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Last year, a woman was killed just a few miles away from here in a brutal car accident with a drunk driver. Rowan knew the woman’s husband, a member of the Kings, and said her death decimated him. That solidified my decision to keep my promise to my dad. Rowan would miss me too much if something happened to me.
Jake grins as he turns the machine on. Locking eyes with me, he brings the tube up to his lips, inhales deeply, and blows into it. Why is a man taking a breathalyzer sexy to me right now? Is it because he didn’t fight me about it at all? Is it because he’s willing to take the steps necessary to make me feel safe?
I gulp down the nervousness he put inside my head with that steamy look in his eyes. The testing machine beeps, and we watch the loading line grow across the screen where he holds it in his giant palm between us. After a few seconds, it beeps again and flashes the result on screen- .01.
“How? How is it so low after all that you drank?” I’ve seen a lot of people take this test over the years and no one has ever had as many drinks as quickly as him and still have that low of a BAC.
He shrugs. “Maybe I have a fast metabolism. Am I allowed to drive or are we going to wait for it all to leave my system?” he asks without an ounce of judgement, and that surprises me too.
The idea of being ‘stuck’ in his truck together for a period of time appeals to me, or at least a part of me that’s been trying to remind me of her presence, but he’s only been nice for the past five minutes so I’d probably be better off to get to know him a little better before I go rushing to sleep with this guy.
I give an awkward thumbs up. “You’re good to drive.”
Jake hits the button to unlock the truck and opens the passenger side door for me. “Can you get in okay or do you need help?”
The truck is tall, but not that tall. There’s a step I could climb on to get into the cab, but I hold my hand out for him to help me up anyway. His hand is warm when it envelops mine, and his fingers squeeze just slightly as he supports my movement up onto the step. His other hand hovers an inch or two away from my hip, ready to catch me in case I start to fall.
Thankfully, I’ve had years of experience getting up into high cabs similar to this one, so I make it up without any issues. When he takes his hand back and shuts the door, I miss the warmth of him. He seems like a kind and polite guy, even though he acted the opposite at the beginning.
He didn’t agree to this date though, so he probably wasn’t sure what to make of me or what to do with me at first. I know I can be a lot to handle, and for someone who had me sprung on him out of nowhere, he handled it all really well. Maybe he acts like a prickly porcupine on purpose to keep people at a distance so he doesn’t have to worry about attachments, since he’s clearly commitment-phobic.
Jake gets into the truck smoothly, without an extra hand to help, and looks over at me, eyes drifting across my chest. “Seatbelt,” he says and watches me with hooded eyes as I pull the strap across my chest and buckle it at my hip.
“I’m all strapped in,” I announce, smirking at the serious expression on his face. I bet he’s always mean. He probably doesn’t have a clue how to communicate with people.
After buckling his seatbelt and starting the car, he looks over at me and pauses. “I need to know the address so I can get us there.” He listens as I rattle off the address of the bowling alley to him from my phone and punches it into the GPS on the truck’s touch-screen. Once the directions have populated, he reaches for the manual gear shifter and drives out of the parking lot.
The first leg of the journey is silent. Jake clearly doesn’t talk much, and I’m afraid to speak over the GPS’s instructions and make him get lost. When he switches into fifth gear, pulling the shifter back into the farthest right position, his fingers brush against my knee. Sparks fly through me and my throat tightens with nervousness. He doesn’t seem to notice, though, so I don’t say anything.
I don’t move away either, though. Being touched is a luxury I haven’t felt in a while, and I wouldn’t mind if it happened again. He shifts down for a curve, and when he brings it back up to fifth, his fingers move a little higher than my knee, covering just an inch of my thigh, and he turns to look at me, making sure I’m aware that he knows exactly what he’s doing.
