“I think that’s why it’s abandoned,” he said. “Thing’s impossible to find from any main road.”

We crept slowly through patches of forest and swatches of sand, leaving the roads behind in favor of tire tracks. Sudden dips and bits of exposed rock made it an adventure, and his skill behind the wheel made it a fun one instead of a terrifying one.

Eventually we made it back to the pavement.