Different Roads

by Lori L. Clark

  Different Roads

  By Lori L. Clark

  Copyright © 2013 by Lori L. Clark

  Cover design by Lori L. Clark

  www.shewritesbooks.com

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the above author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Dedication

  Dedicated to fans of fast cars and hot men, and the men and women everywhere who like to read about them.

  Table of contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  “Jacqueline Carter, tell me you aren’t going looking like that?” Amanda asked and fisted her hands on her hips in the total bitch-like way that is so Amanda.

  “Why? What’s wrong with the way I look?” My eyes narrowed into a glare at my best friend.

  “Chrissakes Jaq, why you always got to be such a guy?” She shook her head and reached behind me to yank the scrunchie from my hair. “Lose the tail, Jaq. Why don’t you try and girl it up a little bit for a change.”

  My auburn waves tumbled down over my shoulders and I swatted her hand away from me, “Girl it up? You want me to girl it up?” I asked, already wrestling my thick hair back into another pony tail.

  She rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah, what the hell was I thinking? I mean why tonight’s party should be any different from all the others we’ve gone to is beyond me.”

  “What are you saying Mandy?” My eyes challenged her playfully. “I mean, don’t hold back on me now by being all shy and shit.”

  “Never mind, you’re hopeless,” she sighed. “Just one of the guys.”

  “That’s why you love me so much, right?” I teased and raised my eyebrows suggestively.

  “You wish,” she grinned. “You only wish you were as sexy as me. You might need to shed the virgin ball and chain first though. That’d be a good place to start.”

  “You make it sound like being a virgin is like wearing a second skin the whole world can see,” I smirked at her. “I’m only fifteen. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t classify me as a lost cause. Besides, just because you lost yours to some loser in the back seat of his dad’s Oldsmobile doesn’t make you an expert on the subject.”

  “I can see right through that act of yours, you know,” Mandy’s eyes sparkled mischievously. “I mean that whole shy, innocent side you show the world might earn you respect from the bad boys, but let’s face it Jaq, you know as well as I do, you crave bad boys. You’re just itchin’ to let that wild and crazy side out and one of these nights it’s going to come kicking and screaming to the surface.”

  I suppressed a smile and turned my back on her so she couldn’t see from my expression just how right she was about my inner wild child. Amanda Dodson has been my friend forever and most days, I’d swear she knows me better than I know myself but there was no way in hell I’d ever admit it to her face. “Shut it, Mandy. You only think you have me figured out.”

  “I’m just sayin’. One of these days Rick is going to dump your virgin ass. I mean if you don’t start putting out, he’ll find someone who will,” she shrugged. “You do realize how hot he is, right? Because if you don’t, I know about six or seven other girls who do. The dude is seriously fuckable and you’re choosing now to save yourself for… for whatever it is you’re saving yourself for.” She shook her head and flipped her honey colored, stick-straight hair over her shoulder dramatically as though I was a lost cause.

  “Rick’s not like that,” I muttered staring down at my feet.

  “Like what? Like every other guy his age? Horny?”

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it,” I shot her a poisonous glare. “We’re just waiting for the right time. And place. Miss Oldsmobile,” I snickered. Before she could come back with a snarky comment about Rick’s primer colored, putty-filled Chevy 4x4, I heard it rumble onto our street and grabbed my sweatshirt. “Come on, he’s here.”

  “At least the Olds had a back seat,” she yelled after me as I was halfway to the front door.

  Again, Mandy’s right. Rick Madsen is hot. A jock. He’s the type of guy who could pull off modeling underwear with a wrench in one hand, a football in the other and a rose clenched between his teeth just for the hell of it. I know other girls want him. I also know several have tried. I think part of me sticks with Rick because he’s safe. He only looks badass. And, he wants me. Me. Of all the girls he could be with, he chose me. He’s definitely a wanted man. For all the right (or wrong) reasons.

  Chapter 2

  Rick hopped out of the truck and motioned for us to come around to his side where he held the door open. “Get in over here,” he told us.

  “Some mechanic you are,” Mandy muttered and rolled her eyes. “Still didn’t get that door handle fixed, I see.”

  He shot her a venomous glare, “Hey don’t judge me. I bought the part; I just haven’t had time to put the damn thing in yet.”

  Rick’s brown eyes met mine and I ducked into a weak, apologetic shrug. I knew he only tolerated Mandy because she was my best friend. He brushed his lips lightly across mine and boosted me up into the cab of the truck. I slid across the cracked vinyl seat into my usual spot; careful to leave him easy access to the gear shift lever planted strategically between my long legs.

  He slid in beside me and released the e-brake, dropped it into first and eased out the clutch. The tires spun in the pea gravel in front of my house as he pulled a u-turn and headed back the way he came. The speakers blasted out some Mötley Crüe song loud enough to hear over the throaty dual exhaust. No one said much while he drove us out to the country for the bonfire slash kegger, mostly because the window-vibrating decibels he had the stereo cranked up to didn’t allow for idle chit-chat.

  The party was out in the sticks at the house of some guy Rick knew. It started out like the other countless parties we would go to — boring and uneventful. The air was so thick with testoste
rone you could have sliced it up and served it for breakfast. If I had a dollar for every time I heard some moron yell, “Hey watch this. Hold my beer,” I’d be beyond rich.

  Rick and his buddies stood around talking about differentials and lift kits and though I know enough about cars to hold my own in their conversation, I didn’t feel like getting into the middle of a debate over who had the best rear end gears. I thought about pulling up a log to just observe for the night. I do that a lot. People watching has always been kind of my thing. Just by taking note of how someone stands, their mannerisms, the expressions on their faces, I can size them up accurately and within the first five minutes decide what kind of person they really are underneath all the hype and bullshit.

  No sooner had I grabbed a beer and gotten all comfy by the fire when Mandy’s hand darted under my nose, “Oh no you don’t,” she huffed. “I did not let you drag me clear out here to East Jesus, Illinois just to have you ignore me all night. Come on. I need a beer pong partner.”

  The fact that we’d already been there about an hour and she was still able to coherently say “beer pong partner” without slurring was a good sign. I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, eyeing her hand in front of my face for a few seconds before I let her pull me to my feet. “Why not? I’m feeling lucky tonight.” I grinned.

  About a half hour into the game, Mandy and I were kicking ass and taking names when some goofy looking guy from the sidelines chimed in with the brilliant idea to make it strip beer pong. I knew Mandy well enough to know that no matter how hammered she got, she wasn’t one to show off the goods in a game of chance. I also knew that she’d bow out and I wouldn’t be able to continue without my partner. We were a team after all.

  “That’s about the most ignorant thing I’ve ever heard,” Mandy said and poked goofy in the chest with a red-tipped fingernail. She reached for my hand and swung our arms up in the air. “We won and now we’re out!”

  The people knotted around the table erupted into cheers and I gave Mandy a high five, “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

  She grinned, “Oh hell no. No way in hell I’d get laid tonight if you lost your shirt first. One look at your melons and none of the guys would see me. Even if I stood there buck naked.”

  “Oh whatever,” I said, cheeks burning.

  Our anatomy conversation was suddenly put on hold when Mandy planted her hands on my shoulders and leaned in, “Don’t look now,” her blue eyes shifted from mine to somewhere over my right shoulder. When I started to turn, she dug her nails in and held me firmly in place. “I said. Don’t. Look. Now.”

  “Okay? What am I not looking at?” I whispered.

  “That,” she said and spun me around.

  I found myself locked into the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. Like a vacuum, the breath instantly whooshed into my lungs with an audible gasp. I’m pretty sure my heart forgot to beat for a few seconds. When my bodily functions erratically resumed, the thundering blood pounding in my ears temporarily deafened me.

  I didn’t want to stare but couldn’t even blink, let alone look away. The piercing way his blue eyes peeked out from under his baseball cap turned the ground beneath my boots into rapidly setting cement. He had me locked on his radar and the bad girl part of me loved every mind blowing second of it.

  Instantly, I was intrigued by him and felt completely exposed and vulnerable as though I was having the infamous naked dream. It was nothing I’d ever felt in my life. No guy should be allowed to leave the house looking as deadly hot as he looked. Like a fly, I got caught up in his web and helplessly stole glances in his direction.

  He was nothing like Rick or any of the other guys I normally allowed myself to be attracted to. The reserved and laid back good ol’ boys.

  Part of me was repelled by the crazy dude’s obvious mission to drink himself comatose, but the bad girl part of me clawed at the door I’d kept her locked behind for so long, aching for freedom. Mesmerized, I couldn’t turn away from him as he chugged Wild Turkey straight from the bottle. Whatever or whoever he was trying to blot from his memory sure must have pulled a number on him.

  Mandy nudged me, “Didn’t anyone teach you it’s not polite to stare? If you insist on doing it anyway it might be a good idea to close your mouth.”

  “Who is he?” I managed to utter after prying my tongue from the roof of my mouth.

  “I don’t know who he is,” she said. “But he is in-freaking-sane hotness.”

  Sometime later while I sat on the tailgate of Rick’s truck, Mandy marched up to me, “Come on. We’ve got to be good Samaritans,” she said with a snort and her giggles turned into the hiccups. “Seth needs us.”

  “Seth?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. I wasn’t completely drunk, but teetered right on the edge between the need to have one more and having had one too many. That place right between being able to walk a semi-straight line and being falling down stupid drunk.

  “Wild Turkey guy,” she muttered under her breath as she yanked me inside the house and down the hall to the bathroom. Seth had passed out in a puddle of his own puke on the floor.

  “And me without my camera,” I grinned. Seems the blue eyed God of Wild Turkey guzzling was sicker than a dog and needed to be rescued.

  We stripped him down to his boxers and threw him into the shower, hoping the cold water would sober him up as well as clean off the vomit. Mandy offered to keep an eye on Seth in one bedroom, while Rick led me off to another.

  Normally, Rick’s an amazing kisser but my heart just wasn’t in it. Kissing him felt like kissing my pillow. All I could think about was Seth. I wondered what his kisses tasted like and was just a little annoyed that my best friend was with him instead of me. Rick kept pushing me to have sex and that idea felt wrong in every way because what I really wanted was to be in Mandy’s shoes and not my own.

  There was no way in hell I wanted to lose my virginity to Rick. Not when every time I closed my eyes I saw Seth’s piercing blue eyes staring back at me. I decided the next day I needed to walk away from Rick because in my heart I knew he couldn’t possibly be the right guy for me. Not when I was so easily distracted by someone else. It’s been said that if you love two people at the same time, choose the second. Because if you really loved the first one, you wouldn’t have fallen for the second.

  Chapter 3

  I sat on my bed reliving last night’s events when what I should have been doing was getting ready. Rick would be here in less than an hour and I hadn’t even showered yet. I was less than excited.

  Mom knocked on my door, “Jacqueline?”

  “Yeah mom, come in,” I said.

  “Happy birthday honey,” she smiled warmly and handed me an envelope with my name scrawled across the front. “This is from your dad. He dropped it off last night.”

  “Oh,” the irritation I felt bubbling inside about everything going on in my life was compounded by the fact that it was my birthday and all my dad managed was to swing by when I wasn’t even home to leave me a lousy card. Yeah dad thanks for that. “Thanks mom.”

  “This is from me.” She had a small box in her hand and waved it in front of my face. “Go on, take it. It’s for you to use on your date with Rick tonight.”

  My eyes widened. Great, mom bought me condoms. I took the box from her outstretched hand and pulled the top off to peek inside. It was two tickets for tonight’s showing of Wicked at the Fox Theatre. “Mom, Rick and I have other plans tonight. I’m not sure he’ll want to change them at the last minute like this.”

  “I’ve already worked everything out with him,” she beamed. “We’ve had it planned for weeks. I knew how much you wanted to see Wicked so I bought the tickets and asked Rick if he would take you. What you do after the show of course is up to you.”

  My cheeks flamed red as I thought about the real plans that had been made for our night. Rick decided tonight would be the perfect night for me to lose my virginity. I swallowed and painted a fake smile on my face for mom, “Thanks mom
, this is great.” I had about as much enthusiasm for the night ahead as if I was going to the dentist for a root canal but I gave her a quick hug of reassurance.

  Going to the Fabulous Fox meant a change of plans for my choice of clothes for the night as well. Blue jeans and hoodie, what I normally wore when I went out with Rick definitely would not work for tonight’s adventure. When mom said she’d worked everything out, she wasn’t kidding, because when I walked back into my room after my shower, she had a bright green dress waiting for me on the closet door.

  Tonight was going to be epic: a date with a guy who expected to take my virginity and I planned to break up with him instead. Going to the Fox Theatre and I have to wear a dress. I felt sick to my stomach. Happy fricking birthday Jaq.

  I was still in the process of trying to make my hair cooperate when I heard the doorbell ring. My stomach lurched into my throat and I swallowed a few times trying to coax it back into place. Mom called up the stairs, “Jacqueline, Rick’s here.”

  Yay me. “I’ll be right down,” I said with a cheerfulness I didn’t feel and grabbed the matching shoes to carry downstairs. The shoes would be a challenge to walk in since the heels were a lot higher than anything else I ever wore.

  Rick’s eyebrows rose appreciatively when I came into view, “You look hot Jaq,” he leered.