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CHAPTER15
SEVEN YEARS
The Challenger’s motor purred along I-35 until Austin turned off at the exit and changed direction. Maizy hadn’t revealed much about her adventure outside of what we already knew. What detailed information could I expect from a girl her age?
I had purchased all kinds of beef jerky from a gas station just outside Gainesville. Austin had merely watched as I piled the individually wrapped sticks on the counter. I’d never really liked jerky very much, but the long car trip was grueling and I was famished.
“Craving?” he asked with a twitch of his lip.
I ignored him, paid the cashier, and stuffed the bag in the back seat.
Austin played a few old songs that brought some forgotten memories to the surface. We laughed and shared stories, finding out little snippets about each other we had never revealed back in the day. When Aerosmith came on, it brought back memories of a camping trip we took to the lake one summer with a group of friends. I was stuffed in a tent with three girlfriends while Wes and his buddies camped closer to the wooded area. In the middle of the night, my friends decided to sneak over and raid their tent. What can I say? We were seventeen. I didn’t go because my favorite Fleetwood Mac slow song had come on my portable radio. I walked to the shore and sat down, watching the moonlight slide over the waves like icing.
I still remember that night so clearly in my head. Feeling the warm summer breeze in my hair and listening to the water lap up on the shore as footsteps approached from behind, competing against the squeals of the girls and complaints of the boys in the distance. Austin had sat beside me that night, wearing his leather coat and denims with a hole in the knee. He didn’t say a word. We just sat together and watched the waves until the song played out.
Of course, he was smoking a cigarette and looking all Joe Cool Badass while I was wearing a ponytail and pink pajama bottoms with strawberry designs. Nothing happened between us. It was just one of those beautiful moments in life that means something for reasons we can’t explain.
Austin had quit smoking since then. You can always tell when you get up close to someone or check out the car ashtray and find loose change instead of cigarette butts. Strangely, he was even cooler now than he had been before. Maybe it’s because back then he was trying hard tobesomebody, and now he finallywasthat somebody.
“Does this mean I’m not going to age?” I asked, staring out the window as a billboard went by.
I felt his eyes on me in the dark interior of the car. “It slows. I’m guessing you’ll look this way for a while.”
I shifted uncomfortably in the seat and pulled my legs up. After a few scrapes of my fingers through my long hair, I put my feet back on the floor and tried to recline the seat.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You need to go to the little girl’s room?”
I laughed because he was serious. Then in the quietness of the cab, it just struck me funny and I laughed some more. When I felt him giving me the “what the hell is wrong with you” look, I completely lost it.
I went into Beaker mode.
Austin smiled wide with warm eyes that crinkled around the corners. He chuckled as I let out an exhausted sigh and rested my head against the seat.
“I’ve missed your laugh,” he said.
“Only you, Austin. Onlyyou.”
“Wes said it was the very best thing about you.”
I teared up and smiled, curling up on my side to look at him. “Why did he say that?”
Austin shrugged and rolled up his window. “He said it was uniquely you, and he was right. Wes didn’t have plans after school and that’s why he took the job with your dad. But he always knew you were going to be somebody. He also said you made the best chocolate-chip cookies and could bake your ass off.”
“I still can,” I bragged, lightly touching his arm and smiling. Baking sweets had always been a passion—I just never had any opportunities to show off my skills outside of Naya’s parties. I had perfected my cookies down to an art.
“Maybe you should do something with that,” he suggested.
The thought lingered. “Maybe.”
“I called Church and requested that he back off.”
“Why would you do that?”
Austin turned the radio down. “You don’t understand the pack dynamic. Bringing him in only complicates things. He’s going to feel a sense of entitlement if he finds her.”
“It’s not a race,” I reminded him. “It’s not like the winner gets a prize.”
He regarded me with serious eyes. “For some, it is. Anyhow, he’s not backing down. I can’t go above him since he’s the Packmaster. If he finds your mom before we do, it could get very sticky.”
