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This puts a smile on her face, and I can’t help the pleasure it sends through my body. I want to kiss her, but she doesn’t seem to be there yet, and I’d rather not fuck this up.
Shortly after, her smile fades. “Your family is pretty close.”
This causes her head to perk up, and the smile returns in full bloom.
“I wouldn’t be here without them.” She pulls at the hem of her shirt before looking back up at me. “We will always have each other. I couldn’t ask for a better family.”
The way she talks about them almost makes me jealous. I have my friends and Jaxon, but them leaving at the end of the summer for college makes me worry. What if they move on and decide to leave Jaxon and me behind? Jaxon’s been around since the beginning of high school, and then Piper, Tyler, and Casey joined soon after. They’ve had my back, especially since my pops fucked off at the end of last year. The way she talks about her family…it’s different, special.
Jaxon and I made a pact in high school. We decided that since the pompous people here don’t care about us, we would always have each other’s backs.
With families like ours, we needed to be family to each other. We’re both pretty much orphaned. His dad ran away from being a parent, and his mom decided she needed wine more than him to cope. Then, you have my dad, who fucked off the minute he could get away from me legally.
I immediately think of my childhood friend. His parents hated him so much that they let their only son get taken away without so much as a peep. I don’t know where he is now. Will we ever see each other again? I can still see his scared face that fluttered with relief when we drowned out his parents’ hatred with music.
Sally told me she was adopted. Did her parents hate her, too? Did they treat her like a mistake the same way my dad treated me or Simon’s parents treated him?
My knuckles clench around the tool in my hand. The thought of anyone wronging her causes blood to rush through my body. If anyone messed with her, I would rip them to shreds no matter who they were, parents or not.
“Can you hand me the wrench?” Jaxon pulls me out of my thoughts. His head is still under the hood of a black Camaro with a custom paint job. His hand is held out, waiting for me to comply, but I don’t, and he looks over his shoulder at me, narrowing his eyes. “If you are going to sit there, at least be a good assistant.”
“Sorry,” I grumble before handing him the wrench, and he’s back to working on the car.
Jennings Garage is the shop located right next to Jaxon’s house. The business was his father’s, but it got passed down to their family friend, Cole, until Jaxon could take over. That has always been Jaxon’s plan. My love for the water is like his love for cars—well, anything mechanical, really. He can tell you what’s wrong with a car or boat just by listening to it for a moment. He’s pretty much the car whisperer.
That doesn’t mean they get a shit-ton of business, though. The garage handles pretty much everything on this side of town, but the corporate shops handle anything that’s above a certain poverty level. I don’t even think they take care of cars made past 2015. They think it’s below them.
That doesn’t stop some rich assholes that want to trick out their cars, though. This particular car in front of us belongs to Thomas Heath. The dude likes to race on the roads outside of town. Fewer cops.
I don’t personally know the guy, but I’ve seen him at parties, and he never says no to a drink at the cove fires. That doesn’t stop the fact that he looks down on everyone from this side of town.
Jaxon hates his guts, but money is money.
“What’s got you in a mood?” Jaxon asks, wiping his hands.
“Nothing.”
“That sounds like a lie, but I’m not a prying man.” He closes the hood. “You can talk when you want to.”
I mull it over for a second. “I’m just thinking about Sally.”
“The hot blonde?”
I narrow my eyes at him and bark, “And?”
He laughs. “No need to bite at me. I might be into biting, but we got to warm up first.”
I practically growl at him before his hands shoot up.
“I’m not hitting on your girl, though she is hot. What up?”
“I don’t like it when you talk about her like that.”
He laughs again, making his way over to me, and repeats himself. “What’s up?”
“I just don’t know what to do about her. I can tell her walls are constantly up around me, but I don’t know why. It’s driving me flipping crazy.”
“I still can’t believe you don’t cuss,” Jaxon says nonchalantly because he says this almost daily. He doesn't need to know that I don’t like it because I already had to deal with vulgar language being thrown around like candy.
