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“Do I even want to ask?” Dad chuckled. “Or is this on a need-to-know basis?”
Downing the rest of my coffee, I grinned across the table at him. He wasn’t getting a thing out of me. “I think it’s safer to wait for the big reveal. Just don’t be late to the centennial pregame performance.”
“Okay...”
He and Mom exchanged concerned glances, humor twinkling in their eyes. For a moment, it felt like we’d reversed time and it was a year ago, when everything was still whole.
But looking back, even then, things weren’t fine. Mom and Dad constantly fought. They could hardly be in the same room together and when they were, everything was so tense. Things might have changed. Our family might have been torn in two, but at least now we could move forward.
“Speaking of the centennial performance.” Mom took a hesitant breath. “Have you heard from Collin lately?”
The sound of his name made me wince. It had been a week since we’d last spoken, but the wound was still raw.
“No, he’s working with his dad at a garage an hour away,” I said, playing with my empty cup. “We didn’t exactly part on good terms.”
That was putting it mildly. Still, he was the one who’d stopped by the parking lot last night. Maybe it was to see how his team was doing without him. Or maybe, it was to see me. Either way, I wished he would’ve said something.
“He’ll come around, sweetie,” Mom said. “I promise.”
Dad grunted and shook his head. “It better be soon, that’s all I can say. Our boys will never make it to the state playoffs without him. Rock Valley High needs Collin Preston.”
He was right. Rock Valley High needed him. But more than anything, Collin needed Rock Valley High. And if he wasn’t going to stay long enough to talk to me, I was going to have to go to him.
I’d hunted him down once before into a boy’s locker room.
I could do it again.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I’d never skipped school before today, but I’d never had such a good reason. Looking down at the phone in my trembling hand, I reread the text from Ally for the hundredth time. He would be here. This was where we’d find Collin.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Trina peered through the windshield at the building wrapped with corrugated steel siding in front of us. It backed up to a junk yard filled with rusted vehicles.
I stared at the three wide open garage doors in front of us. “Yep, this is the address Ally sent me. This is where he works.”
My heart was doing an Irish jig on my lungs at the moment. When I’d told my best friends that I wanted to skip lunch Monday and drive an hour away to talk to Collin, they’d been all in. It was nice to have them along. If I’d come by myself, I might’ve taken one look at this place and turned around.
“It’s...uh...homey,” Mandy said from the backseat. Her lips twisted into a grimace and she patted me on the arm. “Go get him, A.”
Opening the door, I slid out of the car and shielded my eyes from the surprisingly bright November sun. The place was quiet, although several vehicles were parked in the front lot. Two cars waited inside the garage and another had been lifted high into the air. The air smelled of engine grease and burnt rubber.
I steadied myself for what was about to come. This was no time to get tongue-tied. I had something I needed to say to Collin. Something to get off my chest. And one very important question.
Striding forward with as much confidence as I could muster, I walked toward the open bays. A big man with oil-stained hands was working under the hood of a mini-van. He looked up when I approached, barely glancing at me.
“If you’re doing a drop-off, you’ll need to take the keys inside,” he said in a deep voice.
“No...um. I’m looking for Collin Preston.”
He glanced at me again with disinterest. “He’s working on the Chevy Cavalier.”
I nodded my thanks and walked toward the white car on the other side of the garage. A pair of legs clad in blue overalls stuck out from underneath. My heart stuttered, knowing that those legs belonged to Collin. I willed myself to be calm as I walked up to him and cleared my throat.
“I’ll be done in a minute, George,” Collin said in a muffled voice.
“Collin? Do you have a minute to talk?”
His entire body froze and I wondered for a moment if he was going to play dead until I gave up and left. But then he pushed himself out from under the car, his eyes looking up at me in shock. There was a grease stain on his cheek, but other than that, he looked very much like the Collin who’d left Rock Valley High only a week ago. I tried not to stare as he pushed himself off the ground and wiped his hands on a nearby rag.
