Page 21 of Lovewell Lane

The third time it didn’t even attempt to make a noise. Fuck.

The only friend I had so far was at home with her sick child. I couldn’t call her to come pick me up. Uber didn’t exist out here. Sam might have been my next call, but I didn’t even have his number. Which left me with one choice.

With a heavy sigh, I called Derek.

“Hello,” he sounded groggy. Itwaspast eleven o’clock.

“Hey,” I said meekly. “It’s Margo. Is there any way you could pick me up?”

A series of grunts, groans, and heavy breathing followed.

“You know what, I can just walk. Don’t worry about it.” I went to hang up.

“Wait,” he ordered. “Where are you?”

“A bar. It doesn’t appear to have a name.” I looked at the front of the bar with nothing but a blank white sign prominently displayed. “Apparently it’s the only bar in the near vicinity of Honeyfield, if that helps.”

“Barley’s, I’ll be there in fifteen.”

“Actually, it took us thirty minutes to get here, I think.”

“Just–” He let out another deep breath. “Stay put. Go inside please.”

“Okay, thank–” He hung up on me. It was definitely a mistake to call him. With no way to take it back, I got out of my car and walked inside with my head hung low.

Approximately twelve minutes later, a shadow appeared over my shoulder. “Time to go.”

I turned to see Derek looking even more annoyed than I expected. Saying goodbye once again to Michael, I stood up to walk the plank. Or to Derek’s pickup truck. There was no difference in my eyes.

I just hoped he wouldn’t kick me out of his guest house.

“Thank you, again.”

He grunted something I couldn’t understand in his deep southern accent. I scanned the state of him while we walked, and realized I’d definitely woken him up. His short brown hair was messy in the sexiest possible way. He might have even had sleep marks on his cheek. My eyes stopped at his biceps that were nearly bursting out of his tight t-shirt, and I wondered how he wasn’t freezing. I wasn’t complaining about the view, though.

“Why are you out so late alone at a dive bar?”

Oh, so now he wasn’t annoyed at me bothering him. He was questioning my life choices. “I wasn’t alone. I came with Lila, but she had to go home because Sienna fell ill. Sam, the gentleman your brother is, offered to drive her home. Thus, leaving me alone. Which was fine, until my car decided not to work.”

He swung the passenger side door open for me and stormed around to the other side of the truck. Evidently, he insisted on being a gentleman even when I was bothering him.

“My fault for buying a Kia, honestly. It’s a shit car,” I rambled.

“You should have gone home with Lila. Barley’s is not the place to pick up men.”

I couldn’t help the laugh that poured out of me. What a weird night this was shaping up to be. “You think that’s what I was doing? Picking up men on the metaphorical street corner?”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“I was just speaking with Michael, he’s from Honeyfield. You must know him.”

“He was a drug dealer in high school. Not boyfriend material,” Derek said.

I snorted. “Certainly not forme.”

Derek shot me a confused look before reaching his arm behind my headrest to reverse his truck. Holy shit that was hot. I got distracted by the veins in his forearm popping out as he stretched to see clearly. The faint smell of his cologne filled thecabin of the truck which made me want to curl up into him with a good book.

He dropped his arm back to rest at his side, and suddenly I was able to focus again. “Derek, he’s clearly gay.”

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