“Where are we going, Gracie?”
Where ahh we goin’, Gracie.
His Southie accent tickles my erogenous zones like the tip of a feather and I curl my fingers into the edge of the leather seat, holding on for dear life against what this guy makes me feel. Like I’m on the highest point of a roller coaster about to drop straight down. “Beacon Hill. Chestnut Street. Do you…know it?”
Slowly, he shakes his head. “Nah, beauty. I don’t know a thing about Beacon Hill.”
My face heats over asking him such a dumb question. Of course he wouldn’t know my neighborhood. The same way I don’t know South Boston. “It’s okay, I can give you directions.” I scrub my hands up and down my thighs. “Thank you for doing this. Driving me home. My friends…their antics were worse than usual tonight. I wish I could blame a senior year power trip or the alcohol, but that’s pretty much them on a regular basis.”
“That’s not you, though,” he states. “You don’t seem the type to be in Southie after dark stirring up trouble.”
“You’re right. I’m not.” I rub my lips together. “Then again, this…taking a ride home from someone I don’t know isn’t typical behavior for me, either.”
“What is typical behavior for you?”
Our gazes collide across the console and I can see he’s genuinely interested, those golden eyes cutting through the darkness and tracing my features. The way he looks at me is so powerful, it almost feels like his hands are on me, dragging up and down my exposed skin. “Typical behavior for me?” I say unevenly, wracked by a warm shiver. “I’m…well, I’m the senior class president. I’m captain of the flag team. A founding member of the science club. I guess you could say I’m kind of…focused on making my college applications look good. That seems to be the entire focus of my life. And it always has been.”
I expect him to roll his eyes over my goody two-shoes answer, but instead his brow is furrowed, as if he’s focused on every word. “So your typical behavior is being an overachiever.”
“Is that your polite way of calling me a nerd?” We share a chuckle. “Yeah, I guess you could say I’m an overachiever,” I say quietly, as he pulls onto the highway. “But it’s never felt like it’s for…me. A lot of it is trying to please my father.”
North hums in his throat. “What do you do to please yourself?”
Awareness ripples across my senses, the tiny muscles of my femininity pulling taut like a violin string. “I…I…”
“I didn’t mean that like it sounded, Gracie,” North says gruffly, dragging a hand down his open mouth. “I meant, what do you do for fun? Didn’t seem like you were having a good time with your friends.”
No. I wasn’t. In fact, it’s been a long time since I enjoyed myself with them.
But as far as answering his question? What do I do for fun?
I can’t formulate a response. There’s just…nothing.
“I don’t know,” I say, kind of hollowly. “Everything feels like a duty. Going from point A to point B without a thought as to why. I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. What’s expected of me. Hanging out with the kids of my parents’ friends. Joining the right committees. Not letting all of the balls drop, when sometimes…I’d just like to drop kick them into the harbor.”
North is silent for a long moment. And then, “Is that what this is?” He gestures between us. “Am I your way of rebelling?”
“What? No!” I turn to him in the seat, my hand automatically going to his thick bicep. He hisses a breath at the contact, his jaw slackening. Unsure if that response is good or bad, I draw my hand back and curl it in my lap. He stares after it, as if he wants to grab it back, but won’t. Or maybe isn’t sure if I’d like it. “I’m not spending time with you on some…some quest to make my father angry or buck the norm. I—”
“Hey. It’s okay if you are, beauty,” he reassures me in a rush, sitting up straighter in the driver’s seat. “I’m not complaining. You can rebel with me as much or as little as you want, all right? Make your father mad over getting a ride home from a Southie kid? That’s fine with me. I’m not stupid. I know when I’ve been given a gift.”
My pulse flutters in my neck, the smalls of my wrists. “You think driving me home is a gift?”
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “Are you kidding? I’m never opening these windows again so I can keep that cherry cola scent in here as long as possible.”
If he wasn’t driving, I swear I might be crawling into his lap, fusing our mouths together. He’s just given me the nicest compliment I’ve ever received in my life, made all the more special because he obviously meant it. There’s no mistaking the sincerity in his tone—at all times. “You mean everything you say, don’t you?” I murmur, giving in to the urge to lay a hand on his forearm, memorizing how it jumps, flexes. “You’re an honest person.”
A line moves in his cheek, his gaze dropping to my hand where it touches him. “I don’t have much, but I’ve got my word, you know?”
“What do you have, besides your word, North?”
“This car. A two-bedroom apartment right above the train. When it passes underneath my building, everything in the place rattles. I’ve got a little sister—Tulip. She’s thirteen. It’s just me and her now.” His Adam’s apple slides up and down. “I’ve got a fucking angel in my passenger seat and she’s touching me. I’ve got that, and Christ, it ain’t nothing.”
Oh my God.
How am I supposed to breathe when he says things like that? I affect this fighter as much as he affects me. I actually have the power to move this young man who is apparently raising his thirteen-year-old sister alone. This man who I want to know everything—everything—about. And his gruff admission is making me bold for the first time in my life. Making me want to be equally as honest. Wetting my lips, I let my fingers travel up his arm, across his shoulder. Higher until I can slide them into his hair. Tugging lightly on the strands until he groans. “North?”
“Yeah, Gracie.”
“Will you kiss me when you drop me off?”
He starts to pant like he’s out of breath. “Like a motherfucker, baby.”
The engine starts to roar and I realize he’s flooring the gas. I continue to stroke his scalp lightly with my nails while giving soft directions near his ear. I’m liquid fire, throbbing in places I’ve never throbbed before, the scent of his sweat and spicy deodorant breathing life into parts of my femininity that were asleep until now. I’ve never even kissed a boy beyond a simple peck and yet, here I am, wanting to lick North’s contoured shoulder. Wanting to straddle his lap and rub myself anywhere I can get friction. What has he done to me?
Giving in slightly to my body’s urges, I lay my lips on North’s shoulder and his big chest shudders, those scarred knuckles shifting on the wheel. “God help me, I shouldn’t be telling you this. But…you don’t want to know what I’m going to do to that seat once you’re gone.”