Page 95 of Confessions

He wanted to get out of town himself.

He rammed the truck into gear. “Where to?” he asked the girls.

“My place,” Brenda said quickly. “It’s a little ways from the o

ld church camp.”

“Just point me in the right direction.” Ben shoved the Ford into first and the truck bounced along the rutted lane. Near a dilapidated mailbox, he turned south on the county road that rimmed the lake. Carlie reached for the radio, but Ben shook his head. “Hasn’t worked for a few months now,” he said, his fingers brushing her bare leg as he shifted into third. His fingers skimmed her thigh and he felt a tightening in his gut.

Carlie felt the touch of his fingers, and her skin tingled. She pretended to stare out the dusty windshield, but she watched him from the corner of her eye. He squinted slightly as he drove and the planes of his face seemed more rugged in the dark cab. He was dark and sexy and dangerous.

The porch light was burning at Brenda’s old farmhouse. Ben unloaded the rowboat, and, following Brenda’s instructions, propped the boat against the side of a concrete-block shed. “Thanks for the ride,” Brenda sang out as she ran up the cement walk. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Carlie!” She dashed up the steps and disappeared into the house as Ben climbed behind the wheel.

“Now where?” he asked, glancing in her direction and noting that she’d moved to the far side of the cab, as if she didn’t want to chance touching him.

“I live in town. The Lakeview Apartments on Cedar Street—one block off Pine.”

“I’ve been there.” He slashed her a smile that was white in the darkness and caused her heart to flip.

“Then you know there’s no lake and no view.” She relaxed against the worn cushions and rolled down the window. Fresh air blew into the cab, ruffling her hair and caressing her cheeks.

A train was passing on the old railroad trestle that spanned the highway into town as the lights of Gold Creek came into view. They passed the Dari-Maid and turned at the corner of Pine and Main by the Rexall Drugstore, the store where her mother had worked for as long as Carlie could remember.

Though she was nervous just being alone with him, she hoped he didn’t notice. Her palms were sweaty, her throat dry and her heart knocked loudly as the night seemed to close around them.

He took the corner a little too fast and the truck’s tires squealed as he pulled into the parking lot near her parents’ apartment complex. Built in the thirties, the Lakeview was comprised of three six-plex town houses. On the exterior, the bottom floors were faced in brick while the upper story was white clapboard. Black shutters adorned paned windows and though the apartments weren’t very big, they still held a certain charm that her mother loved. “Just like home,” Thelma, who had been raised in Brooklyn, New York, had told her daughter on more than one occasion. “You can’t find quality building like this anymore.”

As the pickup idled, Carlie reached for the door handle.

“You don’t have to go in,” he said, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

Her fingers froze in midair. “It’s late.”

“Not that late.” He turned off the ignition and the ensuing silence was suddenly deafening. She could hear her own heartbeat and the hum of the security lamps that shed a blue light over the pockmarked asphalt of the parking lot.

“I’ve got to work in the morning.”

“So do I.”

She turned to face him and barely dared breathe. Lounging against the driver’s side door, Ben was openly staring at her and his eyebrows were drawn together as if he were trying to piece together some complicated, mystical puzzle. He fingered his keys. Silence was thick in the truck. She swallowed hard.

He reached across the cab, lifted a lock of her long black hair and let it drop again. “Why did you show up at the cabin tonight?”

“I told you—”

“I know what you said, but I was wondering if there was another reason.”

“No.”

“You’re sure that it’s over between you and my brother?”

Her heart was beating so loudly, she was embarrassed. “It never really got started, Ben. It just didn’t work,” she said honestly.

“Why?”

“I liked Kevin...I still do, but he wanted to get more serious than I did....” Before she realized what he was doing, his fingers slid beneath her hair, found the back of her neck and drew her face to his.

“So what are you? Just a party girl?” he asked, his breath fanning her lips.