Still the One Read online

  the day, right?”

  The wet grass was seeping through his clothes as drops of rain splashed right in his eye. They had a long drive ahead of them, but all he could feel was her fingers in his, and then there was her smile.

  Brighter than the sun that hadn’t come out in weeks.

  The front door of the house across the street opened. An older woman in a thick bathrobe and curlers peered out. “What the hell are you crazy kids doing?” she yelled.

  Darcy laughed her musical laugh. “Being crazy kids,” she yelled back.

  The woman muttered something and slammed her door.

  “She’ll call the cops,” Darcy said. “And poor Kel will have to come out and investigate.”

  Kel was the local sheriff and a friend of AJ’s. “We’re not doing anything illegal,” he said. “Stupid, yes. Illegal, no.”

  Darcy shrugged. “Mrs. Willingham likes to cover all her bases when it comes to me.” She blew out a sigh and sat up. “We’ve got eight point five minutes to get out of here.”

  A few minutes later they were on the highway. “I’m not even going to mention how disturbing it is that you know the exact response time for the police to get to your house.”

  Darcy leaned forward, peering out at the long stretch of narrow two-lane road ahead of them. “Where are we going? This isn’t the way.”

  “We have to take back roads today. Turns out they’re repaving the main and the detour they’ve set isn’t the best way to get there.”

  “Back roads?” she asked. “Isn’t that going to take longer?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her silence spoke volumes on her opinion of the matter.

  “We there yet?” she asked five minutes later.

  “Funny.”

  She squeezed the excess water out of her hair and stripped out of her sweater, which left her in a ribbed neon pink The Who tank.

  To drown out the silence—and to keep himself from staring at her skimpy top—AJ turned on the radio. Rap blared through the cab.

  Darcy leaned forward and changed the station. Vintage rock filled the cab. With a smile, she began to sing along to Van Halen.

  He flicked the station back to Eminem.

  “My fillings are going to fall right out of my head,” she said and changed the station again. Bubblegum pop this time.

  She sent him an evil smile that he knew better than to trust. Plus, he was pretty sure it was Justin Bieber, and he hated himself for even knowing that. “And I’m going to need fillings just from listening to this,” he said. “Use your iPod.”

  “I’m doing you a favor,” she reminded him. “The favoree picks the tunes.”

  “I’m driving. Driver picks the tunes.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Pull over. I’ll drive.”

  He pulled over to the side of the highway so fast that she squeaked in surprise. Biting her lower lip, she made a show of looking over her shoulder. “You’re going to get a ticket.”

  “You wanted to drive,” he said. “Well worth a ticket.”

  Silence, which he let fill the interior of the truck because they both knew one undisputable fact—she hadn’t driven on any highway since her accident. She was cleared to drive and she drove around town when she had to, but she’d made every excuse not to go further. She was a woman who leapt without looking first, who always took a dare, who thrived on challenges, and he loved that about her. He missed that about her. He removed his seat belt and reached for hers.

  “You’re an asshole,” she said softly and clutched her seat belt to her.

  “Much as I’d love to listen to you whisper endearments in my ear, we’re on a tight schedule,” he said. “You’ve changed your mind, then?”

  Ignoring the question, she cranked up the radio again. This time Poison blared out, singing “Talk Dirty to Me.”

  Shaking his head, he pulled back onto the highway.

  “You know,” she said, a loaded fifteen minutes of silence later, “most people baby me through all this stuff and my new milestones. Not you.”

  “Not me,” he agreed.

  “You just plow right through the shit, expecting miracles out of me. I annoy you that much?”

  He glanced at her in surprise. “Annoyance doesn’t play into it at all.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said dryly to the passenger window.

  He passed an old couple doing fifty miles an hour before continuing their conversation. “I do it because I care,” he said.

  She snorted.

  He looked at her again, starting to get pissed off that she kept thinking the worst of him. “And also because I believe you can do anything you want to do.”

  He could feel her surprise, and again he met her gaze because he wanted her to see that he wasn’t kidding. “There’s more to life than simply surviving a car wreck,” he said. “You need to live. Even if it means you’re going back to doing stuff that scares me.”

  Her mouth twitched. “Nothing scares you.”

  “Wrong,” he said. “You scare me.”

  She looked at him again. He could feel the weight of her stare as she studied him.

  “I’m not going to ever baby you,” he told her. “I realize you’ve got your brother and sister and friends all wrapped around your pinkie, but that’s not my style.”

  She stared at him some more. Then she changed the station again and cranked it up.

  Country this time.

  As someone sang about his tractor and his dead dog and his wife sleeping with Santa Claus, AJ considered offing himself. It would be less painful. He looked at the time.

  Only five and a half hours to go.

  Perfect.

  Twenty minutes later he glanced over at the sound of Darcy’s low laugh. She was texting, her thumbs flying, a big smile on her face.

  Damn, he thought, staggered. That smile was a hell of a good look on her. “Who you texting?”

  “I’m not texting. I’m sexting.”

  “Sexting,” he repeated.

  “Yes. It’s the act of sending sexually explicit content via text.”

  “I know what sexting is.” He pulled out his phone and made a show of glancing at the screen. It was dark.

  “Not you,” she said.

  “Who?”

  No answer. More thumb flying, and then another laugh.

  Don’t get sucked in, you don’t need to know. She’s fucking with you, just stay out of her vortex. This was what his common sense told him. But his common sense wasn’t in charge. “Who?” his dick asked.

  She gave him a long look.

  And … kept on sexting.

  And cracking herself up. This went on for another half hour before AJ took the next exit. They were out in the middle of nowhere, but there was a gas station and a convenience store, and he needed more caffeine.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “You’ve got to go to the bathroom already? Weak bladder?”

  He shoved the truck into park and slid her a look that would’ve intimidated anyone else.

  Not Darcy. Of course not Darcy.

  “They have meds for that, old man.”

  He grated his teeth as he tossed off his seat belt. He had a good life, he told himself. Hell, he had a great life. He had a thriving business, his own home, and he did alright in the women department as well.

  So why the hell he let this one get to him, he had no clue. “I don’t have to go to the damn bathroom,” he snapped. “And I sure as hell don’t have a bladder problem.”

  “Hey, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s not like I questioned the size of your—”

  He shoved out of the truck. “Wait here,” he said curtly, and started to walk off. At the last minute he went back for the keys and yanked them out of the ignition.

  She laughed. “Nice show of trust.”

  “There’s trust, and there’s stupidity,” he said, and strode into the convenience store. He bought a coffee, a Gatorade, and, because he knew his passenger, he also bought a bag of Gummy Bea