“You talked to Kaden about this outbreak, but you didn’t say anything to me?” Wounded by his lack of sharing the same information, she had to remind herself she was in a crowded restaurant and yelling at him would be unladylike.
“There hasn’t been any reported cases in the U.S. yet, so I was erring on the side of caution where Kaden and the band are concerned. As for discussing the outbreak with you, if you had stuck to the fucking plan we’d already be back in Kentucky where we’ve been getting the Club prepared since December.”
He kinda has a point there, Ginny had to admit to herself.
“If it doesn’t get as bad as I believe it will, I wouldn’t have made a mountain out of a molehill. Some outbreaks aren’t as lethal nor as contagious, depending on where the spread begins and in which climate. They’ve named it CP-20. It’s a type of blood-borne Pegivirus that affects the heart. It starts with a fever, then overtime your heart just stops. There’s no vaccine, and the highest risk is contracting it through blood; however, they are starting to think it could be transmitted through other bodily fluids. That’s why my discussion to Kaden was just a suggestion to stop performing before it reaches the States. You, on the other hand, I had no intention of letting you stay in Nashville any longer than necessary.”
“Oh. She wasn’t crazy about the high-handed attitude he was taking with her, but she couldn’t deny the warm pit in her stomach that he had considered her welfare.
“Do you really want to be by yourself if you get sick? Or unable to get to your brothers or to Willa if they do?”
“No,” she acknowledged.
Ginny still remembered when her appendix nearly burst at sixteen. Waking alone and frightened after going through emergency surgery wasn’t something she wanted to go through again.
Gavin didn’t need to go on, and she couldn’t tell him the why she had to go back. If the outbreak was as bad as he thought it was going to be, there was another reason she had to go back other than her brothers and Willa—Trudy.
Ginny let her shoulders slump, pretending to give in to his coercion. “We can go.” Ginny picked up the bag sitting on the table to throw it away. “You win. I’ll drive.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“What about your motorcycle?” Ginny asked as they approached her car, seeing the large motorcycle parked next to it.
“Viper will have someone come and take care of it for me.”
“Are you sure? I could follow behind you,” Ginny offered.
Gavin continued to the other side of the car. “I’ll ride with you.”
Clicking the door unlocked, they got inside.
“Don’t you trust me? I’m going back to Treepoint with you. I won’t take off again.”
“I’m too tired to ride.”
Ginny watched as he settled back into the plush seat.
“Do you need me to give you directions back to the interstate?”
“No, go to sleep. I have GPS. I’ll wake you if I need to stop.”
Shrugging out of his jacket, Gavin made a pillow of it to shove against the window to make himself more comfortable.
Ginny felt terrible. He looked exhausted; dark circles under his eyes, and lines of exhaustion made him appear older.
Starting the car, Ginny switched the radio from the blasting music to a soft piano concerto. She would be lucky if she didn’t fall asleep listening to it. The only reason she had it programmed into her stations was because she was writing a song with a piano background.
Finding the interstate was easy, and it wasn’t long before she was making decent time. Every so often, she would check on Gavin. Thinking he was sleeping, she would find him staring out the window. After the fifth time, she slowed down, worried that he wasn’t able to sleep with her going so fast.
“Are you having trouble getting to sleep?”
Gavin jerked his head toward her.
Puzzled at his reaction, she hastened to find out what the problem was. “Am I driving too fast? I can move into the slow lane.”
“No, you’re fine. I’ve never been able to sleep when someone else is driving.”
Ginny gave him a sharp look. “Then why did you say you were going to?”
“I thought I’d give it another try.” He shrugged, sitting up in his seat.
“Are you afraid you’ll wake up in Nevada?” she teased.
“Is that where you were going?”
“I guess you’ll never know.”
“You’re not going to tell me?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does if you’re thinking about taking off again.”
“Next time I do, I’ll make sure Viper is given the information so you won’t have to come after me.”
“Why not just tell me yourself?”
“We both know the only reason you came after me is because of Viper.”
When Gavin didn’t contradict her, Ginny switched the music to pop. She didn’t need classical music with a harp crying in the background, when that was all she wanted to do. Every step she took toward Gavin, he never let her gain an inch.
“How did you find me so fast?”
“Three days isn’t fast. Fast would have been if I had managed to catch you before you hightailed it out of Nashville Marty told me you switched cars, and he gave me the license plate number. Couple of times I was sure I caught up with you, until I was close enough to read the plates. Knox put a BLO for your car. If you hadn’t been pulled over yesterday, my ass would be in New Mexico, which thanks to some fucker’s negligence you managed to slip past the BLO. Thanks for stopping for the pee break back there. If I had. to go another mile, I would have run out of gas and lost track of you until someone else spotted you.”
Ginny held back her groan. She almost made it to where she had been going. No one would have been able to spot her once she got off the main roads. Oh well … She gave herself a mental shrug. No experience is ever wasted. Next time she needed to take off, she would make sure no one was the wiser about which vehicle she drove, and she’d definitely switch the routes to be more erratic if she was suckered into another speed trap.
“What are you thinking about?”
Ginny looked at him guiltily. “About Marty ratting me out.” Giving him the half-truth wasn’t so bad, she told herself. Ginny didn’t think he would appreciate the deviousness of her other thoughts.
“I was surprised, too, especially since you gave him such an expensive gift to remember you by.”
“You’re really good at being sarcastic, aren’t you?”
“Am I?”
“Yep.” Switching to a slow lane as a semi came barreling up behind her, Ginny waited until it was safe to resume talking. “You seem angry that I gave Marty a vacation, or am I wrong?”
“I don’t give a fuck that you gave him the vacation, or that you gave those kids money, or you gave Kimmy your old car, or—”
Ginny grimaced as Gavin’s voice grew louder as he listed her presents.
“—you even gave Nickel a buy-one-bag, get-one-bag-free coupon for Dirty Dan’s.”
Ginny reached for her soda cup to help her dry throat. Then she gingerly asked, “Are you angry I didn’t give you anything?”