Page 23 of The Very Naughty List

Maybe my brothers were right to have laughed at my great idea for a date.

“Shit, this probably isn’t the best fake date.” I reach up and sweep my damp hair out of my eyes. “I should have?—”

“What are you talking about? It’s great.” She takes a bite of her donut, making an appreciative noise. “Besides, the fake part of the date is over. We’re not in public now, so this is just the two of us hanging out.”

The thought of that seems even more dangerous somehow than the Polar Bear Plunge was, and I find myself oddly disappointed that I won’t be able to use public exhibition as a reason to pull her into my arms again.

When we get to the garage, I pull inside and turn the thermostat up as soon as we get out of the car. The place isn’t huge, so it should heat up fairly quickly.

“I always liked hanging out in here.”

Hailey runs her fingers over some tools that I left lying out on the workbench, expression nostalgic, as if she’s lost in her memories.

I can’t help the grin that spreads over my face at that. “Yeah, me too. It’s like my home away from home.”

My dad used to run this garage, and I can remember working with him on cars in here as a kid. Then, after my parents died, I took over running the garage as a way to cope with the loss. I always felt safe and completely at home here, and I like that we share that feeling about this place.

“Do you remember when I used to come in here and study?” she asks, glancing my way.

Of course I do.

Lucas and my brothers used to come hang out in here with me all the time while I was tinkering around with stuff.

Once I was working on a set of motorcycles—three of them, to be exact. I got them from a scrapyard and was fixing them up for my brothers and me to ride. Lucas joked around about how they were “death machines,” but I was determined to get them up and running and get us out there riding. Plus, after my parents’ car wreck, I didn’t want my brothers being afraid of things. Their accident was a brutal one, and it hit us all hard. Nick and Reid thought that I was just being reckless again instead of dealing with the grief. But I had a purpose. I didn’t want any of us to be so traumatized that we were afraid to get behind the wheel.

And it worked—for a while anyway, until we all got too busy to go riding together. Or maybe the bikes had just served theirpurpose by then, getting us through the worst of the aftermath of our loss.

Hailey came and hung out in the garage a lot back then, since her brother was here too. But the funny thing was that she didn’tjustcome by when Lucas was here.

“Yeah, I remember,” I tell her. “You’d come by, and we’d all hang out and eat pizza. Lucas used to tease you about always wanting to get pineapple and pepperoni.”

She laughs, and I take her coat from her and turn my back as she changes out of her wet bikini and into the dry clothes she brought with her. I’m enough of a gentleman not to turn and look while she’s changing, but it takes every last ounce of my self-restraint to keep my gaze fixed straight ahead.

“I used to come by after school sometimes.”

Her voice is right behind my back, and I try to stay focused on what we’re talking about so that I don’t start picturing what she must look like right now, her nipples peaked from the cold and her lightly tanned skin flushed.

I nod. “I remember that too. Sometimes you even snuck out of school on your free periods and came here. That clique of mean girls—what were they called?”

“The Divas,” she says with audible distaste. “God, they were horrible. You can turn around now.”

When I turn and look at her, Hailey is back in blue jeans and a sweater that looks soft enough that I want to bury my face in it. But it’s the way her jeans hug the curves of her hips and perfectly showcase her long legs that makes it a little hard to breathe.

I turn around for a second and pretend to look for something in the garage just so that I can get my shit back under control, clearing my throat as I glance at her over my shoulder. “They really used to give you a hard time, didn’t they?”

She grimaces. “They did. Which is why I came to the garage to escape. It was nice to just get away from the cliques and drama for a bit, and to be here with you.”

Hailey’s eyes dart away from mine after she mentions the last part, and I round the workshop bench to stand beside her. It feels good to talk like this—natural, normal, the two of us alone instead of putting on a show for everyone else. Not that I don’t enjoy the spectacle. I definitely do. But I also like having her all to myself behind a closed door too, where we can just talk and be real with each other.

Something about Hailey makes it feel easy to be myself, as if she doesn’t judge me the way almost everyone else here in Chestnut Hill does. I got a reputation for being the town bad boy a long time ago, and that’s never really shifted over the years. Usually, it doesn’t bother me, but I think it would if that’s how Hailey saw me. Or if that’s theonlything she saw in me.

“Well, those Divas are a bunch of shallow bitches,” I tell her. “Brielle started hanging out with them too, you know.”

Hailey rolls her eyes at that piece of information.

“I’m not surprised. I thought she was my best friend, but obviously that wasn’t the case. Looking back on it, Brielle always wanted to level up socially. She was never content with where she was, and never content just being my friend. I wonder sometimes if that’s part of the reason she fucked around with Dylan behind my back. I mean, his family is wealthy and connected, and he was always super popular.”

My blood boils just thinking about how either of those two people could have hurt Hailey as much as they did.

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