Spring Fling

by Claudia Burgoa

  I’d always told myself I would end up with a dancer, someone who could understand the grueling schedules and the unbridled passion for the arts. Sure, it could be difficult when we left for a gig, but jobs didn’t last forever. And I was certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I would meet that someone at Gravity.

  “You’re up, Amie,” Viv called.

  I winked at my group and nodded to the floor. “Let’s do this.”

  WATCH: Show Down

  We were in the last two eight-counts of floor work during the freestyle at the end of the dance when I made the mistake of glancing back at the window. I didn’t know why I did it. I wasn’t searching for Tobias, but a feeling in my gut told me to look anyway.

  The moment my eyes crashed into his, something else awoke inside me, something I’d never felt, even on the dance floor. My head spun, and my heart whirred wildly in my chest. And for a second, I forgot that I was in the middle of executing a sexy combination, one in which I was wearing nothing but knee-high boots, an oversized cream sweater dress, and black spanks.

  I saw him. And deep down, I knew for the first time ever that he saw me too.

  * * *

  Tobias

  * * *

  I’d known Amelia a decade before I truly saw her. I wasn’t blind to her good looks, but there was something about hearing her talk about her love of dance that sparked a fire in me.

  I began to crave her, and not in a creepy stare-at-her-through-her-bedroom-window sort of way. I wanted her in a way that fueled the spark she’d already lit within me. I wanted to hear her laugh, watch her smile, and catch her fruity scent as she breezed down the hall past my room. It was all bait that lured me in to what I ultimately had to have. Her. In every sense of the word. Because Amelia Clark was the girl who gave me a reason to stay.

  And that was exactly why one week after driving her to and from LA, I packed my things and planned to get the hell out of town as soon as possible.

  “You haven’t disappeared yet.”

  I was buried under my truck in the middle of an oil change when I heard her stroll into my garage. Her voice was muffled, but I would’ve known that sweet song anywhere. It was her.

  After adjusting the oil pan, I rolled out from under my truck to find Amelia standing there in one of her midriff-baring dance outfits, her hands on her hips. A smile lit up her face, but her eyes were what held me.

  I’d always considered my truck and I alike in many ways. Once upon a time, I was the talk of the town—star athlete, catching eyes wherever I went. My dreams had been in the palm of my hand. The fire inside me had been fierce and unstoppable. But after all the bullshit went down, I neglected myself. I sat too long, and eventually, all the parts that had fueled me gave out. No matter how many times or how hard I tried to repair it, there was no going back to original condition.

  Is that how she sees me too? Broken and no good? And why do I care?

  I continued to stare at her as she moved from the entrance of the garage to the red toolbox on my right. She looked so innocent and curious among my mess of vehicle parts, like she knew she didn’t belong, yet there was nowhere else she would rather be.

  “How do you know how all this stuff works?”

  It was then that I realized I hadn’t spoken a word since she’d arrived. “My dad taught me. We used to spend a lot of time in here before…”

  “Before what?” She was so nonchalant as she asked, I wondered if Trinity had told her anything. They had been best friends forever, but Trinity had a sort of lioness pride that she risked for no one, just like our parents. Trinity’s image was far too important to her, especially when it came to Amelia. Those two were stark opposites, and from the way Trinity spoke about her, I got the impression my sister harbored a deep jealousy.

  “Just… before.” I wasn’t in the mood to set up a conflict between those two.

  Amelia nodded, signaling that she wasn’t going to push it, as she continued to inspect every gadget and surface with a graze of her finger.

  Her eyes drifted to mine as I stood. “Are you leaving again soon?”

  “Is that any of your business?” I should have felt bad when her cheeks turned pink from my question, but I felt something else instead—a desire I hadn’t felt in a long time.

  “Guess not,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

  I hadn’t meant to come off so abrupt. It had just been a long time since I’d flirted with anyone.

  Is that what I’m doing? Flirting with my sister’s best friend? Because it feels like I’m being a complete jackass.

  I leaned against my truck and folded my arms. “Trin left for New York with our parents for spring break.”

  Amelia nodded as she averted her eyes. They were glued to a hammer drill when she spoke. “Yeah, I know.”

  “You don’t usually stop by when she isn’t around.”

  She gazed up with a shrug. “Guess I was just curious.”

  “About the type of oil I use on my truck?”

  She glared at me. “No, smart ass.” She gestured to the oil dripping into the pan beneath my truck. “I saw you working on her and thought maybe you were leaving again. And…”

  My curiosity peaked. “Spit it out, Amelia.”

  She was chewing nervously on her bottom lip. “I thought maybe I could come with you.”

  “No.” My response was instant. I didn’t even have to think twice about it. “There’s no fucking way. Your parents would freak. My sister would kill me. And I’m pretty sure the cops would have every reason to arrest me for kidnapping an underage girl without her parents’ permission.”

  “My parents are out of town. Trinity doesn’t even have to know about it. And I’m pretty sure turning eighteen today puts me in the legal range to do what I want.”

  My heartbeat sped. “It’s your birthday?”

  She nodded, and it was then that I saw something else in her eyes—a sadness she’d masked with her smile and her sexy strut up my drive.

  Shit.

  “So, can we go?” she asked again, her eyes bright and hopeful.

  I let out a sigh, hating my instinct to give the girl whatever she wanted. Amelia Clark made me weak, and I couldn’t succumb to her power.

  “I travel alone.”

  “Why?”

  I grew anxious at her insistence and at my desire to give in so quickly. I wasn’t in my right mind. That was the only explanation. It didn’t matter if Amelia was of legal age to do whatever she damn well pleased. She couldn’t do those things with me.

  “I don’t know. To get away from people. To think.”

  She took a step closer to me. “We don’t have to talk.”

  I narrowed my eyes, silently calling her bluff. “You’ll be bored out of your mind.”

  “I won’t,” she argued.

  “There aren’t any cell phones where I’m going.”

  “I wasn’t planning to bring mine with me.”

  “You won’t even last one week out there.”

  “Try me.”

  Stubborn, stubborn girl. Maybe if she knows where I’m going, she’ll drop it.

  “How do you feel about camping? And I’m not talking about a cottage in the woods, Amelia. I’m talking about a tent in the middle of nowhere.”

  She shrugged, clearly determined to agree to any condition I laid out. “I’ve never done it before.” Then she tilted her head. “Sounds like fun.”

  I chuckled. “Fun is not what I would call it. There aren’t any showers on site, so we’d have to drive to get to one. It gets cold at night, hot during the day, and there’s no thermostat if you want to get comfortable.”

  “Where would we sleep?”

  “I set up a tent in my truck bed. There’s a mattress, but there’s only one.” I figured that alone would turn her off from hopping in my truck. Accommodations were limited, and she would have to sleep next to me.

  “What will we do during the day?”

  I shrugged. “Whatever you want to do, Amel
ia.” My eyes flickered over her attire again. Something about the way she eyed me back with that challenging spark made my dick so hard, which was yet another reason why she should back the hell away and forget she’d ever asked me.

  Her eyes lit up, sensing my resolve crumbling. “So I can come?”

  I turned away from her, placing the wrench back on the wall and strutting back to my truck. “Guess we’ll find out,” I mumbled to myself. Then I spoke loud enough for her to hear me. “I’ll swing by your place in three hours. Be ready to leave.”

  When I glanced at her over my shoulder, I halted at her smile. Just the fact that I’d put it there made my heart whirl in my chest. And in that single moment I feared that I would also be the one who made it fade.

  * * *

  Amelia

  * * *

  He’d warned me, but I was too hurt and stubborn to care where I would spend that week. I just knew I didn’t want to be alone. Everyone had forgotten my birthday—my parents, my best friend, my extended family at Gravity. It was like I didn’t even exist on my special day. Gravity closing down for that entire week was icing on the cake.

  It wasn’t like me to dwell in my own misery. I had always been admired for my staying positive in any situation. So when I drove up my drive and saw Tobias’ long legs sticking out from under his truck, the idea to invite myself wherever he was going was glaringly bright. I figured he must have been planning to leave if he was working on his truck.

  “Be ready in three hours,” he’d told me before we parted.

  I knew the last thing he wanted was a tagalong. But I was excited nonetheless.

  It was ten minutes after one o’clock in the afternoon when he turned the corner and I could see his white, antique truck driving toward me. After he parked, he hopped out and took the two suitcases standing at my feet. He didn’t even make a wisecrack about the amount of luggage I carried. He just took them, one in each hand, and laid them in the bed of his truck.

  “Ready?” he asked when my bags were loaded.

  I swallowed and nodded, suddenly feeling a wild flock of flutters in my chest. I’d half-expected to never see him again after he’d agreed to let me join him. Surely, the thought crossed his mind to leave without me.

  “Hop in.” He pulled open the passenger door and waited until my legs were tucked inside before closing it behind me. As he did, our eyes met through the glass. It was a brief moment, but all our intentions were as transparent as air. There was something more neither of us wanted to say aloud.

  It wasn’t until we’d pulled onto the main highway that I turned to him and asked a question I should have thought to ask before we’d left. “Where are we going?” I really hadn’t cared before, but my curiosity was eating away at me.

  “Ever been to Big Sur?”

  “No, but I know where it is. It’s like five hours away.”

  “More like six.” He threw me a glance like he was expecting me to freak out. “I figured we’d stop and grab a motel along the way. There aren’t any lights where we’re going at night. We can set up camp tomorrow.” He glanced at me again. “That okay with you?”

  I nodded without giving him the satisfaction of meeting his gaze. I’d pulled off nonchalance well so far, so I couldn’t give away just how nervous I’d become since suggesting—no, begging—to ride along with him.

  We let the music fill the silence for the next half hour before I decided to speak again. I knew I was breaking our unspoken rule that we didn’t have to talk.

  Reaching forward, I turned the volume down to Nickelback’s latest hit so Tobias could hear me. “Okay, I have to ask—and then I promise, no more talking unless you want to.” I rushed to continue before I chickened out. “Since we’re going to be together for an entire week, I need to know.” Shit. This could go badly. “Is anything off limits?”

  Confusion twisted his face before he spoke. “Um, I don’t know. Are you planning on breaking the law? Is that the real reason you wanted to get out of town?”

  I laughed, realizing how vague my question was. “God no. I meant are there any conversations that are off limits. Any topics I should be aware of? What about pet peeves?”

  A smile tilted his mouth as he considered my words. “You mean like, should you avoid asking me why I dropped out of school? Or why my family is so fucked up?”

  My heart drummed in my chest. That wasn’t exactly how I’d seen our conversation going. “Um…” I frantically searched for the right words. But that was the problem—without knowing what had gone on with his family, I didn’t know what to say. “That wasn’t—”

  He chuckled. “Relax. I don’t have anything to hide.”

  I narrowed my eyes, ready to call his bluff. “You don’t?”

  He shrugged. “Nope.” He met my eyes for a second before tightening his hands on the wheel and facing forward. “It’s not me hiding stuff. It’s my parents—and apparently Trin too. I didn’t realize you were in the dark on this. I just assumed you knew.”

  Why is my heart beating so fast? “Assumed I knew what? What would they have to hide?”

  I could feel the annoyance radiate from his body, and I could see that he was protecting them more than himself. But I didn’t understand why.

  “I’m adopted, Amelia.”

  My heart dropped to the floor of his truck. What?

  “It’s not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but my parents keeping it from me was pretty shitty.”

  “How did you find out? Did they tell you?”

  He let out a laugh that was drowning in sarcasm. “I was looking into an international basketball tour and needed a passport. I was searching for my birth certificate in my dad’s office, and that’s when I found the adoption papers.”

  “Oh my God, Tobias. I had no idea.”

  He nodded. “When I confronted my parents, there was a big blowup. A lot of excuses, guilt trips, the works. Trinity had no clue what was going on at that point, but that’s because I took off instead of dealing with it.”

  “You mean that’s why you dropped out and no one knew where you’d gone?”

  His jaw tensed as he gave a slight nod. “I was a bit of a wreck when I found out.” His face reddened as if he were embarrassed to admit it. “I took off for a week, missed practice, missed a game, missed a recruiter. Rumor was that I’d gotten into some trouble and took off to avoid the repercussions. To my parents, that story was way better than the real one, so they rolled with it.”

  My jaw dropped. “I remember that. Trinity was calling you every five seconds. I’d never seen her so worried. After you came back, she said you were in jail.”

  He scoffed as he shook his head. “Well, that was a lie.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Then why didn’t you say something? Everyone was talking about Malibu’s golden boy going off the rails. Why would Trinity lie to me?”

  “The last thing on my mind was correcting some stupid rumor floating around town. I don’t even remember what I did during that week besides drive. But when I came home, my parents told Trinity what was really going on. They all decided that keeping up the family front was better than the truth.”

  “So they just let everyone think you committed some crime and landed in jail?”

  “Yup. I couldn’t say no. They offered me a deal I couldn’t refuse.”

  “What was it?”

  “If I kept quiet, they were going to give up the names of my parents. I was eighteen, but I remember feeling so desperate to know who they were, why they’d given me up, that I accepted without looking for a better option. But the whole thing—it ate away at me.”

  “So you dropped out of school and gave up basketball?”

  Tobias’s jaw hardened, and his knuckles whitened with his grip. “I couldn’t focus on anything. Finishing school became impossible. Basketball season was already over. The team hated me. My reputation was shot. I felt like I’d lost everything. Everything felt like a lie.”

  “I
am so sorry. I feel awful for believing all the lies. I shouldn’t have pried.”

  “You can ask me anything, Amelia.” His eyes slipped to mine, but only for a second before returning to the long stretch of road before us. For the first time since I’d known him, I noticed his eye color—a smoky blue with a dark ring around the outer circle. I wished I could read the thoughts that lay beneath them. “Actually, it felt good to tell someone all that.”

  I swear the corner of his mouth lifted slightly, causing my heart to stutter. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Tobias James smile. Maybe when we were younger, when he’d just won a game of basketball, or when Trinity and I would get caught between the sprinklers late at night when we all should have been sleeping. But as he grew older, he’d become more guarded. His enjoyment transitioned into competitiveness. And his smiles turned into expressions of confidence and intimidation.

  “So,” I started timidly, hoping to break the invisible barrier between us. “Does this mean we’ll be talking more?”

  He let out a breath of amusement. “I still like it quiet. I just want you to know it’s not because I have anything to hide.”

  “Then why do you like the quiet?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t have that much to say anymore.”

  “Because you were lied to?”

  “Because of what the lie did to me. Because of what I lost. I used to have things to talk about. I was driven and passionate about basketball and school. I didn’t even see it all slipping away from me until it was gone. And now”—he shrugged—“nothing feels like it was ever really mine, not even basketball.”

  My breath caught in my throat as an ache sliced through my chest. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t tell him that wasn’t true. It wasn’t my place.

  “Anyway,” Tobias said, cutting into my thoughts and tightening his grip on the wheel. “I don’t mean to bore you. But I figured we’d get that out of the way.”