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“Good.” There was a comfortable silence on the way and, once we were off the dirt road and onto the main highway, Blaze released a breath and reached over to hold my hand. My instincts kicked up, and I thought one of the others might let out a growl or a snarl of jealousy, but there was none of that.
“We, um, passed a whole-ass town,” I said fifteen minutes later. It was small, its main street running parallel to the highway.
The boys laughed. “That would be too obvious, Karelis. Every freshman who gets out of school goes to the first place possible. That’s a good way to get caught.”
“That’s what I’d do,” I responded. “I’m the silly freshman who might get caught.”
“Nah,” Blaze said, squeezing my hand. “You’re not silly, first of all and second, you’re with us. We won’t let anything happen to you.”
Somehow, I believed him.
Chapter Sixteen
Karelis
We didn’t actually go that far, at least not much past the town I’d expected to stop in. It hadn’t really been much of a place. All I saw were a small grocery, some insurance offices, and things like that. The one restaurant was a breakfast/lunch place only, its windows as dark as all the others. Twinkling lights in the near distance revealed homes or farms. But no place where we could have our date.
“So, where are we going?” I figured they had to tell me eventually. “Or is it still a secret?”
“It won’t be much longer.” Blaze let go of my hand to point to a lit building a few hundred yards ahead. “But I will warn you, we are all overdressed.”
“I don’t care about that.” I craned my neck. “Are you taking me to a roadhouse? I’ve always wanted to see a real one like in the movies.” Images of rough wood walls and a fly-specked mirror in front of dusty bottles of lowbrow liquor filled my mind, and a doubt landed with them. Would a bunch of shifters from the local reform school be welcomed in somewhere like that? Would there be a biker gang?
“No,” Casimir asserted. “Since keeping you safe is one of our main goals, that would be against our mission statement.”
What else would be way out here like this? “A truck stop?”
They were all laughing now.
“What?”
“I hope we can do better than a truck stop.” Blaze got into the left lane as the lights drew closer. “We’re going to Jo-Jo-Anne’s.”
A neon sign that had probably once been amazing but now was a pale orange announced that Jo-Jo-Anne’s was a diner.“Oh, this is great! I love diner food.” Overdressed or not, it shouldn’t matter. People went to diners in all sorts of clothes, or at least had in the couple I’d been to. “What a perfect idea. You three rock.”
“You deserve better,” Casimir said. “And we tried. But you look so pretty, we couldn’t ask you to carry your clothes in a bag to run somewhere.”
“In a bag?”
“Never mind.” Adan patted me on the shoulder. “We just wanted to do the very best we can for you. Give you the nicest evening possible with the least chance of you getting in trouble because you are hanging out with a bad crowd.”
“Meaning us,” Adan helpfully added.
“The Three Kings a bad crowd?” I beamed at all of them. “Who would ever think that? Surely not the girls who follow you around campus drooling.”
Blaze parked under a bright light in the crowded lot behind the diner, and I looked over to see his cheeks “blaze” with color.
“We didn’t come up with that name,” he protested. “And we have never done anything to encourage them.”
“At least not since you got here,” Casimir added.
“Not really helping,” Adan muttered. “He means, we haven’t dated anyone else since you got here.”
“Did you bring your dates here, I mean, before I arrived?” Jealousy burned in my throat at the thought of them ever being with anyone else, despite the fact that I’d had no claim on them then. Didn’t even now, although it was hard to remember that.
“We have never even attempted to leave campus with anyone.” Blaze turned off the engine and faced me. “We ate dinner or studied with a few of the other girls, but it was never more than that. And we’d actually shut all that down a while before we met you. We are not interested in spending timewith random females, especially those who might take a friendly smile to mean something much more.”
“Sorry. It’s really none of my business.” I reached for the door handle, but Casimir was already opening it.
