Broken Hill Hurt (Broken Hill High 3)

“You’ll see,” he throws over his shoulder before stalking inside.

While he’s gone, I walk around his Mustang and take it all in. I have absolutely no idea what I’m looking at but I know in the past few days he’s already done so much.

He returns a few minutes later with Jesse, each of them holding either end of the big wooden desk from Nate’s bedroom. “What the hell is this?” I question as Jesse groans and grunts when his hand gets caught between the desk and the doorway.

“It’s your new desk,” Nate says as they put it down against the wall in the garage. “I’m not done with the Mustang yet and you have homework. It’s a win/win situation,” he tells me before grinning and producing a pen from his pocket. He hands it over like my knight in shining armor. “I want you here with me. I haven’t seen you all day.”

I look back at the desk as Jesse finds a bucket and turns it upside down as a chair. He stands back and looks at his handiwork with pride before winking and disappearing. “You know, if you’re going to be working, I’m going to be awfully distracted.”

Nate grins and pulls me in. “I’m willing to take that risk,” he tells me before kissing me deeply.

I melt into him and after a few minutes, I somehow manage to find myself. I pull back and step out of his arms. “Let me get my homework done,” I reprimand him. “As soon as I’m done, I’m all yours.”

“Alright,” he says, sending me on my way with a good ass spanking. “You better hurry up though, I have plans for you.”

All my girly bits clench. I can’t freaking wait.

I drop down onto my bucket and get started on my English essay, but just as I had predicted, my eyes can’t stop turning and watching Nate as he pulls apart the old engine. I put my pen down and briefly give up on the essay. I mean, at this rate it’s not going to make much sense. “Hey,” I say as I watch him lean over the open hood of the car. “Do you know what’s going on with Max? Brooke said he’s been lying to her.”

He continues doing something that makes his muscles bulge from his arms. “What do you mean?” he grunts. “The kid is madly in love with that girl.”

“That’s what I thought,” I muse. “But he keeps making up excuses not to see her.”

“I don’t know, babe. Do you want me to talk to him?”

I think it over for a second. “Nah,” I say. “This is between him and Brooke. I don’t want to get involved and cause problems if it’s nothing.”

“Good plan,” he grunts, distracted by his work.

“Can you keep an eye on him though? Make sure that he’s not playing up on her.”

“Ok,” he says, finally straightening up and looking at me. “And if he is?”

“Then he better watch out because I’m going to rip his balls out through his throat.”

“Damn,” he grunts. “You’re brutal.”

“Be that a lesson to you, Nathaniel Ryder.”

He scoffs as he walks over to me. “Do you seriously think I’d ever do that to you?”

“No, never,” I say, hooking my arms around his neck. “I trust you completely.”

“And so you should,” he tells me, dropping his lips to mine and devouring me.

I pull back when I hear a noise coming from inside and hope to god it’s not Trish, as she’s sure to tell my mom I snuck out. “Now, tell me,” I say as the noise moves away from the garage door. “How’d this whole rivalry with Jackson start in the first place?”

Nate shakes his head and walks back over to his Mustang, dragging me along with him. “We don’t need to get into that shit.”

“Well, if I’m going down because of it then I think I should at least know why.”

He lets out a low groan and leans forward onto the open hood. “Really? It’s stupid.”

“I don’t care.”

“It started as a bet.”

“A bet?” I scoff in disbelief. I mean, how could all this bullshit come from a stupid little bet?

“Yep,” Nate grunts. “Two years ago, Puck bet me to crash a Haven Falls party, and well, I wasn’t going to say no. I shut off all the electricity and locked every door and window. The only way for them to get out was to break their way out or wait for the cops to come and help,” he explains with a fond chuckle. “Girls were screaming and crying. It was like a scene from a horror movie.”

“Ok,” I say slowly. “How does this tie in with Jackson?”

“It was his party,” he says. “He got payback by spray painting a dick on the windscreen of my Camaro. It only got worse from there.”