“Got it.”
I follow her around to the other side of my Jeep under the guise of putting the bag in the back. I reach around her for the door handle, but she stops me and shoots me another glare. “What the hell are you doing?”
I stare at her. “Opening the door?”
“I can do it myself. I know my leg is a mess, but my arms work just fine.”
I want to say that the Jeep isn’t like her brother’s truck. I don’t have running boards. But hours earlier, I’d been making a big case about her ability to scale an eight-foot fence, so there’s no way to justify helping her that isn’t some form of the truth--which is that the thought of driving with her in my car is making me fucking crazy.
“Okay,” I say instead, taking a step back. The Jeep is high off the ground, but she manages all the same. I hand her the bag and back away slowly. Even though I don’t deserve to feel annoyed and sort of cast off, I do.
Emory drives away as I get into the driver’s side and shut the door. Vandy and I are very much alone now, and our positions are not lost on me—me behind the wheel, her in the passenger seat. Her thighs are primly pressed together and her fingers curl around the edge of the seat.
Here we go.
I crank the engine, place both hands on the steering wheel, and stare out the windshield. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
There’s no need to push what ‘this’ is.
Her voice is clipped. “I’m fine.”
“Because it’s normal to be anxious,” I assure her. “I mean, it took me a long time before I was comfortable behind the wheel. My therapist used to—”
Her head whips in my direction. “You have a therapist?”
“I did.” I blow out a breath, just grateful for the lack of bite in her tone. My insides feel twisted enough. I wonder if she even realizes how big of a deal this is for me, too. “At Mountain Point. One-on-one, plus group therapy. It was a condition of my release and enrollment.”
Her fingers relax a little. “Me, too. Well, not the group, but the individual.” She looks askance at me, mouth lifting into a small grin. “Sucks, huh?”
“Yeah, it does.” I grin tightly back. “But I have a feeling they’d both think it was pretty valid for the two of us to be freaking out right now.”
Vandy looks at me for a long moment, eyes searching. “Well, you seem like you’re handling it fine.”
I hold her stare, and I don’t think I’ve ever been more honest in my life. “Before you got here, I threw up in that trash can. Over there by the Redbox.” She follows the direction of my nod, as if she could see it. “Trust me, I’m freaking out.”
“Do you think those therapists would support us doing it?” Her face blanches. “I-I mean, this? The driving thing? With everything we…”
“God, probably not.” I run my hand down my face. “At least not without a shit-ton of reflection and mindfulness exercises. Probably some deep dives into our psyches about why we’re insisting on hanging around one another again, and hey, what’s with the deep-rooted need to join this group, anyway? Are we flirting with self-destructive tendencies by putting ourselves in all these risky situations? And then we’d probably need to do some controlled breathing and talk about how our mothers were mean to us once in second grade, and now we don’t know how to safely process our attachment issues or whatever.”
Vandy lets out a laugh, and it’s nothing like the laugh she had with Tyson. This one is bright and sharp. “You’re right, that’s exactly what Dr. Cordell would say. Minus the second-grade thing. Mine was probably the Valentine's dance.”
I flinch when she reaches across the center of the car and gently pries my hand from the steering wheel. I watch in a silent stupor as she places it on the gear selector, closing my fingers around the lever.
“But I have a better idea, Reynolds.” She looks at me, her hand warm and so heavy on mine that it feels like every point of my body is pinned beneath the weight of it. She breathes, “Just drive.”
My exhale escapes in a measured gust. “Yes, ma’am.”
I put the car in reverse and take one last glance over to make sure she’s okay. Her eyes are forward but she seems less tense, at least. There’s a lock of hair hanging over her cheek and the instinct to reach over and sweep it away, tuck it behind her delicate ear, is so powerful that it’s nearly an ache not to.
Slowly, using every single lesson from Driver’s Ed, I ease the Jeep from the parking space.
I can do this.
We can do this.
Without another thought about why we’re drawn to one another, I pull onto the street and head to Thistle Cove.
15