Page 65 of False Start

She released a muffled laugh, her grip tightening.

“I mean it. You’d just spend the next two days crying and probably do a shit job at driving. And then where would we be?”

“We’re not going to win this race, Texas.”

“I know,” I admitted. “But trying to win the race is turning out to be a lot of fun, too.”

I didn’t pay attention to how long we stood on the side of the road like that. Long enough for a trucker to race by, blaring his horn like he’d caught us doing something a lot more salacious than hugging.

Kit pulled away first. She turned her face away, rubbing her cheek before looking up. “I don’t want to say thank you again.”

“Then don’t,” I shrugged. “I probably don’t deserve it.”

Kit raked a hand through her hair, eyes following the road into the distance. She took a step back. A step away.

TWENTY-ONE

KIT

“When are you graduating, anyway?”Trent settled back into the driver’s seat but didn’t start the audiobook. Instead, he seemed hellbent on a conversation.

And I owed him that much. I’d glimpsed how much he’d paid the assistant, and it would have been cheaper just to ship me back to Norwalk on a first-class ticket.

“Two weeks,” I said, taking a breath. “I mean, I get my diploma in two weeks. I’m not actually walking.”

“Wait, what?” Trent ripped his eyes off the road, locking onto mine. “You’re not walking?”

I shrugged. “College graduation is for hopeful twenty-one-year-olds about to take on the world. I’m just getting a small pay bump.”

“But you gotta walk.” His face is contorted in a combination of shock and horror. “I mean, you’ve earned it!”

The ferocity took me aback. Graduation wasn’t special. It was another step. Another box checked off a list. “It’s not like I’d even have anyone to watch me walk.”

“Derek—”

“Is bed bound. He probably can’t walk to the stadium, let alone sit through the entire graduation.”

“Your mom?”

“On the other side of the country.” I flinched. We’d talked about school on the phone, but somehow the invitation to watch me graduate always lodged at the back of my throat. I didn’t want to drag her back to Virginia when she’d done so much to get away. “It’s really not that important.”

“I’ll go.”

I blinked, unsure that I’d heard Trent correctly. “What?”

“I’ll go.” He offered with the same ease he’d offered to come on the rally. As if a five-day jaunt around the southeast or a four-hour graduation ceremony were barely an inconvenience.

I opened my mouth, readying an excuse. He didn’t really know me. We weren’t friends. The ceremony would be long and boring and too much to ask. “You don’t mean that. No one likes graduations.”

“I do.” He nodded, raising an eyebrow as his green eyes wandered to mine. “I’d like to watch you graduate.”

I waited for the teasing. The joke. The devilish glint in his eye, even knowing it wouldn’t come. Because as much of a flirt and an opportunist that Trent was, he wasn’t mean. He didn’t hurt people. He didn’t make offers he didn’t intend to fulfill.

“It’ll be fun. We’ll watch five hundred other people walk across the stage, and then you’ll have your big moment. We’ll grab dinner after.”

I tried to imagine it. A graduation without Derek or Mom in the audience, but Trent.

Trent? Sure, we’d kissed the night before, but that had been for…science? I wasn’t even sure anymore. The memory of the bar and the dare and the bartender tumbled around in my brain until they muddled into an incomprehensible mess.

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