Page 69 of The Kings of Kearny

Jakob’s phone chimed from between us. He picked it up and glanced at the screen, slowing the van down so he could get a better look at it. His jaw clenched, and he threw it back down.

“Goddamnit,” he ground out.

“What’s up?” I asked, not liking the look on his face.

“Change of plans,” he said, pulling out onto the main road. “We need to go talk to someone after we drop this shit off.”

“Who?” I asked.

In answer, he just shook his head.

I stared at his profile, fighting back the urge to scream. “If you ever call me stubborn again, so help me God, Jakob.”

He reached out and grabbed my hand, drawing it toward him so he could plant a kiss on my knuckles. His eyes met mine over the top of them, briefly, holding both a promise and a warning. A promise that he would answer me soon? A warning to stop asking questions?

Argh!

Why did I feel like I never really knew what was going on with this man? Why did I constantly feel off-balance and in over my head?

I tried to pull my hand from his, but he held on tight, his thumb stroking over my skin as he drove.

“Let me go,” I said, sounding angrier than I was. I needed to think, try to sift through my thoughts about what was going on and my ever-changing, ever-conflicted feelings for this impossible man, and I couldn’t seem to do either of those things with him touching me.

He glanced over again and caught sight of my expression. A scowl crept across his face, and he dropped my hand and flicked on his blinker, pulling off to the side of the road.

I looked around us—cornfields to the left, cornfields to the right.

Jakob put the van in park and came over to my side of the vehicle. Before I could ask him what the hell he was doing, he wrenched open my door, unbuckled my seat belt, and hauled me out of it.

“Jakob!” I yelled, grabbing onto his neck as he strode into the cornfield.

The van was still on, and both the doors were wide open, like we’d been abducted. If anyone drove past, they’d be so overcome withChildren of the Cornvibes that they’d either take the fuck off or call the cops.

“You drive me crazy sometimes,” he growled.

“Ditto, buddy,” I said, poking his meaty chest for emphasis.

“Why couldn’t you have trusted that I would answer you when I could?”

“I didn’t know that’s what you were asking me to do!” I shot back. “Why didn’t you just say that to me?”

He made a frustrated sound and then hauled me forward so he could seal his mouth over mine. My head spun as he kissed me, hard and fierce, and I did that stupid thing where I forgot to breathe again. By the time he pulled back, I was light-headed and thankful he was holding me up.

“We’re going to see Daniel King,” he said.

Just like that, the light-headedness vanished. “Um, what?”

“And I didn’t say anything in the van because my father might have bugged it.”

“Um,what?”

“Now we need to quit wasting time and get back on the road before he looks at the GPS tracker on it and wonders why the hell we’re parked here.”

With that, he turned on his heel and headed out of the cornfield.

I clung to him, dumbstruck, looking back over the past few days and beginning to realize that the reason I had felt like I never knew what was going on was because I hadn’t.

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