Page 18 of Triple Play

I aim my gaze over his left shoulder and out the car’s rear view. “You heard her.”

Dutifully, he scrunches down so Shira can navigate out of the spot.

Once clear, she shifts Lilac back to drive, bringing a whine from the engine. “Shh, girl, easy now,” she says like she’s gentling a horse.

“You sure this is gonna get us to Florida?” Paquette says. As if he can’t take Shira’s previous answers at face value.

“She said she was sure,” I say. Even though it’s unclear if Lilac will make it as far as the highway. As my dad likes to say, leadership is about not letting uncertainty get in the way of forward motion. “Shira, show him what this old girl can do.”

Shira’s eyes shine with laughter as if I’ve said something funny. “You trust me to get you there?”

I settle my hand over the center console and give her knee a reassuring squeeze. She’s probably nervous about driving in this weather. “Of course.”

“In that case…” She angles the car toward the garage entrance and readies herself like a Formula One driver right before a race. “Hold on tight, I guess.”

Then she drops her foot to the gas and speeds us forward, out of the garage and into the oncoming snow.

CHAPTER FOUR

Shira

“What an asshole!” I yell as I slam my foot on the brake. I glance over at Blake to see if he’ll grab the door handle. Joke’s on me, because he hasn’t let go of it for the last ten miles. “I mean…the guy cut me off.”

“If driving is stressing you out, I can take over,” he offers. Though what it sounds like is that my driving is stressing him out.

Felix laughs, not for the first time since we left. I pretend to check the mirror and shoot him a look in the rearview. Quit that. It only makes him grin harder.

“So,” Blake says, “does everyone from New England drive like this?”

“Massachusetts,” Felix corrects from the back. “People from Massachusetts drive like this.”

“Yeah,” I call, “mostly because people from Vermont take twenty-five years to execute a left-hand turn.”

Felix’s laughter fills the car. The same booming laugh that shook his thighs while I was on his lap. My face warms involuntarily. Good thing the heater’s running full blast and I’m olive-skinned enough for a blush not to show through.

Blake turns to me in question, hand relaxing but not quite relenting the door handle.

“Felix is from…” I begin, then trail off. Because there’s no good reason for me to know where he’s from. I swallow around my nerves. “I just figured with the name that he’s from Vermont.” Though I guess he could be Cajun or from Quebec or from any of the million other places that speak French.

“It’s true,” Felix concurs. “I am from Vermont.”

Blake has to relinquish his grip on the door to turn toward the conversation. Even with the seat back as far as it will go, his knees stick up. He can’t be that comfortable in the dip of Lilac’s passenger seat. Even so, he hasn’t complained: not at my driving and not at the traffic that’s varying between a race and a crawl.

“I don’t know that I’ve met anyone from Vermont before.” A smooth Blake answer, like he’s either being polite to Felix or he wants to save me from being embarrassed even if he’s not sure why. My heart does a thing, a skipped beat. He’s so considerate toward me…and I’m lying about kissing his teammate, if only by omission.

“I grew up on a farm,” Felix says.

“Oh yeah?” Blake says. “What’d your people raise?”

“Dairy. Some vegetables.” It’s short, the way Felix never was about the farm. “They were thinking about planting some alfalfa.”

“Sounds nice.”

“Yeah,” Felix growls, “it was.”

The was catches me. For a second, that hangs in the air between us. Is something going on with the farm? I have Felix’s number, mostly because he needed mine to Venmo money for my nails and hair—always with a little musical note emoji—that sometimes got used for gas and groceries toward the end of the month. He texted me a few pictures last year—before June when I’d thank him for the money—and after June when he asked how I was. Those texts I left on read, but I always saved the photos. Eventually he stopped sending pictures when I didn’t answer. Hell, he probably deleted the whole album or found another dancer to show them to.

“I don’t think I could be a farmer,” I say. “I wouldn’t want to get up early.”

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