New Adult Romance Box Set

by Emme Rollins, Julia Kent, Anna Antonia, Helena Newbury, Aubrey Rose

  “Is there a mechanic out here?” Joe snapped, waving his arms wildly as if 'out here' were some sort of giant field where the only thing you could see were alien crop circles and certified auto technicians.

  “Yeah, there are plenty of them,” I said. “Every guy in this trailer park's a mechanic. At least they're an amateur mechanic because around here you don't take your car somewhere unless it's an absolute emergency and...” I let my voice trail off. “Hell, if my uncle were here I'd tell him to come out and take a look.”

  “He's not around?” Joe asked, looking nervously toward the trailer.

  “No, he's a long haul trucker. He's out on the road, he won't be back until...” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at it—it read 11:19. “Until a lot later today,” I said. “And the first place he'll go is Jerry's Bar.”

  “Great!” Joe shouted. “So what am I supposed to do? What are we supposed to do? Your mom is going to kill us, Trev.”

  Joe's face had a tight kind of horror to it like a very prim and proper person who was reacting to a situation and trying to keep it within the bounds of the whole prim and proper thing but was actually unraveling on the inside. It was strange to watch because around here nobody bottled up their emotions when it came to anger. Of all the things we felt we were entitled to feel, anger was number one in this town.

  Trevor slipped his hand in my back pocket, leaned down and whispered, “I guess this isn't goodbye just yet.”

  I shot him a dubious look, eyebrows flying high and said, “Huh.”

  He grinned and we walked out to go and look at Joe's car.

  My mind formulated a plan: I would take a look under the hood and figure out just what kind of mess we were dealing with and then find someone here who might be able to take a look at it. Then again, anybody who was gonna look at the ca—

  Oh, my fucking sweet Jesus!

  As we got within sight of Joe's car I realized just how difficult this one was gonna to be. It was a BMW and I don't know nothing about brand new cars like that, but this thing looked to be so clean, so shiny, and so new it might as well have been in a womb.

  “Holy shit!” I said. “What is that?”

  I don't think I'd ever seen a car that didn't have a rust spot on it, much less one that looked like an alien spaceship. Might as well have been, at least—and yes, I know that's hyperbolic. But it was like Joe had landed here with some new technology that people wouldn't understand for the next twenty years.

  See, we all drive beaters, unless you're someone who drives a work truck for a living and then you get a decent Ford from your foreman. So, the trailer park was filled with old, rusted out Cadillac DeVilles, Chevies of assorted ages ranging from the Chevette to the Caprice, a lot of Ford F10 trucks and absolutely no foreign cars of any kind unless you count the rusted out, old VW van over in Mr. Jenkins' side yard which was currently acting as his chicken coop.

  Helping Joe get his BMW fixed was going to be about as easy in this town as finding someone fluent in Croatian. That didn't mean you wouldn't find someone, it just meant that it was gonna take a while, that we would have to increase our search radius—and that, whatever the result was, no one was going to be happy. Except for Trevor, who was suppressing a grin and grabbing my ass like it was discontinued and would not be available in stock for ages.

  Joe climbed in the front seat, shoved the key in the ignition and turned. Ruur ruuur ruuur rur. It wouldn't turn over. He was going to drain the battery if he kept going. He slammed his hands against the wheel and screamed some rageful, guttural growl that almost made me laugh because the combination of his perfect, exquisite face, gorgeous, graceful body, and that scream was comical. I couldn't take him seriously. Trevor started giggling too. Joe just started muttering and grabbed his phone and texted someone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I'm doing a search.”

  “Oh. What's that?”

  “I'm searching for BMW dealers in this area.”

  I snorted. “You'll have to go to Cleveland or Pittsburgh for one of those.”

  “How far is that?” he asked, naive and innocent.

  “I...uh...” I stumbled. How could I tell him that we were talking about a fifty plus mile tow? “A good hour.”

  “Shit!” he screamed. “There's no one in town who can fix this?”

  My mind sorted through the options. Who could possibly...? And then I thought about how close to home the answer really was.

  “There is only one guy,” I said. “He's not a BMW mechanic but if anybody can fix it, it's him.”

  “Who is it?” Joe shrieked. He looked at his phone and said, “Damn it, you're right. Goddammit! Nearest BMW dealer fifty-eight point four miles. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  “It's my uncle,” I said.

  Joe went pale. “But you said he's not home until tonight.”

  “Yeah, he's not. He's probably not home until more like nine or ten o'clock.”

  Like Trevor moments ago, Joe seemed to take all the tension in all his body and forcibly melt his muscles, as if programmed to trigger some kind of relaxation inside of him. He took a couple deep breaths, leaned back in the driver's seat and stared up at the visor, sighing. “OK, there's nothing I can do about this.”

  He reached into the glove compartment, pulled out a small baggie, and started stuffing tobacco into a pipe.

  Wait—that wasn't tobacco.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed, running over to the window.

  “I'm toking up,” he said. “I have to do something to chill out here. This is—I can't believe—my mom is going to freak. I'm already—”

  “You can't do that here. Not in public,” I said. “If you wanna do that come in my house.”

  He looked at the trailer. “No fucking way I'm going in there with your mom in there.”

  “No, I mean my little house.”

  “The shed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why can't I do it right here? It's perfectly legal.”

  “What?” I screeched.

  Then his face closed off and he shoved the baggie under his crotch, the pot spilling out a few little pieces onto the floor. “Oh, shit, that's right. We're not in Massachusetts.”

  “No, Dorothy, you're not in Kansas anymore,” I said. “What does not being in Massachusetts have to do with anything?”

  Trevor came up behind me and whispered in my ear. “In Massachusetts it's decriminalized if you have under an ounce.”

  I pinged my head between the two of them, looking at them. “You drove through how many states? Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, and now Ohio with pot in your glove compartment? Are you out of your fucking mind? And you two are going to be fucking lawyers? Pfft. I don't know what kind of education they give people in Massachusetts but it sounds like you two got an F in basic common sense.”

  Joe sheepishly stuffed all his paraphernalia back into the baggie and under the seat. “Sorry,” he grumbled.

  “Around here, that could make someone lose parole.” Shaking my head, I saw a guilty confusion fill Trevor's face. “Just be discreet and don't let it near the trailer. Mama would kill me.”

  Joe laughed. “Back home it's a $120 or so fine.”

  Everything came easy for him, didn't it? In Massachusetts, even drugs were no big deal.

  This was starting to get out of hand. Hah! Starting? I could tell I needed to take control. These two amazing, virile men standing before me and I was the one who had to exert my authority. You do what you have to do, right? So I said, “Look, let me go take my pathetic little flip phone here,” Trevor rolled his eyes and Joe got a puzzled look on his face, “and go call the person I know who can help us. The problem is, yeah, he won't be back until late tonight but he can help. You OK with that?”

  I stared hard at Joe. It was pretty obvious that the only answer was yes. “Yes,” he said.

  Good boy.

  I marched away and fished the phone out of my pocket, dialed my un
cle's number and waited.

  He was a big man, quiet, and had helped raise me...when he was home. Being a long haul trucker meant that he wasn't home that much, a night here and there on the weekends and then longer stretches if he was out of work. From what Mama said he wasn't much like my daddy who had been a bit more cultured, if wild—she always said that I got my wild streak from my daddy and I got my intelligence from her. I don't know how much of that is true because I don't remember my father.

  At least, I don't remember much of him that hasn't been tainted by other people's stories of him, as if the re-telling grounded it in my mind, making it real. Maybe that's why it was so strange to have Trevor here, and now Joe, because if I felt more real when I was with him then what was real? But right now I didn't have time for any of that.

  Uncle Mike answered the phone. “Yup.”

  “What's up there? It's Darla.”

  “Yup, I know. I got caller I.D..”

  “Umm.... I've got some friends here with a broken car and I'm wondering when are you getting back?”

  “I'm back tonight 'round nine.”

  “Well, I'm off my shift at nine. Can you meet us here at home and take a look?”

  “Yeah. What kind of car is it?”

  “Umm....it's a...what year is your car, Joe?” I shouted.

  “2013.”

  “It's a 2013 BMW.”

  Silence. That's about what I expected for an answer.

  “What kind of friends you got there, Darla Jo?” he asked slowly.

  “New friends,” I said, doing my best Chippie Pete imitation. “New friends.”

  “Darla, the only people in our area who drive a 2013 BMW are people driving through.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But they're friends and it's broken so can you help or not?” The pain of what he'd just said was like a stab in my ribs. I had to breathe through it like a stitch in my side that would eventually go away if I just ignored it enough.

  “Sure. I'll be there,” he said, yawning.

  “You tired?” I asked.

  “I'm always tired, sweetheart, but I'll help you.”

  “OK, thanks.” Click. He hung up before I could and I went back and said, “He'll be here around nine tonight.”

  Joe looked at his phone and checked the time. “That's almost ten hours.”

  “Yup.”

  “There's no other option?”

  “Nope. Welcome to Ohio, the heart of it all,” I said.

  Trevor slung an arm around my shoulders. I could get used to this. “What are we going to do for the next ten hours?”

  “Well,” I said, reluctantly. “It's more like five hours,” I said, thinking it through. “I have to work at four.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “The gas station.”

  “There's a career,” Joe muttered.

  “Around here, it is,” I said. The rich boy, snotty stuff was coming out, just like with Trevor and my phone and I wasn't gonna take any of that shit.

  Trevor nudged him and then shook his head slightly. Joe picked up on it and said, “Fine. What the hell are we going to do around here?”

  He looked around and spotted a naked two year old running down the steps of a trailer with a naked one year old following, stumbling along in the path while their mom chased after them with bath towels. Trevor laughed and pointed and said, “I already did that. Let's find something else to do.”

  “What do you do?” Joe said.

  What I had thought was standoffish, I was quickly realizing, was some kind of an insecurity in him that he masked with an irritable snobbery. At least, I hoped I was right because otherwise he was just an asshole. I thought about it—five hours, nothing better to do, daytime in early May.

  It was time to find a bowling alley.

  Joe

  “Bowling? You want to go bowling?” Was she crazy? You had to be fucking kidding me. My car broke down in the middle of the set of My Name Is Earl and Trevor and Darla wanted to go bowling? Why on Earth would they want to go bowling? I took another good look around. Naked children wandering on the dirty ground? Check. Chickens roaming aimlessly? Check. Buildings falling apart and endemic poverty persisting in a trailer park? Check. Darla living in a rotting shed that would be condemned by the Sudborough Town Inspector in about three seconds? Check.

  Bowling it was. I imagined that was probably the only thing people did around here other than drink. If nobody could look at my car for the next ten hours, then at least they could do something to keep themselves occupied.

  “You don't look good, dude,” Trevor said.

  I took another look at the clock—11:31. A wave of exhaustion hit me as I remembered that I'd been driving all night, and then a sickly nausea seeped in to my bones, crawling up my balls and into my gut. My life wasn't supposed to be like this. I was supposed to be back home, starting to study for finals, making sure that all the ducks were lined up in a row so that I could get into the right Honor Societies, graduate with the right awards, get my law internship all set up for summer. Then I could have a crazy ass, wild party at the end of graduation, which would include Trevor and the other guys from the band and just let us have a fuck of a good time. It wasn’t time for that letting go, yet, and driving six hundred miles to get Trevor from some haze-induced state wasn't part of my plan ever. And now they wanted to go bowling?

  "You guys have balls," I said, my mouth feeling pasty and my head swimming. Her little shed was tiny and I wasn't sure what we were supposed to do. I'd been up for nearly twenty-four hours, driven for nearly half that alone, and was bone tired in more ways than one.

  "Well, no, the bowling alley has balls. I don't own one,” Darla said. She shot Trevor a smirk. I rolled my eyes.

  “Ha ha, very funny.” The last thing I wanted to do was go bowling, but it looked like we were stuck here for the next ten hours and I didn't know what to do.

  And then, it hit me. “Darla, your car works, right?” I looked over at what I assumed was her car. It had more rust than blue and it looked like it had been a Toyota in an earlier life. We walked over to it, now standing in front of her shed, the door open, sunlight illuminating the shabby interior. It was cute—like a thrift-shop version of the princess cottages that dotted the backyards of my friends' houses when we were in preschool.

  “It will get you wherever you need to go. Not Sudborough but you know...the local gas station or a place to get something to eat.”

  “What about a hotel?”

  “A hotel?” She and Trevor said the words in unison, skeptical.

  “Yeah, a hotel. I'm exhausted and if we're going to be here until at least ten o'clock at night I'd at like to get some sleep.”

  Darla pointed to the bed in her shack. “You can sleep there.”

  And that's where my brain just unraveled. “Umm...yeah. No.” I looked at the room, the bed, a couple of men standing in front of Darla's broken porch, smoking cigarettes and looking like they had about eight teeth between the three of them. “I really couldn't put you out,” I said.

  What I really wanted to say was, I'm freaked out and I need a comfortable bed that I control without the stink of Trevor and Darla in it and without the sense of boundary crossing that this entire world represents. This was about as foreign to me as being drop shipped to Beijing. At least I knew a few words of Chinese.

  “Why waste all of that money,” Darla said, “when you've got a perfectly fine place right here?”

  Something in my face must have made her stop short because that's exactly what she did. Trevor's face shifted from bemusement to neutral—he knew; he got it. I suspected he was secretly relieved that I was suggesting a hotel. This was so out of our norm that it was my educated guess that, as the peyote wore off, he was growing increasingly uncomfortable.

  Darla's eyes narrowed and I could see I'd offended her. This was a woman you didn't cross.

  “I see,” she said. “Joe, my friend, let me direct you to the Waldorf Astoria. It's over there, be
yond old Jenkins' farm, behind the outhouses. Meanwhile, the Biltmore is two exits up, past the hog slaughtering factory. And then, of course, we have the Marriott Suites, which are in Cleveland. For you, sir,” she said, her voice syrupy and sickly, making my heart feel heavy.

  A thin thread of guilt came out of nowhere—why in the hell would I ever feel guilty for wanting to take care of myself, for wanting to take care of me and Trevor? Extricating ourselves from this crazy, blonde bitch was natural. If my car hadn't broken down we'd be out of here, right?

  Trevor put a hand on her arm and whispered something in her ear. A flame of anger and rage plumed inside me and I tamped it down instantly. No time for letting my emotions get the better of me. It was time to be reasonable, rational and logical. Logic dictated that we needed a room so that Trevor and I could peel ourselves off of this woman, this...groupie? Random Acts had groupies in Ohio? That was cool. She seemed to know who Trevor was and seemed to like the music. That part was awfully odd.

  “Let me tell you something, Joe,” she said. “There's really only one hotel nearby—it's at a truck stop. The room's gonna be a little bit bigger than my place and yes, you'll have your own bathroom. You won't have to go in and talk to Mama about what she won in her online gambling this week. And the rooms are gonna smell like cigarette but not quite as bad as my trailer. It will be nothing like my little shed here. And you can have your nice little calm life back for a few hours where you don't have to rely on the hospitality of people who scare you.”

  “Fuck, no. You don't scare me,” I retorted.

  She raised her eyebrows, looked at Trevor, looked back at me. Something in the way she studied my face made my pants tighten. She had a curvy, devil-may-care attitude about her. The way she shifted her hip, the swell of her breast against her ribcage, the jaunty smirk—and then there was the fact that she was right—she'd hit the bullseye. These people scared me. Lots of things scared me. How could someone I'd never known figure that out so fast?

  If she could, in the middle of nowhere, then what would the world know about me when I went out into it? I had to be a pitbull in order to function in big law. That was my parents' goal and mine, right? Mine—my goal. I decided to try being a pitbull back.