Page 34 of Caught Stealing

Apparently. I just wish I had a fucking clue why.

Dread fills my gut as I realize we have another four hours before we reach the Mercer’s place in Nashville; our halfway stop for the evening. Meaning four more hours of death glares while my mind attempts to figure out what happened back in May.

But rather than dwelling on it, I do my best to shove down the thousands of questions swirling inside my brain and fake a smile. “Guess we better get back on the road.”

“Probably,” Theo says with a heavy sigh. “But hey, if you need to escape the tension for a bit, you’re more than welcome to drive the Bronco.”

“You don’t want me to.”

He gives a shrug. “I swear, I don’t mind.”

My eyes shift from him to the mustard-yellow contraption he calls a vehicle. “I meant what I said. The only place I’d be caught driving this thing is off a damn cliff.”

He aims a smirk at me before yanking open the driver’s door. “From the sounds of it, you’re ready to anyway.”

Shit. After the bomb he just dropped on me? Me turning kamikaze on all their asses is less of a possibility and more of a guarantee.

“More than you know, man. More than you fucking know.”

Thankfully, the time spent in the car after lunch is much more mellow—though I’d like to merit it to Phoenix falling asleep about thirty minutes after lunch. It’s a little hard to give death glares when you’re in a food coma, I guess.

Yet the peace wasn’t all that peaceful, seeing as I couldn’t stop sneaking glimpses at his sleeping form in the rearview mirror, begging the recesses of my mind to remember something.

Anything.

But as another few hours pass and we close in on Nashville, I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe even having a bit of fun—with Noah, at least.

“Okay, this has been bothering me since we got in the car, so I have to ask,” he starts just after we cross the state line into Tennessee. “Why do you have a duck named Jerry on your dash?”

I can’t help the smile curling across my lips as I glance at the rubber duck he’s speaking of perched via a piece of tape on the top of my dashboard. There’s a littleHi, my name issticker on its chest, and I filled out the blank space with a black Sharpie, dubbing him Jerry.

“It’s a Jeep-people thing,” Phoenix says before I can reply.

I didn’t realize he woke up, and my eyes shift to the rearview to find him already staring at me. “Why do you say it like that?”

“I didn’t say it like anything.”

“Except you did,” I insist before glancing at Kason—who is dead asleep in the passenger seat.

So much for being the mediator like he promised.

“You kinda did,” Noah confirms, and hell, at least someone’s on my side. “You said it like you just found out he has an STD.”

This time, Noah is the recipient of my irritated frown. “Why the fuck does everyone equate me with STDs?”

“I dunno,” Phoenix says, tone laced with equal parts sarcasm and venom. “Maybe it’s because you’ve spent the last couple years defining yourself as a man-whore who will screw everything that walks on two legs.”

I watch his face silently for a minute, waiting for even the slightest hint of anything. Any clue as to what happened between us. But all I pick up on is a big, fat nothing, so I let my focus shift back to the road.

“It’s a label I’ve been given.”

“It’s one you’ve earned.”

My attention stays locked on the road, knowing it’s either that or risk crashing into oncoming traffic. And I can’t get answers out of Phoenix if I’m gorked from a head-on collision.

“Okay, but back to the duck,” Noah says, simultaneously diffusing the tension and rerouting us back to the original conversation. “I have to know the story.”

“There’s not much of a story to tell,” I insist. “I wasn’t ducked or anything.”

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