Page 49 of Busted Dreams

“I missed you,” I said into his chest as I hugged him tight. Out of all my guys, he was the one I saw the least.

“You saw me yesterday afternoon when I dropped you off from school.” That was true, but he had to leave right after and the drive was barely ten minutes. Today, I drove myself because Beck had been busy and Rhys had said he had something he had to do. That was fine, I missed my time with Freda anyway. Since moving to Silver Ranch, she had been the one constant symbol of freedom.

“Still.” I sighed. “Okay, as much as I want to stay in this exact spot all day, we have a video to make. I have some ideas, but what did you come up with?”

“That we won’t be doing the video here,” he muttered, but I was tucked under his chin so I heard him perfectly.

“Why not?” I propped my chin on his chest to look up at him.

“Let’s get out of here, and I’ll tell you all about it. I have a place I like to go to, and if you’re game, I’d really like to take you.” He let his fingers comb through my hair to the ends, then brushed another strand away from my face.

“Sure. You drive? And I’ll get my car after? I have to warn you though, I only have about an hour.” Stepping away, I started walking toward Cherry while giving Freda a loving pat on the way.

“One hour? That’s all I get today?” he grouched playfully.

“Sorry. I promised Thatcher I’d go hang out with him tonight, but I wanted to do this first. It’s important to me.” He was important to me, and showing him that his dreams were possible was crucial. Even though I’d secured my dream, it still felt feeble and like it could come crumbling down at any moment. If I could help Beck with his, I’d be proving to myself as well as him that anything was possible.

“Thatcher, huh?” An odd note rang in his voice that I couldn’t quite place. “Well then, I guess that’s fair since I already called Saturday.”

“What’s Saturday?” I asked as I slid in beside him.

He paused, looking to the ceiling as if he was mentally reviewing some unseen information.

Suddenly, he turned to me and grinned. “Okay, I call Saturday. There’s a Devil’s Hands cookout, family only. They want to get to know me and Jonah much better. Angel also knows I won’t come without you. So boom, that’s an invite for you, and I already demanded Rhys and Thatcher be allowed to go. I know you wouldn’t feel comfortable without at least a few of your friends there.”

The way he said friends made the hair stand up on my forearms, and I was wearing a winter coat, so I wasn’t cold. He knew I was dating or going to date Thatcher and Rhys. Did he know what happened with Rhys?

No way, there was literally no way he would know. I was just being paranoid.

But I did need to be honest with him.

Biting my lip, I looked at him under my lashes…and chickened out. I would tell him before the evening was over, but not yet.

“I’d love to go with you. And yes, I’d feel the most comfortable if the other guys went too. You and Jonah are family, so they’re going to want to speak to you. If Thatch and Rhys are there, I’ll have someone to talk to away from all of the small talk. And don’t worry, I won’t take my camera,” I said wryly. “Somehow, I doubt they’d enjoy any type of documenting from an outsider.”

“Probably a bad idea.” He smirked as he pulled out of the parking lot.

“So where is this secret spot?” I twisted my bag in my lap, fingering the tassels as middle class suburbia passed us by. It wasn’t the hell I thought it was when I first moved here, not when I found real friendships among the people I desperately wanted to leave behind, but a part of me still ached to start over somewhere without the taint of my parents over my head.

“It’s a little coffee shop on the wrong side of the tracks. Close to the old high school.”

A few years ago, Silver Ranch rearranged their school lines so the more impoverished areas were grouped in with the wealthier kids in the district. At the time, a lot of the “good” families had hated it. Jonah had told me enough stories of how it was in the beginning, and he still struggled with it, even if the fight was only in his head.

“That’s cool. What else is over there?”

Twisting the radio dial to find some music, he said, “There are a couple streets of businesses. Most are closed and condemned now, but the coffee shop still stands strong.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize it was its own little town.”

“It’s not.” He laughed, then took my hand in his. The tingling racing up my arm was becoming familiar now. This was our thing when he was driving. “You’d be surprised how businesses will look at people when their clothes are worn and stained, their hands dirty from blue collar work. A few decades ago, some of the wives opened some basic businesses in our neighborhood to cater to the people who didn’t feel comfortable going to the ritzy sides of the tracks.”

“That’s surprisingly motivational and slightly depressing.” Badass women rising up to create their own businesses? That was awesome, but the reason why broke my heart for the prideful people who lived there because they were born to their life situation.

“Don’t worry so much about it. It’s not like that anymore. Old lady Murphy, she used to own the sewing shop next to the coffee shop, and now her grandkids manage three locations around Silver Ranch, one even in the heart of downtown. So there was definitely some good that came of it.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. It was still sad to hear about.

The well-paved streets turned to ones that clearly weren’t on the maintenance route, with weathered grooves and potholes decorating the road. Tags of graffiti littered some of the sides of stone and brick buildings, but not nearly as much as I would have thought. Beck pulled into a small parking lot behind a small strip of businesses with a sign for Splash Coffee Shop pointing down a narrow alley.

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