She scowled at the side of his face. Technically they could do it for less, but Gideon staunchly refused. He wanted their monthly payments to be as low as possible. His plan was for them to both work part-time while they both attended college full time. If they couldn't make the bills work under part-time jobs, then they had to keep looking. For nearly an hour, she had argued with him last night that she could just put college on hold or take it slow and get a full-time job, but he wasn't hearing it.
Staring back down at the picture of the old Victorian they both had looked at last night, her hopes ebbed a bit. The property did need a lot of work, just like all the other properties they looked at in their price range. They would need every penny they could get to get the place in perfect working order.
Shutting her laptop, she placed it on the stack of books piled around her chair and leaned back in her chair with a huff. She would offer to switch places with him, but she knew it was useless. He would just grumble that she didn't know how to drive in traffic and that she let too many cars in front of her, and that would only make her upset and want to argue with him.
She was reaching down and sorting through her books for an unread one when he spoke.
"Remember when we were stuck in traffic like this back in Ohio?"
Jade's back went rigid as she looked up to Gideon's evil smile. Barely keeping a laugh restrained, he rested one arm on the top of the steering wheel and gave her an evil, knowing smile.
"Don’t you dare," she growled, pointing a commanding finger at him.
Chuckling, he glanced back at the road and shook his head at the horrid memory. "All I have to say is thank God Beans gave you that end-of-the-world kit, right?"
Grabbing the empty paper cup in her cup holder, Jade threw the cup at the side of Gideon's laughing face. "You said we would never bring that up again!" she yelled.
Embarrassed beyond mortal belief, she recalled that terrible day. That morning they had gone to a crappy truck stop, the bathrooms were too disgusting to even consider using. While Gideon braved it, Jade had decided to use a bottle of water to brush her teeth and use the next stop they encountered to pee. What she did not account for was the forty-minute traffic backup. Desperate, she had opened the zombie survival kit Taylor had given her the year before pulling out the one thing she told herself she would never have to use—the portable toilet container. Gideon had laughed about it for two days straight.
"I should stop talking to you," she shifted in her seat angrily and stared out the window.
Gideon laughed harshly as he maneuvered into an open gap in the left-hand lane. "You couldn’t do that even if you tried."
She should've resisted his baiting, but like a fool, she fell into it. "Oh, can't I?" she crossed her arms and shot his strong profile a challenging look. "Just watch me."
Slowing the truck back down behind a line of cars, Gideon turned his face only a fraction away from the road, just enough to cut his knife-edge gleaming eyes her way in warning. "If you think I am going to let you go silent on me again, Jade, you have another thing coming."
Anger simmered to life inside of her making her hands shake as she gripped her armrests on either side of her. "Well, if you think I am going to just roll over and do as you say, then you have another thing coming," she threw his words back at him.
"Ok, just try it, I want you to," he gave her a nonchalant nod as his threatening words sliced through the space between them like blades of ice. "Because I promise I have a remedy for that."
Cold anger and a little bit of fear, if she was being truly honest with herself, mingled together at the bottom of her stomach, but her pride would not let her back down. Gideon was so used to being the one in charge, she would show him that he couldn't control everything. She was no longer a child, and he needed to stop treating her like one.
"And what? Just what are you going to do?" she shot back.
"You pull that silent treatment crap with me, Jade, and I'll pull this truck over and tie you to that seat and for the next eight hours," he growled, and she could see his own anger rising to match hers in the way that his shoulders tensed and his grip tightened on the steering wheel. "You will have no choice but to endure my presence. No escaping to your bunk and pouting. And when it's time to go to bed, I will put you tied up like a hog at the fair into my bed so we can get nice and cozy, and after a while," Gideon paused and looked pointedly over to her, his amber-brown eyes darkening. "You'll talk, and better yet, you'll apologize," he vowed.
Liquid heat of embarrassment crawled up her neck, she was so shocked at his ludicrous threat she could barely form words. "And just how the hell is that going to work when we stop, huh? You'll have to let me out at stops." She wanted the words to sound authoritative, but instead, they sounded breathless and tight.
"We'll get one of those private bathrooms each time," he shrugged. "Yeah, it will be more expensive, but whose fault would that be, huh?"
By now, her heart was hammering. What was he even saying? Would he tie her up each day until she relented and force her to bathe with him? This was crazy. Surely, he was joking. But looking at his strong jawline and the taut lines of his profile, the twisting feeling in her gut told her he wasn't.
"Do you really think I will just let you drag me to and from the truck to the bathrooms without a fight, Gideon?" she made one more attempt to win this with a shred of her pride.
Pulling through the last of the traffic, Gideon maneuvered easily into the lane, the waving police officer directed them on to bypass the three-car wreck on the shoulder. Finally, they were able to pick up speed on the clear road.
"Have you ever fought me before, sweetheart?" he asked, his voice so dangerously soft it chilled her to the bone.
Not once growing up did she ever roughhouse with Gideon. Unlike other siblings she knew, or even Ebony and Gavin, who took out all of their pent-up anger at one another at their Taekwondo school, she and Gideon never once fought. He had always been sweet to her, always the protective big brother.
"No, you haven't," he answered for her. "And you would not win even if you tried."
Sinking back into her chair, she looked away from him and out her window at the line of trees beyond the road. Every now and then, there was a break in the trees, and she could see a long unpaved driveway leading to a small secluded house. It reminded her of their home that they left. Running an agitated hand through her ponytail lying on her shoulder, she slowly combed through the curls with her fingers.
"Why are you being this way?" she asked hesitantly.
"Because I'm tired of you weaponizing your silence against me, Jade," Gideon snapped as if he had been waiting on the edge of her silence the entire time waiting for her to speak. "I told you at the beginning of all this how it fucking kills me when you do that."
"But I wasn't talking about really not talking," she argued. "I was just mad at you for bringing up that horrible moment."
Heat crawled up her neck and onto her cheeks as she thought of having to pee in that stupid portable toilet. She could die just thinking about it.
"I'm sorry," he said after a while. "That traffic had me on edge. I don't understand how difficult it is just to drive in a straight line," he muttered, running a hand through his curly hair.
Feeling the tension in the cab ease a little, she gave him a pouty smile. "I don't want you to be angry and threaten to tie me up."
Gideon laughed and glanced at her. "Would you rather I be sweet and kind when I tie you up?"
Tired of him teasing, Jade thought for a moment before replying. "Yes."
Gideon's whole body seemed to seize as he turned and gave her a wide-eyed look of shock. Following his line of sight, the truck began to veer, and they both heard the loud warning grind of the tires hitting the rumble strip on the shoulder's edge.
Jade laughed as Gideon corrected the truck with a curse.
They were about seventy miles outside of Chicago in a little town called Belvidere when they stopped for gas. Tiny
and a little ways off the interstate, the gas station was more like an afterthought. With only two diesel pumps sitting about twenty yards off from the tiny four pump station and convenience store, it was easy to see that they were a recent addition to capitalize off truckers low on fuel making their way to Rockford.
"Tell me you don’t have to use the bathroom?" Gideon asked warily as he leaned forward in his seat to look out at the lone convenience store sitting in the desolate darkness.
With only one flood-light sitting on a pole between the gas pumps, it tried its best to light up all of the parking lot, but sadly it failed. The deep shadows of the ghostly gas station lingered everywhere. It looked like something out of a horror movie.
"Yeah, umm no, I will wait until Rockford," she answered decidedly.
"Good idea, hell, I wouldn't get out if we didn't need the gas," he grumbled, putting his hand on the doorknob. Opening the door, he stepped down and looked back up at her with a rueful smile. "If I get snatched and drug off by the Children of the Corn, leave out the part where I screamed like a girl."
"Don’t say that!" she squealed, but the door was already closed shut.
Damn him. Sitting stiffly in her seat, she watched him as he jogged across the gravel parking lot to the dismal little store. Wind howled around the truck as she watched Gideon open the glass door covered in old cigarette and beer advertisements. Since their argument earlier, Gideon had let her pick which podcast to listen to, and like a fool, she had picked horror. She was regretting that decision now. Looking out her window, she tried to see what lay beyond the light of the gas station, but she could see nothing but a pitch black. Looking out Gideon's window, there wasn't much change, only the familiar white and yellow stripes of the road gleamed in the low light, and beyond that, nothing.
Relief pumped through her veins when she saw Gideon push through the convenience store door and walk back quickly through the cold whipping wind with his hands buried in his coat pockets. Lord, she was being dramatic. Ok Jade, no more listening to podcasts about floating heads and people who ate people's faces off. Hearing the gas cap of the truck being removed near the driver's side of the truck, Jade pulled out her phone. Seeing a text from Ebony, she typed back a reply. Vibrations from the gas pump being shoved into the truck echoed through the quiet rig as she sat in silence and scrolled through recipe videos. After a few moments of silence, Jade looked up from her phone. She could hear the gas still pumping into the rig. He had told her he was only going to get a few gallons, enough to make it to Rockford. Having no nearby competition, the prices were high out here in the middle of nowhere.
Putting her phone down on the dashboard in front of her, she stood up from her seat and leaned towards Gideon’s chair to get a look out his window's rear-view mirror. The image displayed back to her in the mirror, froze her to her core.
Standing with his hands part ways up, in a sign of surrender, Gideon stared angrily down at a shorter man holding a knife.
Silently, Jade backed away from the window, making sure not to rock the truck even an inch. Standing straight, she breathed in and out of her nose, feeling the air burn as her lungs filled and emptied. She made a step to reach for her phone and paused. They were in the middle of nowhere. How long would it be for the police to get there? Would the man panic if he heard sirens? What exit were they even at? Glancing out the window, she bit her lip in growing panic, the sign to the gas station wasn't facing in her direction. With every second that went by, her stomach felt bottomless, and her nerves began to fray. Looking at Gideon's bed, she stopped and stared at it for a long second.
That last day at their house back in Stardust Cove, she and Gideon had been in an out the front door all morning, passing each other as one carried things to the truck while the other walked back to the house to get something else. Jade had been walking back in the house when she spotted Gideon carrying one of his shotguns towards the truck. Having boxed up and sent the rest of his and Dad's guns to Gavin's house along with the rest of her things she couldn't take with her, she was surprised to see the weapon in his hand. Wordlessly, she gave him a questioning look.
With a smirk, he had replied. "You can take the man out of Texas, sweetheart, but you'll never get Texas out of the man."
Lifting up Gideon's mattress, she grabbed the heavy pump shotgun sitting between the frame and three shells out of the tiny cardboard box of ammo sitting next to it.
With a calmness she could only thank God for, Jade quietly slipped out of her side of the truck. Barely feeling the cold whip through her thin pajama pants, Jade didn’t risk closing the door. Silently, her sneakers trodded across the gravel as she rounded the truck. Popping all three shells into the chamber, she moved to the edge of the truck's grill.
"Give me your wallet," she heard the man's voice rasp. Peering around the edge of the truck, she could see the glint of the long silver blade pointed at Gideon's chest.
Crouching, Jade felt her fear begin to mutate in anger as she watched Gideon's bright eyes burn with fury. She knew, just as she knew the sun was bright and the sky was blue, that Gideon was going to make a grab for the man. She forced herself to move.
Quickly and quietly, she stepped forward, coming to her full height just as Gideon's eyes widened.
Jade leveled the heavy shotgun at the back of the man's head and racked it in warning before she spoke. "I'm only going to ask once, Mister, please step away," she expected her voice to waiver with the adrenaline that ran through her—it didn’t. Calm and filled with promise, her voice was as steady as her finger hovering near the trigger.
She would shoot him, she realized. If he even tried to move that knife towards Gideon, she would lower her aim to the man's back and shoot him.
Jerkily the man's head inched to his right, and Jade knew he was looking at their reflection in the gas pump's screen. Gideon dropped his hands and stepped back, his face a mask of fury while the man quickly lifted both hands. The knife fell from his hand and hit the ground with a clatter.
"Get the fuck out of here," Gideon whispered. Without the need to be told twice, the man, whose face she never saw, darted off across the road and disappeared into the night.
Lowering the gun to her side, Jade let out a strangled little sound, something like relief and something like pure exhaustion. Carefully, Gideon reached for the shotgun as Jade sagged against the side of the truck. She jumped at the sound of the gas pump stopping suddenly, signaling the tank was full, and jumped once more as Gideon popped out the unused shells. Without saying a word, Gideon snatched the gas pump from the truck and closed the gas cap before grabbing ahold of her elbow and directing her back into the truck on his side.
He didn’t speak for nearly two hours. With furtive glances, she snuck peeks at him as he drove through the night towards Rockford. There was no need asking if he was angry, it was evident by his granite face and stone stiff posture. Keeping her mouth shut, Jade resigned herself to staring out into the night, trying to let the last of the tremulous fear work itself out of her system.
Pulling up to a brightly lit truck stop, Gideon parked the truck and got up from his seat, and began pulling clothes into his backpack.
Ok, so she guessed they were showering here and parking for the night. Getting up, she followed suit. Pulling her own clean clothes into her toiletry bag, the silence was killing her. Dropping her things on her bunk, Jade whirled in place to face Gideon, who was standing at the tiny closet.
"Gideon, please, let's just talk about-"
Taking only two steps to close the miniscule distance between them, Gideon backed her into their bunks. The edge of hers pressed into her shoulder blades while his bunk pressed into the back of her calves. Gripping the bunk's frame on either side, Gideon caged her in neatly. A dark, savage flame of fury burned in his eyes, and the lines of his face hardened into a mask of barely restrained control.
Jade jumped as he leaned forward, and her heart stopped when she felt the press of his lips not on her forehead as he
had always done but against her cheek only centimeters from her lips.
Pulling back, Gideon angled his head to one side and looked at her. His amber eyes traced every inch of her face until they paused on her lips. Jade had to use every cell in her body to keep from licking her lips. The pressure of his gaze made them tingle in awareness, and her breath simply stopped.
Gideon's lips began to move, and Jade forced herself to pull her complete focus from them and the memory of how they felt against her and actually listen to his words.
"I can't right now, Jade. Give me some time. Let's shower and eat first. Then and maybe then I'll be able to stop thinking about that moment you put your fucking life in danger," the snarl to his words was so whisper-soft, it took Jade nearly a minute to realize just how deep his seething anger went.
Jerking back, she began to argue that what she did was for his safety, he was the one in danger, not her. But the words never came. Leaning down again, Gideon's eyes glittered with anger, but his lips pressed softly against hers, and her whole world stopped. Brief and chaste, the tiny kiss should not have incapacitated her like that, but it did. Dear God, it did. Like a bumbling fool, Jade nodded mutely as he calmly told her to finish getting ready, and like a shell-shocked doll being led by the hand, Gideon led her into the truck stop.
A Love So Wrong: A Forbidden Romance Page 14