by Sarra Cannon
He takes a deep breath in and pulls his hand away from my face. “We’ve been over this,” he says.
“I know you say you don’t want to settle down, but you also say you don’t want to leave me,” I say. “You can’t have both anymore. We’ve been through too much and I care about you too much for that.”
“So what do you want from me?” he says.
“I want you to give this one real chance,” I say, my heart aching with need. My eyes search his. “I want you to take me with you. Be with me and only me. Let’s leave all our money, all our distractions behind. Let’s explore each other and see if there’s something real here. Something that could last. And if there’s not, I’ll let you walk away. I swear. I’ll never ask anything from you ever again. I won’t get mad and drive off in your car. I won’t try to kiss you or call you or manipulate you. If at the end of this, you don’t want to be with me, I’ll let you go.”
I swallow, my mouth suddenly dry from the thought of exactly what I’m offering him. I already know something like this could break my heart forever. But I’m willing to sacrifice forever if it means one real moment with him.
He presses his hands against my hips and pulls me all the way against him.
“You’re saying I can have you all to myself on this trip and if I’m still not ready for a relationship at the end of it, we can just part ways? No questions asked?”
Our eyes meet and passion for this man consumes me. I’ve never been this close to having him. Or losing him forever.
“Yes.”
“And what if I don’t want to walk away? What then?” he asks. His hands grip my waist tighter and my knees tremble.
“Then we live happily ever after,” I say, a smile playing at my lips.
“Is that a promise, too? No matter what else happens?”
I move my hand up the length of his chest, then up across his neck, pulling him closer to me, my fingers gripping the side of his neck and my thumb resting on his cheek. “If you take me with you, it’s one hundred percent your choice what happens between us,” I say.
I made my choice a long time ago.
He leans his forehead against mine and groans. “How am I supposed to resist you?” he says.
“You’re not,” I say. I grip his shirt into my fist, wanting him closer. Wanting him to stop denying that we belong together.
He lifts me slightly off the ground as he lowers his lips to mine. He takes them passionately, dipping his tongue into my mouth, devouring me in a rush of need. I wrap my arms around him, giving myself to his kiss. He spins me around and presses my body against the side of the truck. My legs go up, wrapping around his waist as he grinds into me.
He breaks away and I gasp for air, my hands digging into him. Needing him. His lips move across my jawline and down to my neck. I lift my chin, giving him access and moaning when his teeth graze my skin.
I rock against him, feeling him grow hard against me. Our bodies have taken over the conversation, the deal closed between us. I’ve sold my soul for this, and I don’t regret it for a second.
All I want is him.
He places both hands on my face and turns my head so that we’re looking directly into each other’s eyes. We’re both breathing hard, our bodies sweating in the already humid early morning air.
“Are you sure you know what you’re getting yourself into here?” he asks. “I don’t want to break your heart.”
I swallow back tears and breathe out in a half-laugh. I shake my head slowly back and forth. “You’ve already broken my heart a thousand times.”
His eyes move back and forth across my face and his eyes wrinkle with a mix of sadness and worry.
“At least I know this will be the last time,” I say in a whisper, not fully trusting my voice. “Will you take me with you, Mason?”
He holds me to him for a long moment, then finally says the one word I am longing to hear.
“Yes.”
Chapter Thirty
Mason lets me down slowly. He holds me in his arms a few more seconds, then kisses the top of my head and lets me go.
“You realize how crazy this is right?” he asks. “If we’re really going to do this, we’ll need some rules.”
I crinkle my nose. “I thought we were trying to get away from all the rules.”
He smiles. “We’re making our own rules,” he says. “First, no whining about where we’re staying, what we’re eating, or what you’re wearing.”
I roll my eyes and lean back against the truck. “I already told you I wouldn’t complain.”
“Okay, well just expect me to remind you of that after a few nights of sleeping in a tent.”
I laugh. “What else?”
“No cell phones or calling back home,” he says. “What did you tell your parents about where you were going?”
“I left a note on my bed,” I say. “I just told them I was going out of town for a little while and that I was fine, but I needed some time on my own. I told them not to come looking for me and that I’d try to check in if I wasn’t back in a month or so.”
He nods. “That’s good. At least they won’t think I’ve kidnapped you,” he says with a laugh. “That could get pretty ugly.”
I giggle, picturing a SWAT team outside our tent.
“This isn’t going to be a luxury trip, so you’ve got to learn to be frugal. I’m sure that’s a word you’ve never had to deal with, but we’re going to be on a very tight budget if we’re going to make this last,” he says. “I’ve got about two grand, which sounds like a lot, but it’s got to really last. Gas is going to be really expensive if we’re driving a lot. Plus food. And camping isn’t free. How much do you have? And I’m asking about cash. No using credit cards or anything that can be tracked. Part of the whole adventure of this is no one knowing where we are at any given time.”
I smile big. I’ve never had that. Even when I was in Europe, I was on a strict itinerary and my parents were constantly checking in on me to make sure I’d arrived at each location safely with my friends.
“I don’t have nearly as much as you do. I have three hundred bucks in cash on me right now, but if we get to the bank before my parents read that note, I think I can take out another hundred or so.”
He nods. “That’ll work,” he says. “We’ll make it work.”
“I have a rule too,” I say, hoping this isn’t too much to ask of him. And if it is, I’m not sure I can go.
“Okay, what?”
“No other girls,” I say. “I know you were originally planning to be alone, so I’m sure you had some grand dreams about leaving a string of broken hearts from here to Los Angeles and back, but if I’m going to offer myself to you like this, I want you to really give it a chance. There can be no one else as long as we’re together.”
“Done,” he says. “Of course, I say that fully expecting that you’ll be on the first flight home after a few nights in a tent.”
He winks and I punch him in the arm.
“You’re going to eat those words, mister, just you wait.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” he says. “To all of it.”
Chapter Thirty-One
After a brief stop at the bank, Mason pulls into a gas station on the edge of town.
“You want anything from inside?” he asks. “I don’t plan on stopping anywhere for a while after this.”
I crinkle my nose. “Not even for breakfast?”
He jerks his thumb in the direction of the convenience store. “You can have anything you want from inside,” he says.
I start to pout, then remember my promise not to whine. I can’t very well break that promise before we’ve even left the Fairhope city limits. “Just get me a bottle of water and a granola bar or something that doesn’t look too gross.”
I’m already getting the feeling this trip is going to kill my diet, which is already a daily struggle.
Oh well, maybe I’ll learn to actually enjoy food again. Isn’t that supposed to
be one of the perks of being pregnant? Eating whatever you want and not worrying about your weight?
Too many comments from my mother about my weight growing up killed my joy for eating. I couldn’t put a cracker in my mouth without her yelling at me about how many carbs it had and how it would just end up on my ass a few minutes later.
Mason fills the tank, then disappears into the store.
I take out my cell phone and compose one quick email to my brother.
You’re going to think I’m nuts, but Mason and I have run away together. No, not to get married or anything, ha! Just to have some fun and get away for a while. I haven’t told him about the baby, so please keep it just between us. I need to find out for myself whether there really is something more between us. I promise I’ll be safe. Don’t miss me too much. Love, Penny.
I hit send just as Mason opens the door of the truck. He’s got a bag of chips hanging from his teeth and his hands are full of junk food.
I laugh and grab the chips. “What did you do?” I tease. “I thought we were supposed to be on a budget.”
“We can’t start a road trip without munchies,” he says with a laugh. His eyes are shiny and happy and I can’t remember the last time he seemed so light.
He dumps everything onto the seat between us. Energy drinks. Nuts. Water. Candy. “Take anything you want,” he says. “But leave me the Junior Mints, I love those things. Oh, and one more thing.”
Before I can stop him, he snatches my phone from my hand.
“Radio silence from here on out,” he says. He pulls the back case off and fishes out the sim card inside. He holds it up, then ceremoniously tosses it out the window.
I lean over, watching it fall to the pavement. “Hey, what if I need to make an emergency call?”
“You may have told your parents not to come after you, but that thing is like easy tracking 101,” he says. “It takes some of the adventure out of this thing. Besides, if there’s an emergency, the phone will still work to call 911.”
I sit back, feeling more nervous by the second. There’s that last flash of panic, knowing this is really it. I’ve never done anything like this in my life.
“What about your phone, then?”
He lifts an eyebrow at me, then lifts up and pulls his cell out of his back pocket. He hands it to me with a half smile. “You want to do the honors?”
I press my lips tight, trying not to smile back, but I’m kind of glad he’s letting me do this. It takes me a second, but I finally get the back cover off and find the sim card. I bite my lip and meet his eyes, then throw it past him through the window.
As we drive off, two lonely little sim cards litter the pavement at the Solo on Highway 64 on the way out of Fairhope. To me, they serve as proof of a commitment the two us just made to each other.
I turn to him as we approach the county line. “It’s just you and me now,” I say, which isn’t exactly true.
“You ready for this?” he asks.
“Are you kidding? I’ve been waiting for this my whole life.”
With that, I roll down the window on my side of the truck and stick my head and both arms out into the rushing wind, watching the Fairhope sign as we blow right past.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Where are we heading?”
Mason has a small map on the seat between us. He hands it to me. “Pick a place,” he says.
“Seriously?”
He shrugs, then pops a few Junior Mints into his mouth. “Sure,” he says. “Why not?”
I smile. This is so crazy. I’m used to over-planned trips without much room for freedom. After all the drama and worry of the past week, I feel free and daring and happy.
I spread the map open and start looking.
“What’s the general plan?” I ask. “Are we camping out tonight? Because we’d need to stop somewhere early enough that it’s still light outside, right?”
“Well, we can’t drive all the way to Mexico today, if that’s what you’re asking,” he says, laughing.
I roll my eyes. “I know that,” I say. “I’m just trying to get an idea of how far we should go. And when we get there, then what? Do we just plant ourselves somewhere for a week? Or are we going to drive every day?”
“Whatever we want to do,” he says. “That’s the beauty of this.”
“I’m not used to having so much choice,” I say.
“You realize how crazy that sounds, right?”
“What do you mean?”
He turns the radio down and keeps one hand casually on the steering wheel. “Think about it. You come from one of the wealthiest families in the South. You could have just about anything in the world you want. You could afford to go anywhere in the world you’ve ever wanted to go. And you just told me you’re not used to having so much choice?”
I lay the map down across my legs. “Well, you know what I mean.”
“Yes, but I want you to really think about it,” he says. “This is the kind of thing that’s been on my mind a lot lately. Why would a girl who could literally have anything she wanted be limited on choices?”
I shrug. I’ve never really thought about this before. “I guess because I don’t always feel like my choices are my own.”
“Exactly.” He adjusts his weight and sits up straighter. “See, money doesn’t always open the world up to you. Money can be a straight-jacket sometimes, too. This is something people don’t always realize. They think that because we have money, we’re lucky and free. But sometimes the money is what ties us down. Let’s say I wanted to work on a construction site. Say I like working with my hands and working outdoors, so I want a job where I can be outside in the sun and build things. If my dad wasn’t Nathan Trent, do you think anyone would give a shit? No, it would be normal. It would be an honest way to make a living and that would be that. But because my dad is rich, I have to consider how it looks for me to have a job like that. People suddenly judge me, like I’m only working that job to make a point or stick it to my dad. Or they assume my parents are going broke. It can’t just be something I wanted to do.”
I lean back. I think about school and how my mom wanted me to be pre-law because she was. I never really felt like I had a choice.
“If Penny Wright didn’t want to finish college, it would be a scandal, right? That’s such bullshit,” he says. “Our lives are dictated by how things look, and I’m so tired of it.”
“What brought this on?” I ask. “Why has this been on your mind so much? I mean, it’s not like you actually want to work construction, right?”
“No,” he says. “But if I did, I want to be free to make that choice without being judged for it.”
“So, what then?”
He licks his lips. “Honestly?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I want to know what made you start thinking about this.”
“My parents have been having some financial problems,” he says. He glances over at me, watching for a reaction. “It’s been going on for a while, and all they ever do is fight about it. Mom keeps trying to convince Dad to put the house on the market and look for a smaller place. It’s not like they’d have to move into a studio apartment. She’s talking about downgrading to a five-bedroom house or something, but Dad acts like it would be the end of his reputation in the community. He thinks it will draw all this attention to our family. So instead of making a change that would take away some of the financial stress, they put themselves deeper in the hole just to keep up appearances.”
I frown and stare at the map, not knowing what to say.
“There’s more to it than that,” he says. “But that’s really what got it started for me. Then, the more I started looking around at all our friends and the things people do to one-up each other or show off, the more I started thinking about just getting away from it all for a while.”
“I didn’t know your parents were having a hard time,” I say.
“No one does,” he says. “And I didn’t want to bring it up to you, beca
use your dad’s the one who pays mine. It’s awkward.”
I shrug. “Still, I’d rather you felt like you could talk to me instead of keeping it to yourself and dealing with the stress of it yourself.”
“It’s hard to complain to you or Preston about money,” he says. “I was afraid if I said something, you’d want to do something to fix it.”
I bite my lower lip. “It’s my first instinct,” I say. “I can’t help it. When someone needs money, I feel like it’s one of the few things I can do that will really make a difference.”
“I know you don’t mean it as an insult, but you can’t throw money at every problem and expect that to be enough,” he says. “Anyway, my point was that it’s not the money that’s the problem. It’s the fact that my parents are willing to sacrifice everything we have to try keep up the appearance of having money.”
I nod. “And in response, you decided to strike out and do the opposite,” I say. “Drive to a place where no one knows you in a truck that pretty much guarantees no one will think you have money. Then what? What’s the goal?”
He leans back against the seat. “To just live,” he says. “To experience a simpler kind of life where the only thing that matters to people is what kind of person you are. Not how much money you have or what kind of house you live in.”
It seems like such a foreign concept to me, I can hardly wrap my mind around it. “I’ve lived my entire life opposite of that. I’ve made friends by inviting people to parties on the yacht. Trips to Europe. I’ve always worn expensive clothes and driven fast cars. People flock to me because of those things, I think. I’ve always been scared that if I took all that away, maybe there wouldn’t be much left to like about me.”
He shakes his head and reaches across the seat to grab my hand. “You’re so much more than all those things, Pen.”