by Bethany-Kris
“Can I drive?” she asked.
“Whatever you want, sweetheart.”
Chapter Five
“For a backwoods boy, you sure do clean up well.”
Gage tossed Summer a smirk, enjoying it a little too much that she was still staring at him. “I’m not dressed any differently than what I was earlier.”
He wasn’t, not really. Sure, he’d changed his jeans and long sleeve shirt into ones that didn’t sport stains from spray paint. After he’d gotten back to his father’s and put his work supplies away, he took a meticulous care to get the paint off his skin with some turpentine. A quick shower, clean clothes, and Gage was good to go.
“I don’t know,” Summer mused, still standing in the doorway of her hotel room and refusing to let him pass. “I was expecting checkered flannel, maybe.”
Gage laughed. “Not my style, sweetheart. I’m more of a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy.”
“I like it.”
Damn, he liked the way she looked a whole lot, too. The flimsy cotton summer dress left her thighs available for him to stare at. She’d forgone the gladiator sandals from before for a pair of pink and white worn chucks that matched the color of her dress. No makeup on her pretty face and her with hair down loose, she was about as natural as she could get.
Gage forgot what a real girl looked like, frankly. Others were much too concerned with the gunk on their face and keeping their hair perfect.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” Gage said, unable to keep the husky swell from his tone.
Summer leaned in the doorway, letting her hip rest to the doorjamb. “I suspected there weren’t a whole lot of high class places around here, so …”
“You’d be surprised. In Perth, there’s the castle. It’s actually a mansion that has a turret like a castle would. Sixty dollars a plate. The doctors usually frequent it more than anything. The food is crap, though.”
Summer grinned. “We’re not going there?”
“Hell no. We’re going to have fun, sweetheart, not be bored. Let’s go.”
Summer said she wanted to drive, but she hadn’t said her vehicle, which Gage suspected was the tiny two door Mazda parked in front of her room. Instead, he tossed her the keys to his newer Chevy four door pickup truck and made a dash for the passenger side. Being close enough to smell the vanilla dancing on her skin was enough to make his jeans tight around his groin.
Girls didn’t usually cause such an immediate reaction to Gage. Or maybe it was that he hadn’t met the right ones. His attention was so focused on his work and his art that he didn’t have time for females and their nonsense.
Sitting in the passenger seat should be awesome, he thought slyly, knowing he’d be smelling that vanilla for a good half hour.
Maybe he hadn’t thought this out well enough.
In the driver’s seat, Summer shook her head. “Feels like I’m driving in a giant boat. Don’t you live in the city, country boy?”
“Right in the middle of it, actually,” Gage replied, buckling up. “Guess old habits are hard to break. I only bought a truck for when I came back home. I don’t need anything this size in the city.”
“Why for home?” Summer asked.
Ah, good question.
“Because where the pavement ends, the fun really begins, girl. Nobody wants to be taking a new, tiny car through the backwoods out here unless you’re meaning to ruin the damned thing.”
Amusement played on her pretty, pink lips. “I take it you’ve done that?”
Gage nodded, his memories lighting up with just a few of the crazy things he’d done. “A few times.”
“I might let you show me some of those back roads, country boy.”
Hell, yeah. “Come on, let’s drive.”
Gage directed Summer’s driving from the passenger seat. She admitted she’d come in from Grand Falls, through the trucker’s route to arrive in Plaster Rock. That wasn’t the way he wanted her to take this time, so she was completely in the dark about where they were going, but she didn’t seem to mind.
Thirty minutes later, Gage was shaking his head. “Slow down a little more through here, Summer.”
The Gulch had taken more lives than Gage cared to remember. With its crappy roads and dangerously sharp turns, cars and drivers didn’t know what hit them until it was much too late. The high stone walls on either side of the road didn’t offer any protection when the impact came, either.
“What’s that?” Summer asked quietly, nodding at a wooden cross off the road, attached to the tree with spikes. The cross was situated on one of the most dangerous turns in the Gulch called The Devil’s Elbow. Gage didn’t catch his frown in time. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, it’s okay. It’s uh … two guys about my age were coming home from a party in Arthurette. They were driving on an ATV, hit the gravel too fast, and lost control.”
“They didn’t survive, I take it.”
“No one does on this road,” Gage muttered.
“Did you know them personally?”
“Everyone did. Everybody knows everybody around here, Summer, in one way or another. They were older than me by a couple of years at the time.”
“Oh.”
She didn’t ask anything more about it. Gage was grateful.
Barely two minutes later and they were out of the Gulch. Summer immediately noticed the Perth-Andover town limit sign. “I thought you said—”
“I said we weren’t going to the castle, sweetheart. I said nothing about showing your pretty face around Perth. Besides, my pizza or pie question had an ulterior motive earlier.”
“Oh did it?” she asked teasingly.
“Mmhmm. You have no fucking idea how happy I was that you said poutine.”
Gage instantly regretted his statement, having realized it was the first time he cursed in front of the girl in a way that wasn’t as innocent as damn, hell, or shit. Hadn’t his father always told him girls didn’t like boys with mad mouths?
“I’m—”
Summer’s light blue eyes glanced over at him, stopping his apology up short. Something darkened in her eyes at the same time her lips curved into a wicked smile. She didn’t mind his mouth. That was good to know.
“I’m what, Gage?”
Christ.
Gage turned to look out the window as he said, “I like my name in your mouth.”
“So do I.”
Double Christ.
Gage was so fucked.
“Park here along the road,” he managed to say.
Jumping out of the truck the moment she put it into park, Gage felt slightly better with the warm summer air slipping into his lungs. No, there hadn’t been a single person who knocked him off sideways quite like Summer had.
Why in the hell couldn’t he get a damned grip?
Gage didn’t think on it too long. Walking around the truck, he helped Summer out of the driver’s side. Instead of simply grabbing the hand he offered to her, she slipped her fingers in-between his, weaving them together before tightening her grip and jumping down from the truck.
Gage swallowed the lump in his throat and reveled in the heat of her hand. There wasn’t any need to work himself up over the way she completely turned him on his side before lighting up feelings that had never been there before. Beyond that, he couldn’t afford to feel those things.
Because she doesn’t stay, he reminded himself silently.
Summer said it herself.
Something else said whatever this was wouldn’t end well.
“What’s this?” Summer asked, turning to look across the road where more vehicles were parked.
The tiny canteen in the middle of Perth was only big enough to be a shed, maybe. It only opened during the summer and some of the fall months. During the rest of the year it was closed. People would crawl over one another to get some of the first orders in when it did open. With its bright lights all around the building, colorful picnic tables surrounding the outside, and peop
le milling about, it certainly didn’t look like a restaurant everybody who was anybody would eat at.
But it was. It was, above anywhere else he had eaten before, the best place to eat.
“Best poutine for miles,” Gage said, squeezing her hand in his. “They make a pretty great burger, too.”
Summer sighed, bumping her shoulder into his. “My kind of guy. Let’s eat.”
Thirty minutes later and Summer had perched herself up onto the back of Gage’s tailgate with a poutine and milkshake in hand. They could have chosen any one of the picnic tables by the canteen, but the curious eyes of the people milling around made Gage uncomfortable. It didn’t seem to bother his companion, though.
Summer was probably used to attention by now, if she traveled as much as she said she did.
While they ate, he told her a bit about the town, like the flood that nearly decimated it a couple of years earlier, and the reservation only a few kilometers away. He found it fascinating how genuinely interested she was in learning about the area, but even more so, learning about the things he’d done here growing up.
“God, this is good,” Summer mumbled into her hand.
“Better than Quebec?” Gage asked.
Summer hummed indecisively, plucking up her milkshake to take a healthy sip. “The company makes it that way, so yeah. Much better.”
“I’m flattered.”
“You should be.”
“Hey, country boy,” Summer drawled, eyeing the hot fudge sundae Gage was spooning into his mouth. “If I asked nicely, could I have a bite of that?”
Shit, she didn’t even have to ask nicely, but … “I don’t share my ice-cream. That’s blasphemy.”
“Gage … please?”
Well, how could he deny someone who said his name like that and begged like she did?
“Fine.”
Gage spooned some of the ice-cream and hot fudge, ready to hand the plastic utensil over to the pretty sweet stealing demon on his tailgate. Before he could, Summer had took hold of his belt loops and tugged hard enough to cause him to stumble closer.
Right in between her thighs. Summer sat her mostly eaten food to the tailgate, saying nothing. Then, the heels of her chucks hooked around the backs of his legs, pulling him even closer.
Gage hadn’t expected that at all.
Something was turning as tight in his throat as his jeans suddenly felt.
“A bite?” she asked softly.
Gage offered the melting ice-cream without a word, watching as she leaned forward and took the bite. That candy mouth of hers closed around the spoon, drawing in his gaze straight to her lips. The way they tightened, and how her smile formed at the coldness sweeping her taste buds.
As Summer released the spoon, Gage finally felt like he could breathe.
“You’ve got something right here,” he said lowly, using his free hand to swipe at the bit of fudge on her bottom lip. When her tongue snaked out to sweep her lip and his thumb, Gage shuddered. “Shit … um—”
“Don’t do that,” Summer interjected calmly.
“Do what?”
“Freak out, Gage. I’m just a girl. Like any girl.”
No she wasn’t. She wasn’t just any fucking girl.
Summer was still talking, though. “Don’t be worried about sending me running or—”
She didn’t need to say anything else. Gage leaned forward and caught her lips in a kiss that shocked him right down to his blood and bones. The way her mouth melded into his, opening to invite him in, the taste of vanilla and chocolate edging around her lips, Gage was lost.
He barely registered her taking the sundae from his grasp to set it down, or the way she pulled him close enough to fist both her hands into his shirt. The only thing he could feel and know was her … The feel of her lips, the stroke of her tongue along his, the way she smelled, and tasted in his mouth.
No, not any other girl.
Gage didn’t care what she said about it.
“Hey, Gage, my man! Where’ve you been?”
Fuck.
Chapter Six
Summer jerked at the intruding voice, but she caught the flash of something unknown in Gage’s eyes before he turned around to meet the person. She couldn’t help but notice how he stayed between her legs, his arms opened wide so that both of his palms laid flat to either side of the tailgate. Almost as if he was shielding her from view.
“Colin,” Gage said quietly. “Nice to see you, too.”
Every inch of the man in front of her had turned stiff like a metal pole, his broad shoulders tense, like a snake ready to spring.
What happened that she missed?
“I wouldn’t call it nice exactly, man,” Colin replied.
Summer peeked around Gage’s side to see who was talking. A tall, lean native man about Gage’s age was flanked by two other men with the same russet colored skin, black hair, and brown eyes. Behind them, two girls—at least high school age—were tittering like a couple of fucking hens.
Yeah, she definitely missed something here.
“Gage?” Summer asked quietly.
The feel of his hot palm lying next to her thigh, squeezing gently, was enough to tell Summer she needed to be quiet.
“How long have you been back from the city?” Colin asked.
“A little less than a week,” Gage answered. “I’m going back in a couple of days.”
“Heard you’re working on a piece for the school.”
Again, Gage tensed. “What about it?”
“Wouldn’t want someone messing that up, would you now?”
“It’s a piece for the fucking school, Colin. It has nothing to do with Perth, or the rez.”
“Not the point,” Colin replied shortly. “What are you doing down this way? Looking to get your ass kicked, I bet.”
“You don’t own Perth, man.”
One of the boys from the side smirked and said, “New treaty says the tribe owns all the way up to the hill, now.”
Gage jerked his chin towards the road. “That’s still not here. I don’t go down to the rez even when I am home, and I don’t mess with your shit anymore. I apologized, your boys apologized. It’s over.”
“It’s not over, Gage,” Colin muttered. “Why do you think we’re here, anyway? Trouble like you has a way of spreading, and the people around here don’t want it infecting us again.”
“Yeah, because I was the one who started it all, right?” Gage asked sarcastically. “You marked over my tags. How fucking disrespectful can you be, slumming up somebody’s work with a mess? You knew what you did, so you knew what was coming. Like I said, over. Leave it alone.”
Summer chanced a look around Gage once more, only to meet the stare of the middle guy.
“That your girl, Gage? Couldn’t find homegrown, you had to pick up city trash?”
That really seemed to prick at a nerve because Gage was suddenly moving away from Summer. It didn’t help that the guy’s tone was anything but nice. She wasn’t about to let a fight go down, especially considering Gage was severely outnumbered and a fight was probably all these guys wanted to begin with.
Grabbing onto the pockets of Gage’s jeans, Summer pulled him back. “I am. And we’re done eating now, so we’re leaving.”
“Smart girl,” Colin noted. “Shame, too, given her company.”
Right, because their teenage companions said so much about their intelligence.
“Fuck off,” Gage spat. “Give it a rest already.”
Summer frowned as Gage moved to the side, allowing her to drop down from the tailgate. Instead of handing her the keys to drive again, he urged her towards the passenger side. Summer didn’t argue.
Just as Gage closed the door, offering her an apologetic glance, she heard, “Don’t come back here again, Gage.”
They weren’t dignified with a response and Gage walked around the front of the truck to get in his side.
Once they were out of town, on the highway and not the route they’d co
me in from, Summer asked, “What was that all about?”
Gage’s jaw flexed angrily. “I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t ask for an apology, I asked what just happened.”
“Stupid pride, that’s what,” Gage said, shrugging like it didn’t make a difference. “You’d think six years would wash shit away, but it doesn’t.”
“Old friends?” Summer dared to ask.
A barked, bitter laugh filled the cab. “Hell no. We never were. Being as small of a place as these areas are, you’re bound to run into one another, you know? But we weren’t exactly what I’d call friendly.”
Summer remembered what Gage had said to one of the boys about tags and marking. “They marked over your art, you said. What’s that mean?”
“Exactly like it sounds,” Gage replied quietly. “I did a piece, someone marked over it. That’s about the most disrespectful thing anyone can do to a graffiti artist, next to claiming someone’s work as your own. Problem was, they weren’t even trying to make something. They just blacked it out and painted on NP while they did it.”
“NP?” Summer asked, confused.
“Native Pride.”
“Oh. You retaliated, I assume.”
Gage smirked, shaking his head. “Stupid pride, like I said. Me and Dean, a friend of mine, and another friend went down to the dam on the rez and did this huge piece. It wasn’t anything bad, and actually, it looked pretty awesome come morning. Didn’t matter, the damage was done. There wasn’t any hiding who had done it, either. The younger generation were all aware it was me marking up shit around here.
“Anyway, got my ass kicked,” Gage continued, turning to shoot Summer a sad smile. “And rightfully so, I guess. A week later they painted over it with some grey stone colored paint to match the dam. A couple of nights later, the rez boys painted Native Pride over the grey paint. At least nobody blamed me for that.”
Summer didn’t know what to say. “That must have sucked.”
Gage snorted. “No, what sucks is the fact that their Native Pride is still on that dam. No one even bothered to cover it up or say a thing about it. Mine, however, earned me a night in the ER and situations like today.”