Broken Hill Hearts (Broken Hill High 4)

Jesse’s eyes widen. “Are you for real? You’re going to let me drive the Mustang?”

“Yeah, man,” Nate laughs. “But I’m going to kick your ass if you put a single mark on her.”

Jesse salutes him before tossing the keys to his Range Rover to Tyson and dropping down into the Mustang. Nate watches on with an amused smirk as Jesse starts up the car and revs the absolute shit out of it with nothing but a massive, excited grin across his face.

Nate shakes his head and takes my hand. “Come on,” he says. “I want to take you home and celebrate… our way.”

“Really?” I smile up at him before roaming my eyes up and down his body. “I don’t want to wait until we get home. I’d rather celebrate in the back of the Camaro. After all, we need to christen it.”

Nate’s eyes flame and not a moment later, we’re dropping down into the Camaro and he speeds away, taking us somewhere we can have a little privacy without the eyes of every senior and junior from Broken Hill High on us.

“Hey,” I say as he pulls out of the dirt road and joins the traffic on the highway. “I know a place I want to show you.”

“You have a place?” he scoffs with an evil little smirk that has me wanting to reach across and squish it right off his face. “Do you take all the boys there or just me?”

“Shut up,” I laugh. “It’s not like that. I just want to show you something.”

“Ok,” he grins. “Show me the way.”

Fifteen minutes later, Nate pulls into the empty parking lot of an old factory warehouse. “Where the hell are we?” he grunts, looking up at the old, huge building.

I unbuckle my seatbelt and open the door. Nate follows my lead and I meet him around the front of the Camaro, taking his hand in mine. “Dad bought this place a few years ago as an investment,” I explain. “He had some big plan of turning it into office spaces or something like that so he could rent it out, but it never happened. It’s just been sitting here empty.”

“Ok,” Nate murmurs, watching me and probably wondering why the hell I give enough of a shit to make him drive out here.

“I overhead dad on the phone the other day. He’s going to sell it and I thought this could be the perfect place for you to build your shop.”

“What?” he grunts with wide eyes, flicking his head back towards the warehouse with a whole new perspective.

“It’s big enough, right?” I question, not really knowing what he’d need to start his business. “Come on,” I say, dragging him along. “Last I checked, the side door was broken.”

Nate lets me drag him along and his silence tells me there’s a lot of thoughts going through his head right now. I just hope they’re all good ones, but if not, it doesn’t really matter. We can find somewhere else.

The closer we get to the side door, the more appreciation begins to seep into his eyes and it’s almost as though I can see the ideas rushing through his mind.

We reach the door and it’s clear as day that it’s broken and I try my best to open it, but the fucker is jammed. Nate shoves me aside, grabs the door handle and with one quick move, he shoulders his way through the door.

We break into the wide open space and I pull up the flashlight app on my phone as I search around for the light. I find it beside the main entrance and the second I hit the big button, the warehouse lights up like the fourth of July.

“Woah,” Nate whistles, low under his breath as he takes it all in.

“Do you like it?” I question.

Nate spins around, taking it all in and though he hasn’t said anything, I see the answer in his eyes. This place will be where he has his beginning, whether he has to buy the property from my dad or rent it.

We walk around the warehouse and I point out all the places where I think things should go with Nate promptly correcting me and reminding me that when it comes to building a shop specifically for restoration, I have no clue what I’m talking about, so I just keep quiet and let his dream come out, imagining how it will all piece together.

“Thank you,” Nate murmurs as we get back in his Camaro.

“Are you going to do it? Is this the place?”

He nods his head as he looks at the warehouse. “Yeah, I think it is,” he tells me. “It needs a bit of work but I think it would be perfect for what I need.”

“Do you want me to talk to dad about it?”

“No,” he says, staring up the engine and backing out of his spot. He looks across at me with that boyish smile that completely lights up his face and takes my hand. “I’ll do it.”