He flashes me that perfectly white grin, and I feel my own lips tug up into a smile. The whole time I sat at Alma’s, my stomach was turning into tight knots. I felt nauseous, my palms clammy as I turned the pages in sync with Jeff.
But after one minute in this truck with him, I feel myself let out the breath I’d been holding. I feel myself letting go and letting it all settle inside me.
I turn and look out the window, staring up at the sea of green we’re driving through. At the end of the road, the trees clear a bit, and as he pulls onto Lake Shore Highway, I can see the blue of the water.
“Not a lot of wind today, so it’s not too choppy,” he says. “Whattya say?”
I turn to him and cock my head.
“About what?”
He nods his head toward the water as he drives down the highway.
“The best way to see the town is by water,” he says with a shrug and a devilish smile. I look out at the lake again.
“Let’s do it,” I say. He nods and picks up speed, and after a few more minutes on the windy highway, he pulls off into a parking lot in front of a small strip of stores and shops. “Where are we?”
“Just gotta get the key,” he says. He takes the keys out of the ignition and pulls one from the chain. He hops out and walks over to one of the shop doors. Above it hangs a huge sign that says Big Moon Sports. I follow behind him and look around the store. There are spinning racks of clothes and bathing suits, sunglasses, huge inner tubes hanging on the wall, water skis hanging from the ceiling.
“Do you work here?” I ask him as he walks behind the front counter and uses another key on his chain to get into a glass case. He pulls another key from the glass and closes it then stuffs it in his pocket. He chuckles.
“Uh, yeah. You could say that,” he says. “Come on, let’s go.”
I follow him out the door of the shop. He locks it and holds a hand out for me to cross the parking lot. We wait on the side of Lakeshore Highway for the traffic to clear then swiftly walk across the crosswalk. He leads me down a set of questionable wooden steps then onto a set of docks. There’s a small shed on one of the docks, and boats and jet skis are tied to them on either side. I follow him down the longest dock to a speedboat, and he turns to me and holds out a hand.
I look up at him. His brown eyes are big and gleaming, and one corner of his mouth is tugged up into a grin. It’s breezy this close to the water, and when it blows my hair back off my shoulders, it sends a chill down my spine. I smile back at him and slip my hand into his. The stark contrast of my flesh on his makes me pause for a moment, the sunlight bouncing off of my porcelain skin while it seeps into the darkness of his. I step up onto the back of the boat and sink down into the passenger seat.
He hops on and unties the boat then uses his foot to push us off. He sits down in the driver’s seat and starts the boat using the key he got from the store, and we’re off. As he pulls out into the water, he hops up to pull the buoys in. He grabs one on his side of the boat, and I hop up to grab the one on mine. As I stand back up, I catch his eyes on my backside for half a second. I bite my lip as I slide back down into my seat.
“Nah,” he says just as my butt touches the leather. I look at him quizzically. “You get the best view from up there.” He points to the seat at the nose of the boat. I smile at him as I stand slowly.
“Okay,” I say, “but try to not stare again.” I raise my eyebrows at him playfully, but the look on his face is a little less playful. He clears his throat as I shimmy past him and up to the front of the boat.
I kneel on the soft cushions of the front seat and look out over the water. There are boats whizzing by us, water skiers making it look completely effortless, families fishing off of distant docks.
The wind gets stronger as he picks up speed, and I grab hold of the railings on either side of me.
“Relax,” he says. “You’re fairly safe with me.”
I look back at him and narrow my eyes.
“‘Fairly?’” I say with a smile. He chuckles, and my stomach flips. His gaze intensifies a bit, and I bite my lip in response.
“I’ve been driving boats on this water since I was twelve,” he says. “I got you.”
I nod and turn forward, pushing my long honey locks off my shoulders and letting them fall to my back. I close my eyes and gently let my head drop back as he points the nose of the boat toward the big, open heart of Meade Lake.
All I feel is the rumbling of the water below us. All I hear is the moaning of the engine and the wind whipping past my ears. But I feel his eyes on me, and that has my spine straight and heart skipping a beat.
“So, if you’ll look to your right,” he says with his best tour-guide voice, “that’s Lou’s Lakeside Grille. Lou was a close friend of May. Best burgers in Meade Lake.” I smile and nod as I look up at the bar on the shore. Another wooden staircase leads up to it from the docks. It has a big deck with string lights on the back, and it’s packed.
We move a little farther up the shoreline.
“That there is the B&B you’re staying at,” he says. I nod, looking at it from the water. It’s such a cute little inn, the perfect place to escape to after all I’ve learned today.
He veers left down a cove and slows down a bit.
“We all call this Rich Man’s Cove,” he says with a smile. “And you can probably see why.”
My jaw drops when I see them. Massive, castle-like houses with perfectly manicured yards. Some with pools. All with impeccable boats tied down to their massive docks. One has a tennis court; another has a guest house.
“Wow,” I mutter, still ogling. He laughs.
“Yeah,” he says. “Crazy thing is, these people don’t even live here year-round. These are just vacation homes.”
“My God,” I say. “Can you imagine having that much money?”
Then we both grow quiet.
I swallow and look back toward him sheepishly.
“You might be able to more than I can now,” he says with a smile.
Oh, yeah. I forgot. I’m a millionaire now.
He spins the boat back around and pulls back down the cove, veering to the left. As we make our way into the wide mouth of the lake, I hear laughter, screaming, and loud music in the distance. I look up ahead and see a massive building perched on the shoreline at the base of a big building behind it. Sand covers the shore in front of it, and people are laying out and playing volleyball. Ski lifts trail up the mountain behind it, and “Willington” is painted down the side of the building in huge, gold letters.
“What is that?” I ask. Derrick scoffs.
“The Willington. The soul-sucker of all small businesses here in Meade Lake.” I narrow my eyes at him. “It popped up a few years ago when the Willington family bought the land when the original owner died. Four-season resort. Complete with its own private mountain, private beach, and two four-star restaurants. They also have a ski shop and a cafe, so pretty much, something to rival every single business in the area.”
I nod. I’m not used to the disdain I hear in his voice. I swallow, thinking about my father and Jennings Technology. Through the years, I’d heard one side of some extremely heated phone calls my dad had had. Mostly, they consisted of some disgruntled small-business owner telling him off while he muttered things like, “I’m sorry about that,” and “I understand, but Jennings purchasing the business is the best bet for survival.” It was no secret that Jennings was in the business of acquiring its small-business rivals, running over the Georgia tech industry like a vacuum. I almost shivered at the thought. I hated that about it.
We speed past the resort, and the farther we go, the quieter the lake seems to get. There are less boats, less houses, and less businesses popping up on the shore. There are more trees now, and the few houses we do drive past seem to be hidden behind them, like the trees are protecting them from the madness of the water. Unlike the houses in Rich Man’s Cove that seem to have cleared everything in their path so they could boa
st, these ones seem to be trying to camouflage themselves into the trees.
We turn down another cove, and he cuts the engine off completely. He hops up from the driver's seat and walks up to the front of the boat with me. I tuck my feet under myself to make room for him and scoot back slightly so he has room. He sits down and straightens his legs out, stretching his arms out on either side of the seat.
“See that house?” he asks with a nod of his head. I turn to look, squinting my eyes. I see it tucked back behind the trees. It’s big. Not Rich-Man’s-Cove big, but it’s impressive. I can see a large stone patio and a hammock up in the grass behind it. It’s a log house with a forest-green roof. There are balconies popping out of multiple places, and I daydream for a moment about what it would be like to wake up, open the door, and step out onto it.
“Yeah,” I finally answer him. He scoots a little closer to me, and I can smell that same after-shave scent that makes my heart rate accelerate.
“It was May’s,” he says close to my ear. “And now, it’s yours.”
My lips part as I stare up at it.
“Mine,” I whisper. His hand brushes against mine on the seat, and I gasp subconsciously.
“Yours.” I breathe in and out slowly, staring at the beauty in front of me. “You wanna go see it?”
I whip my head to him.
“Now?”
He nods. I turn back to the house.
“Will she...will we be...alone?”
“Haven’s not home,” he says. “She’s staying with my mom for a while.”
I swallow.
“Let’s do it,” I say. He smiles at me and reaches a hand out to pat my bare knee. He makes his way back to the driver’s seat and kicks the engine into gear again. He turns the boat toward the house and aims it for the boat slip out in front of it. He cuts the engine off and tosses the bumper back into the water on his side. As the boat nears the dock, he hops off and ties it down. He holds a hand up to me as I climb up onto the seat. I take it and reach my foot out to step onto the dock. But I miss.
I stumble off the boat and onto my knees across the wood. Before my face hits it, though, he yanks on my hand and grabs onto my other arm, pulling me up before I become a total catastrophe.
“Damn,” he mutters. I want to die, but luckily, I’m a pro at making a complete fool of myself in front of people.
“Yeah, this happens a lot.” I shrug. “If you’re gonna be around me, you’ll have to get used to it.”
He looks down at me, and that corner of his full lips pulls up again, that half-smile sending a zap to my very core.
“I hope I get a chance to, then,” he says. I bite my lip again, and he turns toward the house. That’s when I notice he’s still holding my hand. He catches me looking down at them, interlocked. “I’m not taking a chance. I’ll be holding this till we get to land.” He makes himself laugh as I playfully nudge his shoulder.
“I’m not that tragic,” I tell him.
“Eh. You’ll have to prove that to me.”
We get to the grass, and I feel a wave of anxiety hit me. I freeze as we stare up at the house, quiet, like it’s frozen in time, waiting for its rightful owner to come breathe life back into it.
“You okay?” he asks. I slowly turn to him and nod my head.
“Uh, yeah, yeah. Let’s go.” He looks down at me and cocks his head, like he’s not sure if he can trust me. “I’m fine, really.” I take a step in front of him, and he follows quickly behind. The patio is even bigger than it looked from the water, paved in stone with a big fire pit in the middle of it. Adirondack chairs are circled around it, and a few chaise lounges sit off to the side. There’s a deck that stretches off the center of the house, but the stairs are blocked off.
“May wanted the deck to extend to either end of the house,” he says. “I promised her I’d get it done. I didn’t get that chance while she was alive, but I’m finishing it now. It’s a work in progress, so it’s not usable right now.”
I nod.
“You can...you can build?”
He laughs.
“I can do a lot of things,” he says. “I’m pretty good with my hands.”
Our eyes meet again, and I know there’s some deeper meaning behind his innocent words. And the thought makes me shiver. His hands were one of the first things I noticed about him—long and dark with thick veins leading up to his bulging forearms.
“I have a key,” he says, reaching into his back pocket to pull out his keychain.
“You mean we can go inside?” I ask. He dangles the key and nods. I turn back slowly to the house, staring up at the huge floor-to-ceiling windows that are plastered across it. I picture the get-togethers that happened on this patio, the people that lounged in these chairs. The crisped, dripping marshmallows that probably fell into the fire pit on occasion.
May, staring out the windows as she drank her morning coffee.
Or was it tea?
Or maybe it was neither.
And maybe none of these things happened. I wouldn’t know because I missed it all. I missed her. I missed my sister. Man, that word is still so foreign to me. It was so forbidden, so taboo my whole life. And now it’s being shouted at me from the top of the tallest mountain here in Meade Lake.
So many lies, so many things to learn about my own self.
And then I feel a tightness in my chest. The lump in my throat makes it harder to take in a deep breath, and I feel the stinging behind my eyes of tears that are threatening to drop any minute.
“I...I, um, I think––” I stammer. He steps in front of me, blocking the house from my view completely. He reaches down and takes my hand in his.
“Hey,” he says. “We don’t have to do this today. Let’s get you back to your car, okay?”
Thank God. Thank God he said it so I didn’t have to.
I’m not ready.
I follow Derrick back down to the dock, and when we reach it, he playfully takes my hand again.
“I’m not taking any chances,” he says. I manage to crack a smile.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you just want to keep holding my hand.” He looks down at me and gives me a curious look, his eyebrows shooting up. Then, much to my dismay, he drops my hand. Instead, he moves his hand to the small of my back and gently leads me to the boat.
He helps me on and unties us, and we each pull our bumper up. As he pulls us out, I look back at the house one more time. May’s house. My house.
9
We boat back to the store, and Derrick drives me back to Alma’s. When we pull in, we see Haven’s car still parked in the driveway. He looks at her car then turns to me.
“I’m gonna just head back to the B&B,” I tell him. “Can you please tell Alma thank you again?”
He nods quietly.
“Are you sure you don’t wanna––”
“Nah,” I cut him off. “Not tonight. I’m not gonna ruin her day any more than I already have.”
He shakes his head.
“You didn’t ruin it. I did,” he says. “But it’s not her decision. And I know you haven’t seen the best side of her yet. But she really is great. I swear.” His face breaks into a smile, and I can’t help but reciprocate.
“If you say so,” I chuckle. I reach my hand to my handle, but he grabs my hand before I can move any further.
“I hope you’ll stay for a while,” he says. “Just to get to know the area. And her.”
I swallow, our eyes trained on each other.
And you. I nod.
“So, for the funeral tomorrow, did you still want to come?” he asks. I swallow. No.
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to pick you up? The family is, uh, I mean, we were all gonna go up early to be there to greet people.”
I swallow. The family.
“No, no. I’ll come separately,” I say. He tilts his head.
“Kaylee, we want…you’re a part of––”
“I’m not,” I say, shaking my
head. “I’m not. I’ll just see you there, okay?”
I slip out of his truck and tuck my hair behind my ears. “Thank you for today.”
I walk across the gravel and get into my car.
As I pull out of the driveway, like clockwork, my phone rings. It’s my father, and just seeing his name flash on my screen makes my queasy. I’ve been putting off my life––or, at least, my life in Georgia––for days now. I need a plan. I hit decline and quickly command my car to call Charlotte.
“Char, hey,” I say.
“Hi! I was just thinking about you. What’s going on there? How is it?”
“It’s...it’s good,” I say. “But listen, I need you and Emma to do something for me. I need more time here. There’s a lot for me to go through. I will fill you in on it, I swear. But I need time that’s uninterrupted by them. First, I need you to go to my apartment, grab some clothes, and ship them up here to me. I’ll text you the address and pay you for the shipping. Second, I have a plan. Will you go along with it?”
“You know I will,” she says. Like I said, world-class best friend. The kind that revs up for the plan before she even knows what it is. When I park in the driveway, I open up a text.
Hi, Dad. Sorry I didn’t answer.
Where have you been? I gulp.
I took a trip.
A trip? He answers back instantly.
Yes. I need some space.
My phone rings again. I decline.
Answer your phone, he types. I don’t respond.
Kaylee. Where are you? Your mother is worried now.
I pause and look out over the water again.
You can let Mom know I’m safe. I took a trip with Charlotte and Emma to Miami, I send off.
Miami? What the hell is in Miami? I sigh. I can picture his face growing red, that vein in his forehead sticking out the way it does when he feels like he’s losing control.
For a few minutes, there’s nothing. No text, no calls. Just as I scoot off my chair, my phone rings again. When I don’t answer, he texts me again.
You have a week.
Stones Unturned (Meade Lake Series Book 2) Page 6
