Pride (9 page)

“Adam, you don’t have to do this. We can just—”

“No, I need to say this,” he told her, “before we—I need you to know that … how much I … I’ve never known anyone like you, Harper. You’re the only person in my life I can always count on—”

“You know I’ll always be there for you,” she reminded him. “Believe me.”

“I believe everything you say, Gracie, because I know you’re the one person who always tells me the truth. Promise me you always will.”

“Oh, Adam …” She grabbed him then and kissed him, hard, wrapping his arms around her and pressing herself against his bare skin. She was done talking. And it was a good thing—because the next words out of her mouth would have been a lie.

“Yo, dude, you in there?”

The loud voice was quickly followed by a pounding on the door and some raucous laughter. Harper quickly rolled away from him, and Adam groaned in frustration. The guys. Great. Their timing was just impeccable.

“Go away!” Adam shouted, grabbing his sneaker off the floor and throwing it toward the door. “I’m busy.”

“
Getting
busy is more like it,” another voice called out.

“Asses,” Adam muttered. He turned toward Harper in apology. “Just give me a second and I’ll deal with this,” he promised, eager to get back to what they’d barely started.

“You know what?” she gave him a quick peck on the lips and hopped out of bed, pulling the sheet around herself. “Let me.”

Harper strode toward the door, but froze midway there when the shouting started up again.

“You got Grace in there, dude?”

“She’ll show you a
good
time—and I should know!”

“You got me to thank, bro. I taught her everything she knows.”

“Just don’t hog her. Leave some for the rest of us!”

Adam leaped out of bed and stormed past Harper, flinging open the door.

“Get the hell out of here,” he growled, leveling a fist at the cluster of grinning idiots.

“Dude, chill, we’re just having some fun with you.”

“Fun’s over,” he said shortly, and swung the door shut in their faces. “They’re drunk,” he told Harper, feeling like he needed to apologize, as if this were all somehow his fault. “Come on,” he urged her. She was still standing frozen in the middle of the floor. “Let’s go back to bed.”

They climbed onto the soft mattress and swaddled themselves in the downy comforter, and Adam again took her in his arms.

“Ad, those things they said,” Harper began hesitantly, in a tentative and unfamiliar voice.

“Shh, it doesn’t matter,” he promised her. “Nothing’s changed—we’re still here, together. I still want you.”

And he did, desperately.

But he couldn’t stop hearing their words, their laughter. He couldn’t focus. And as he eased himself on top of her, ready to take their relationship to the next level, to start them off on a new beginning, he discovered—to his horror and humiliation—that he just couldn’t.

Kane closed the door softly behind Beth—then gave it a sharp kick for good measure. What had been the point of finagling the single room? Of talking her into coming in the first place? For God s sake, it wasn’t even eleven o’clock yet—was he supposed to just be a good boy and go to sleep?

Calm down,
he told himself. He didn’t like exposing too much of his emotions, even in private. He was nothing without his poker face, and practice made perfect.

Speaking of poker …

He’d overheard some of the staff talking about a weekly poker game, and had no doubt he could talk himself into it.

He weighed his options.

Sleep? Not so much an option as a failure.

Partying with his peers in some smoky, overcrowded room that, by this point, probably had sweat on the walls and vomit on the floor? Kane didn’t associate with these losers when they were in town—and he saw no reason to make an exception for their change in zip code.

Poker it was.

He crept through the lounge on his way to the staff quarters, wary of running into their absentee chaperone.

Turns out his instincts were half right: Jack Powell
was
in the lounge, but judging from the blonde precariously balanced on his lap, nibbling his ear, he wasn’t going to be doing much chaperoning anytime soon.

Kane shook his head in admiration—finally, a member of the Haven High teaching staff he could look up to.

Newly inspired, he went off in search of some fun of his own. Not
too
much fun, he reminded himself. After all, he had a girlfriend now—a real one. And that meant no extracurricular activities. If Adam could do it, he could do it.

As he’d suspected, his charm was more than enough to get him admitted to the back room and then to the poker game—though he supposed waving around a ready wad of cash hadn’t hurt.

It had been just what he’d expected: dark room, good Scotch, and two beautiful women facing him across the table. Those compact, svelte bodies, hard muscles only highlighting the soft curves … There was only one surprise. Sitting to the right of Amber and Claire was a more familiar face: Harper.

“What are you doing here?” Kane asked, taking a seat at the makeshift poker table.

Harper rolled her eyes. “Don’t ask. And you?”

“I’d say that’s a good policy. Don’t ask and”—Kane glanced at the buxom brunette on his right and the luscious blonde on his left—“don’t tell.”

“Your deal,” said the guy who’d let him into the game, handing him the cards. “Oh, and did Amber tell you?”

“Did Amber tell me what?” Kane asked, winking at her.

“We usually play a warm-up round before we start tossing the money around,” Amber explained. “Just to get us in the mood. Strip poker.” She looked him up and down. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Mind?” He glanced toward Harper, who only smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Trust me, I don’t mind at all.”

Was she crazy?

Kaia stared out the dusty window of the pickup truck, wondering if she’d lost her mind. What other excuse could there be for her agreeing to this ridiculous plan?

A few hours earlier, as she’d half hoped and half feared, Reed had shown up with her cold, greasy pizza. After trading yet another round of insults, she’d challenged him to find some way to alleviate her Grace-induced boredom. He, in turn, had shown up at the end of his shift with a dirty pickup truck and a challenge of his own: Drive off into the middle of nowhere with a skuzzy stranger and hope that his definition of “something interesting to do” wouldn’t land her in the morgue.

She didn’t even know why she’d called him. So he was hot. Fine. There was no point in denying that. Nor could she deny the fact that when he looked at her, when his eyes burned into her, she trembled.

But that was irrelevant. It had to be. Kaia Sellers could
not
involve herself with someone like this
Weed,
poor, stupid, aimless, and completely unacceptable. Couldn’t, and wouldn’t. And yet …

And yet, she’d made the call. And when he’d shown up at her door, she’d welcomed him in, hadn’t she? Leaned toward him, so he would smell her perfume. Favored him with a sultry smile.

And now here she was in the old truck, Reed by her side, speeding through the darkened landscape, the lights of civilization (if Grace qualified) fading into the distance behind them.

I must be crazy,
Kaia thought, unsure whether to be appalled or amused. It was the only possible explanation.

Crazy was fine—for a night. But whatever happened, Kaia promised herself, one night was all it would ever be. Reed Sawyer could not be allowed into her life. He didn’t fit. And never would.

They drove in silence, and when the truck suddenly came to a stop, Reed turned off the engine and got out without a word. Kaia climbed out as well (once it became painfully clear he wasn’t planning on opening the door for her) and looked around in dismay. If this wasn’t the
middle
of nowhere, surely it was only a stone’s throw away.

That’s it—he brought me here to kill me,
she thought in sudden alarm.

They were parked on the shoulder of a dusty road that stretched across the flat land until it disappeared into the darkness. Ahead of them sat the massive, hulking frame of a gutted industrial complex, long since abandoned.

“We’re
here?
” she asked, masking her increasing panic with the comfortably familiar cloak of disdain.

He nodded, and hopped up on the hood of the truck.

“And where is ‘here,’ exactly?”

“This is Grace Mines,” he explained. “Or used to be. It closed down—then it burned down.”

“And then what?” she asked, intrigued in spite of herself. She hopped up onto the hood of the truck next to him, looking more closely at the shattered remains of the mine, gleaming in the light of the full moon.

“Then nothing. Who has the money to do anything about it?” he asked rhetorically. “It’s been like this ever since I can remember. I guess it always will be.”

Kaia tried to imagine the empty husk before her as it had been in the boom times, teeming with workers, young men seeking their fortune, fathers struggling to support their families, the air filled with the clicking and whirring of machinery. This place had been alive once. And now? Weeds sprouted amid the fallen beams, empty beer cans lay strewn in piles of ash, the jagged glass of the shattered windows splintered the moonlight—now, it was just a corpse. A fallen giant, a dead zone, soon to be reclaimed by the wilderness around it.

“You come here often?” she asked, her tone more serious than she’d intended.

He nodded. “Something about it—” He looked over at her, then looked away. “We can go, if you want.”

“No, I want to stay for a while.”

And she was surprised to discover it was true.

They sat there side by side, not talking, not touching. They sat for a long time, just staring at the old building, at the desert that lay beyond it. Kaia shivered once and, wordlessly, Reed tucked his jacket around her shoulders. It was heavy and warm—and smelled like him. Not pot this time, but a deep, rich scent, like dark coffee by an open fire. It fit here—
he
fit here—strange and dark, like the ruins, with a quiet dignity.

She was about to take his hand when she felt the first spatter of rain.

Rain? In the desert?

Before she had time to be confused, the skies opened up. It was as if bucket after bucket of icy water were being dumped from above—the rain fell fast and hard, pelting their skin, turning the desert dirt around them into rivers of mud.

“What the hell is this?” Kaia complained as they both scrambled back into the truck. “It s not supposed to rain in the desert!”

“Sometimes it does,” he said simply, hoisting her into the passenger seat, then rushing around to the driver’s side, finally throwing himself in and slamming the door.

They looked at each other—both sopping wet, their hair and clothes plastered to their bodies—and burst into laughter.

“This is, by far, the weirdest date I’ve ever had,” Kaia said, wringing out the edge of her shirt as best she could.

“Who says it’s a date?” he retorted, but with a smile.

“We should probably wait for it to let up before we drive home,” Kaia said, gesturing toward the opaque sheet of water flooding down the windshield.

“I guess we should,” he agreed. “Cold?”

“What?”

“You re shivering.”

She was cold, she realized. She hadn’t noticed. She nodded and, hesitantly, he put an arm around her. She inched to the left, resting herself against him. It wasn’t much warmer—but she stayed.

She leaned her head against his shoulder and they listened to the rain pelting the truck, spattering against the soft ground. She shivered again, and he held her tighter. His wet hair was still dripping, and she watched the drops of water trace their way down his face. They looked like tears.

They sat there together, motionless, for a long time.

And then the rain stopped. And they drove away.

chapter
5