Turning Home (A Small Town Novel)

by Stephanie Nelson

I turned in his arms so that I could see him and giggled at how dirty his face was. He had a smear of mud across his bottom lip, and I found myself reaching up to brush it away. His lips parted beneath my fingers and suddenly neither of us was laughing anymore. My eyes snapped up to his, and then I was on my tiptoes, kissing him.

  There was something sexy about Brooke initiating the kiss. It meant she wanted it—had been thinking about it since our last kiss. She felt so damn good against my body, her soft lips moving against mine as though she needed what I was giving her. I brought one hand up, cupped her face, and slipped my tongue into her mouth. She let out the sexiest little moan I had ever heard come from a woman—like a junkie getting her much-craved next drug fix. Knowing I was that drug of choice did funny things to me—things I would not put a name to or analyze too closely. I didn’t want to think about what was happening between us. I just wanted to live in this moment, taste her mouth, and feel her softness beneath my calloused hands.

  I promised myself that I would take things slow with her, but damn if it wasn’t a battle. Feeling myself hardening in my jeans, images of her in my bed spread through my mind like wildfire. I wanted those soft little moans falling from her lips while I kissed her in places she had never been touched. Maybe I was the junkie, addicted to her.

  I broke the kiss before I could act on my imagination. She had her hands on my chest and looked up at me with so much hunger; I almost started kissing her again. I knew where it would lead, though, and I couldn’t sleep with her knowing she was leaving in a day. One more day was all I had left with this little slice of heaven.

  “I should get you home,” I told her, slowly lowering my arms from her waist and heading toward the driver’s side of the truck.

  “Dylan,” she said softly. “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “You’re always the first one to break the kiss, and then you withdraw from me.” She looked away nervously, the headlights reflecting off her tanned legs. “Am I doing something wrong?”

  That was what she thought? That I wasn’t enjoying myself? I smiled despite how worried she looked. I couldn’t help it; she looked so adorable in her vulnerability.

  “Do you really want to know?” When she nodded, I walked back over to her and grabbed both of her hands in mine, looking down at our intertwined fingers.

  “Because if I don’t stop myself, I’m afraid I’ll take it a step too far,” I told her. “You’re doing everything right, and I don’t want to take advantage of the situation. You don’t deserve to be treated as a casual thing, understand?”

  I thought I saw her eyes blur with tears, but when she blinked, the glimmer was gone. She smiled up at me and nodded.

  “I should get home,” she said, looking down at herself. “My parents are going to kill me.”

  I took in her muddy clothes and wondered just how much they had cost and how she was going to explain the mud bath.

  “I’m sorry about your clothes. I’ll give you the money to replace them.”

  “It’s okay.” She grinned. “It was worth it, and my parents will freak out more over my appearance than my ruined clothes.”

  “Tell you what—why don’t I take you back to my apartment, and you can wash up and borrow some of my clothes.”

  She laughed. “I think it would raise more questions if I showed up in a boy’s clothes, but I would love to wash up.”

  I nodded, but inside I was elated. I didn’t want to say goodnight yet, and because I’d been a dumbass and listened to Jase, I had already lost time with her. At the thought of Jase, I remembered I was his ride and had left him at the party.

  “I just need to call Jase and let him know where I am,” I told her, walking to the back of the truck. “He drove with me to the party, and I don’t want his drunken ass walking home and getting in trouble. Do you have a curfew?”

  “Midnight.”

  “What a coincidence,” I said, smiling. “That’s when I turn back into a pumpkin.”

  “You mean to tell me your charming personality has an expiration date? Pity.”

  I was grinning like a damn fool. “You think I’m charming, huh?”

  She shrugged, a play at coyness. “You have your moments.”

  I chuckled and pulled my phone out of my pocket. It was just barely nine o’clock so I still had at least three more hours with her. I scrolled through my contacts and tapped on Jase’s number.

  “Dude,” he said, answering after three rings. “Where the hell did you go?”

  “I saw someone, and we took a little drive. You all right? Haven’t gotten in any fights yet?”

  “By someone, do you mean Brooke? I saw that little d-bag she’s dating here. He was getting pretty cozy with some chick.”

  That didn’t surprise me. I had seen how he devoured those girls at Dana’s party last night. If it were the last thing I did, I would talk some sense into Brooke and split those two up. How much could she like him if she was here with me?

  “Yeah, I’m with Brooke. You good, or do you need me to come get you?”

  “I’m ready to head out,” Jase said. “The party sucks, and Carrie is trashed out of her mind. Girl can’t even walk upright.”

  I snorted and shook my head. When something bad happened in Carrie’s life, she tended to go overboard with the alcohol.

  “All right, I’ll swing by and get you guys.”

  “See ya in a few, man.”

  After I hung up, I turned toward Brooke and said, “I have to pick up Jase and Carrie before we head back to my apartment. Is that cool?”

  “Yeah, that’s fine,” Brooke replied. “I should probably talk with James just so he doesn’t tell my parents I disappeared. If he even noticed I was gone …”

  I braced my hands on the truck and used my feet to clear away some of the mud from the back tire. It wasn’t stuck as badly as it had been.

  “Brooke,” I said, hesitating to speak my mind. She looked over at me, her hip leaning against the bumper. I knew I had to say something because if that prick ever did anything to hurt her, I would end up in jail for beating his ass.

  “I don’t think you should be with James. I’m not saying that because I want to replace him. I just don’t want anything to happen to you, and from what I’ve seen, you don’t look like you’re happy when you’re with him.”

  She considered me for a moment. “I was planning on breaking up with him after we left for school. If I did it now, my parents would lecture me. They love him; well, my dad does.”

  Of course her father loved him; he was a star quarterback and came from old money just like the Kingsleys.

  “It looks bad, doesn’t it?” Brooke said, “that I have a boyfriend, but I’m here with you.”

  I walked over to her and clasped the back of her head, leaning in to press a kiss to her dirty forehead. I met her eyes and shook my head. “No one is judging you, Brooke. I know things between us could never be like that. I’m just enjoying our time together.”

  “Right, because we’re just having fun together.” She said it as though she was reminding herself. “Why could things never be like that between us?”

  My eyebrows drew together as I thought about her question. “Because I don’t have a trust fund or a future outside of this town. Can you honestly say you would date me openly, introduce me to the folks? The most I can offer you is my time until you leave to start your life.”

  She looked down, a strand of hair falling across her face. I reached out and tucked it behind her ear, rubbing the pad of my thumb across the softness of her cheek.

  “If I wasn’t leaving for school,” she began, “and if my parents weren’t so …”

  I smiled, though I didn’t find anything she was saying humorous. “Don’t worry about it. You don’t need someone like me in your life anyway. I’m sure by this time next week you won’t even remember my name,” I teased.

  “Likewise,” she said with a half-smile. “I thought you forgot about me tonight ac
tually.”

  I thought for a moment, wondering what she was talking about. “Oh, you mean because I didn’t text you to meet up?”

  She nodded. “I’m joking, it’s not a big deal.”

  I could tell that it was, in fact, a big deal to her. She didn’t pull off nonchalance as well as she thought she did. It had bothered her not to hear from me, which made me happy.

  “I was trying to stay away from you,” I told her with more honesty than I had ever used with a girl. Normally, I would have spewed some line that would have had the girl eating out of my hand, but I didn’t want to be the old me with Brooke.

  “Is that why you chased me down at the party?”

  “It’s not as easy as I thought it would be,” I said, raking my eyes down her body. “You tempt me like a juicy worm on a hook.”

  She laughed loud. “Would that make you a bass? Because all this time I thought people were saying you were an ass.”

  I captured her in my arms and started tickling her. “You’re a smartass, you know that?” I walked her over to the passenger’s side of the truck and opened the door with one arm while holding onto her with the other. She wasn’t fighting to break free as much as she should have.

  “Get in, Princess, so we can get you cleaned up and back to your castle.”

  Her laughter subsided, and she climbed into my truck, filthy from head to toe, but still looking like an angel. I winked before shutting her door and heading over to my side of the truck.

  “What the hell happened to you two?” a blonde guy asked, taking in Dylan’s and my mud-covered clothes.

  “Brooke,” Dylan said, extending a hand out to the blond-haired guy. “This is Jase Beckett and that,” he pointed to a woman cradled in Jase’s large arms, “is our friend, Carrie.”

  I recognized the girl as the one who had had her arms around Dylan when I first walked into the barn. Hearing him say she was just a friend made me happier than it should have. Then again, he might call all his flings friends. It wasn’t like I knew a lot about Dylan. That was hard to remember when he made me feel so comfortable.

  “It’s nice to finally meet the infamous princess of Roseville,” Jase said, his eyes volleying between my face and Dylan’s. He made a face at Dylan that was less subtle than probably intended. I wondered what these two had said about me and why Jase had that frown on his face.

  “I prefer Brooke,” I said, looking between the two guys. “Not even my daddy calls me Princess.”

  “You’re a Kingsley, who lives in that old Colonial mansion on the other side of town and drives a Mercedes,” Jase noted, flicking a glance at Dylan again. “That’s Southern for royalty, Princess. What I wanna know is why you’re hanging out with the pauper?”

  “I—” I was at a loss for words. I wasn’t about to confess to how I felt for Dylan because his friend was bullying me. I didn’t even know what I felt for Dylan.

  “You don’t have to answer him,” Dylan said to me. Shooting Jase a glare, he said, “Don’t be a dick.”

  “It’s okay,” I told Dylan, crossing my arms and matching Jase glare for glare. He was messing with the wrong girl. My entire life I had been surrounded by catty, judgmental people. If he thought he was intimidating me, he had another thing coming.

  “I’m more worried as to why he’s acting like a jealous girlfriend.” I quirked an eyebrow at the blond meathead. “Something you wanna tell Dylan?”

  Dylan tensed beside me, but I saw the grin creep onto his face. Jase shifted Carrie in his arms. Either she was dead or passed out drunk because she hadn’t stirred since Jase carried her out of the barn. I was hoping for the latter.

  A slow smile spread across Jase’s face, and then he started laughing. “I get it, dude,” he said to Dylan. “She looks like a peach but has a mouth on her. Feisty, I like it.”

  Now that I had won over Dylan’s best friend, I felt my body relax considerably. Luckily, it didn’t take much. As Dylan and Jase exchanged a few words, I searched the field and outside the barn for any traces of James. His BMW was still here, which meant he was probably inside ogling drunken girls. I sent him a text letting him know I was getting a ride home with a ‘friend’ so that he wouldn’t question my muddy clothes and disheveled hair. I wondered how we had made it two years together when neither one of us seemed interested in the other. Scratch that, James was interested in getting into my pants, but that was about it. Maybe he stayed with me for the same reasons I stayed with him—social status.

  As Dylan, Jase, and I walked back to the truck, I asked, “How are we all going to fit?”

  Dylan and Jase looked at each other. “I can ride in the back with Carrie,” Jase offered.

  “Nah, it’ll jar her like crazy, and I don’t want to clean puke out of my bed,” Dylan said. “How about you drive, Jase, and Carrie can sit in the middle, while Brooke and I take the passenger’s side.”

  Dylan tossed Jase the keys and opened the passenger’s side door. Jase lifted Carrie into the cab and walked around to the driver’s side, getting in and shifting Carrie into a sitting position. Next, Dylan climbed up and reached a hand out to me. Call me dense, but up until then I hadn’t understood what Dylan meant when he said we would take the passenger’s side. Now that I could see the space fill up, I realized Dylan expected me to sit on his lap. I was trying very hard not to allow the heat coursing through my body to reveal itself on my cheeks.

  I grabbed Dylan’s hand and stepped up on the foot rail, allowing him to pull me up. Ducking, I maneuvered myself inside and caught my breath when Dylan’s hands settled on my hips. This was more sexual than anything we had done, or maybe my awareness of his body was turning something innocent into something dirty. I sat on his leg so that my legs rested between his and tried to breathe in and out like a normal person and not a girl twisted with hormones. What was it about Dylan Crawford that made every nerve ending in my body spark to life?

  “All in?” Jase asked, starting the truck.

  “Yep,” Dylan answered.

  I caught him smiling out of my peripheral and bit my lip to stop myself from grinning like a fool. His fingers gave me a gentle squeeze, but I refused to look at him and let him see just how on edge I was at being this close to him. Instead, I stared out of the windshield and tried like hell to act as though I was calm and collected.

  “So, we dropping Brooke off at the mansion?” Jase asked.

  “She’s going to clean up at our place, and then I’m going to take her home later.”

  A knowing smile fell against Jase’s lips and made me even more uncomfortable. I was sure he was used to Dylan’s flings and suspected I was just another notch for his bedpost. I shifted a little and then realized that was probably a bad idea considering I was sitting on a guy’s lap.

  Dylan leaned up so that his mouth was poised just beneath my ear. His hot breath against my skin was just as seductive as the rest of him.

  “Don’t worry about what he thinks,” he whispered. “Nothing is going to happen to you.” His fingers worked against the thin silk of my shirt as he tightened his hold around my waist. “Unless you want it to.” I felt like a match, just waiting to be struck and lit on fire. Every caress of Dylan’s hands or mouth was a subtle move in the direction of me igniting. Who knew a guy could have this effect on a girl? Not me, that was for sure.

  Ten minutes later and we were pulling into the parking lot of a two-story apartment building. It was nice enough with white siding and a manicured landscape. Dylan opened the door and helped me climb down off his lap. My dirty appearance all of a sudden made me self-conscious. I tried to run my fingers through my hair, but they kept getting snagged in muddy knots. The only thing clean things on me were the shoes Dylan had taken off my feet. Little did he know that those were the least expensive things I was wearing.

  Jase maneuvered Carrie out of the cab and cradled her in his big arms, shutting the door with his shoulder. Dylan grabbed my hand and began walking toward the building. We slipped through a door th
at opened up to a long hallway. There was a carpeted staircase leading to the second level, but we didn’t take it. Instead, we headed down the hall and stopped at the third door on the right. Dylan held out his hand to Jase for his keys and unlocked the door, ushering Jase and Carrie inside first. When Dylan and I entered, he reached across my body and flipped a light switch, illuminating the space.

  “Ignore the mess,” he said, tugging me farther into the apartment. “Jase treats it like it’s his own pigpen.”

  “I’m not the one that got chocolate syrup all over the carpet,” Jase said, lying Carrie onto the couch and placing a thin throw blanket over her sleeping body. When he stood up, he met Dylan’s eyes and smirked. “Wanna tell Brooke how that happened?”

  “The bathroom is that way,” Dylan said to me, ignoring Jase. “There are clean towels in the closet. I’ll get you one of my t-shirts and a pair of shorts to wear while I wash your clothes.”

  “They’re dry-clean only,” I said, trying to ignore what Jase had said. It reminded me that Dylan wasn’t just a sweet and fun boy I’d had a crush on for the past three years, but a guy who had probably slept his way through half the town. What the hell was I doing here with him?

  I headed in the direction of the bathroom and once the door was closed, I felt my shoulders relax and my lungs start working again.

  “Dude, what the hell?” I heard Dylan say in the living room.

  “What?” Jase said, “I thought you were proud of your conquests? Who knows, maybe she’ll think it’s sexy that you’re so experienced.”

  I leaned against the door and sucked in a deep breath. I was so far out of my comfort zone it wasn’t funny—not to mention in a guy’s apartment with his smartass roommate, who thought it was necessary to tell me about Dylan’s previous hookups. I reminded myself that Dylan could do whatever he wanted. He was not my boyfriend, nor would he ever be—couldn’t be. Maybe when my parents passed away we could give it a shot. I couldn’t see Dylan waiting for me for that long, though.

  I had been in the shower for ten minutes when someone knocked on the door. My hands paused from my soapy hair, and I froze like a deer in headlights.