Page 89 of False Start

She’d insisted on driving, her eyes glued to the road, and any conversation about last night immediately shut down with a pointed look and a frown.

Fair enough. Sex last night had been good. Hell, better than good. But jaded by my monthlong, self-imposed dry spell, anything that wasn’t my hand and a video would have been mind-blowing.

And I’d been in “no strings attached” deals before. More than a few. During the football season, they were practically required. Kit’s insistence that the night had been a one-off and wouldn’t happen again was a relief.

Or at least, should have been a relief.

I should have been grateful for the silence, glad no other feelings had developed. But I wasn’t.

The words on the page blurred.

“Are we okay?” I asked tentatively.

“Was I okay” would have been the better question, but I had no way of answering that.

“Yeah,” Kit jostled in her seat, hand falling off her face. She crammed it under her knee. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” I exhaled the word, and from her raised eyebrow, probably sounded more relieved than unsure. “I just didn’t want to make things weird between us.”

“Weirder than sleeping together?” She shook her head. “Impossible.”

“Possible,” I countered. “I could have tried to convert you to Scientology. Or licked your armpits.”

“Please tell me that wasn’t a personal anecdote.” She scrunched her nose.

“Nope, I’m saving those for the next time we sleep together.”

She rolled her eyes, shaking her head. “Not happening. Now, how many more stops do we have this morning?”

I ran my thumb over the last page of the guidebook. “Six.”

“No extra stops?”

“Nope.” Unlike the hundreds of miles we’d covered over the past four days, the last stretch was a one-hundred-and-fifty-mile jaunt down to Florida. “I’ve found a few potential stops, but we don’t have much time to get to the final check-in.”

Kit frowned.

“Are you still hoping to sell the car?” I’d checked the rally’s social media account but hadn’t seen her car listed for sale. “You might want to let Ashley help you out.”

“Not looking forward to a drive home?” Her tone was offhand, but the question probing.

The car reeked of gas station food and mildew. Despite vacuuming out the backseat, a faint fishy smell hung in the air, and the Cougar wasn’t exactly built for comfort. The ash tray that jutted out from the passenger door dug into my side and the head rest bulged right at my shoulder blades. Even with mysweater wedged between me and the door and a neck pillow, my body ached.

And I didn’t want to be anywhere else.

“That’s not what I said.”

“I’ll work it out once we’re there.” She waved a hand, eyes glued on the road in front of us. “Or not. What’s the first stop?”

“Big Mama’s Pancake Emporium.”

The giant breakfast sampler seemed to put Kit at ease, and I regretted how quickly I’d have to disrupt that calmness. Thankfully, she hadn’t bothered to read through the final day stops, so she weaved the car along the back roads, past salt-sprayed signs and houses on stilts until we pulled up to the second-to-last stop on our way to the finish line.

“No.” A shudder accompanied the edict.

“We’ve got to.” I shoved the route book into my pocket and laced my voice with confidence. “Did you see the observation tower?”

I pointed to the painted building jutting out over the single-story houses, a green snake wrapping up the tower, shingles used to imitate scales wrapping around the fiberglass exterior.

---