Love Story (Love Unexpectedly 3)

And my heart? Shit. My heart’s had barbed wire around it for a good six years now, and there’s absolutely zero chance that the person to slip beneath my protective walls is going to be the one who caused those walls to go up in the first place.

Chapter 22

Lucy

So, update.

We’re somewhere in Tennessee, and we’re…surviving.

There’s no other word for it, really. It’s been two days since our whatever in Miami, and it’s been a lot of bickering about the radio, where to stop for lunch, what to eat for dinner….

Except that gets exhausting, as does trying to keep our hands off each other, so we occasionally slip up. We occasionally slip into old Reece and Lucy, back when we told each other everything. I’m slowly chipping away at the piece of his life I missed while I was away at school, although the guy’s not making it easy on me.

The second I make any sort of headway, he overreacts by treating me like I’m a bratty little sister he can’t wait to be rid of.

My head is throbbing from the pounding of his obnoxious rock music. I reach out again to change it, and he knocks my hand away.

“What’s your deal?” I snap.

“We each get thirty minutes of radio at a time,” he says, without glancing away from the road. “Been that way the whole time.”

A few more nights, I think. You can do this.

Then I’ll be in Napa, him in Sonoma. Too close for comfort, certainly, but there’ll be a hell of a lot more space than there is in this stupid car. Obviously my crap brother named it Horny for a reason because even though I hate Reece, I can’t seem to go five minutes without visualizing his hands on me.

My efforts with the radio thwarted, I opt for rolling down the window instead.

Reece gives me a look. “Hot?”

I don’t respond. I’m not hot. Well maybe a little. Mostly it’s that freaking cologne he’s taken to wearing since that night in Miami. I don’t know what the hell it’s called, but they should rename it: Lucy Hawkins’s Cooter Kryptonite.

It makes me want to jump him every time he gets near.

To be fair, I’d probably want to do that anyway. But the fact that he smells like pepper and Christmas and bourbon doesn’t help.

We drive in silence for a few more minutes, and I distract myself by watching eagerly for a rest stop so we can switch drivers. At least with my hands on the steering wheel, I’m not tempted to put them on him.

Well, less tempted anyway.

I get excited when I see the telltale blue sign, then wrinkle my nose when I see the big orange notification that it’s temporarily closed and the next rest stop isn’t for forty-eight miles.

My pissy mood’s interrupted when the car makes a quick and unexpected swerve, and I hear a stream of curses from Reece.

I sit up in my seat and roll up the window to keep out the dirt that’s flying up as he pulls over to the shoulder. “What’s going on?”

“Flat,” he says grimly as Horny rolls to a stop on the mostly deserted highway in the middle of nowhere.

For a moment there’s only silence, then a whoosh as a semitruck whizzes by.

Reece checks over his shoulders to make sure no other cars are coming up on us before opening the driver’s side and climbing out, giving the door an angry slam.

I watch as he puts his hands on his hips, chomping on the mint gum he stole from my purse at our last gas stop, coming around to glare at the passenger-side tire.

Then he glares at me, as though it’s my fault just by being closest.

I give him my biggest shit-eating grin, and even through the dark lens of his aviator sunglasses, I know his eyes are narrowing.

He marches toward the door, and after glancing once more at the oncoming traffic (spoiler alert, there’s none), he jerks open the do