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“I’ve been at an all-girls’ school my entire life,” I finally reply. “When would I have done that?”

He hands me the helmet. “Come on then.”

“I can’t. What if someone sees me?”

“Helmet, remember?” he asks. “You don’t even have a backpack. No one is going to know.”

I continue to hesitate, but he’s giving me that look again. The look he has just before he kisses me…like he’s certain I’m not brave enough to say yes. And also like he wants to kiss me. “I’ll be careful. Do you really want to keep living the way you always have?”

I don’t. My life had grown so stale and staid that I barely wanted to be a part of it myself until Ford came into the picture.

I take a deep breath and grab the helmet. He shrugs off his letter jacket. “Wear this too. It’ll get cold once we’re on the road.”

“Then you’ll get cold.”

He grins as if this is funny. “I’ll be fine. I’m too warm as it is.”

I pull it around me. It’s toasty inside and drapes halfway down my thighs. I climb on and his hand goes to my bare leg, his thumb running beneath my knee. “You’ve got to hold onto me, okay?” he asks.

I nod, wrapping my arms around him. My heart is beating so hard I can’t catch a full breath. My parents would explode if they could see me now.

“Don’t wreck, okay?” I whisper. “If my parents find out about this, I’m dead.”

“If we wreck, we’re both literally dead, which, no offense, worries me a little more than your parents.”

He takes off so fast I don’t have time to take a deep breath. “Ohmygod,” I gasp, tightening my grip, and he laughs.

“You like it?” he shouts.

“No!” I cry, pressing myself tighter to his back. “Slow down.”

He takes a corner, and I scream as the bike tilts right.

He laughs and takes one hand off a handle to squeeze my thigh. “You’re fine!” he calls over the wind. “I promise.”

I yell at him to keep his hands on the handles and he laughs again, but complies.

The wind is whipping strands of hair loose from the helmet, blowing through my oxford. I press closer, breathing him in. His smell—laundry detergent and soap and him—makes me feel grounded and safe, even when we’re flying down a road with no protection at all.

I grow accustomed to the speed and begin to relax, allowing myself to enjoy the hard planes of his back against my front, his confidence, the way his khakis brush against my inner thighs. The farther we get from school and home, the safer I feel. It should be the opposite.

He finally slows and pulls into a small cut-off on the road. The dunes rise high just fifty yards away, and before them is a lake that is as clear and pristine as any body of water I’ve ever seen.

“Wow,” I say. “I’ve never seen water that blue.”

“It’s a coastal dune lake. It’s rainwater, but also the storm surge from the gulf.”

“So, it’s saltwater?”

He nods. “Not like the ocean, but close. Come on.”

He pulls me down a grassy slope and onto a dock that hangs over the water.

“Watch out,” he warns as we sit on the edge. “School shoes go flying right in. Believe me. I’ve done it before.”

I smile at him. “You come here often?”

He hitches a shoulder. “Matt’s dad owns a house nearby. But one of these days, I’m gonna buy a place here.”