Page 126 of Crossing the Brooklyn Briggs
“Are you changed yet?” a static-laced voice asks near my head.
I flinch, scrambling to grab the walkie talkie just behind me. “Chad? What’s going on?”
“I’ll keep driving until you’re dressed.”
I curse again. If Brooklyn’s terrifying older brother is involved, I’m not getting out of whatever this is.
I don’t have a lot of space in this trunk, so when I grab the duffel and open it to find a tux, I consider my options. I could struggle through changing and hope that gets me out of this cramped space, or I could refuse to comply and see if that messes with whatever plans they’ve made.
I click the walkie talkie to open the channel to talk again. “Where’s Brooklyn?”
Chad doesn’t answer, instead pushing the car a little faster. He’s barely made any turns, which means we’re getting progressively farther from the house. I don’t like that.
I spend a few more minutes weighing my options and even consider unlatching the back seat so I can crawl into the cab of the car, though I’m not sure I want to go head-to-head with Chad. He likes me for the most part, but he’s never been afraid to tell me to keep my guard up. Any missteps, and he won’t hold back.
“Dressed yet?” Chad asks in his rough and gruff voice.
I sigh. I’m not going to have a choice in this. Grumbling, I kick off my shoes and start working my way into the tux, which is extremely difficult in this cramped space. I’m definitely going to come out of this looking like a rumpled mess, but at least I’ll be able to leave the trunk.
I hope.
When I’m as presentable as I can be, I grab the walkie talkie again. It’s not easy; at some point, I accidentally kicked it down by my feet, so I have to use my foot to shove it back up toward my hands until I can reach it.
“I’m wearing the stupid tux. Happy now?”
“Took you long enough.” Chad slows the car down until he comes to a stop, and then I’m pretty sure he does a U-turn and starts driving back the way we came.
“Were you on the highway?” I ask in alarm. It’s the only road he could have taken for that long, which means we’re probably outside of Sun City now.
“You took forever. I told you I would keep driving.” He sounds far too amused by the fact.
“Can I at least get out of the trunk for the drive back?”
“Nope.”
I know better than to argue, which means I get to spend the next twentyish minutes asking myself if I really want to become a part of this family. It’s a stupid question because the answer is always going to be yes, but it’s fun to pretend I have a choice in the matter.
Houston has told me more than once that if I ever break Brooklyn’s heart, he’ll break my body. Chad told me he has enough dirt on me that he can make my life a living hell if I give him a reason. Even Micah has tossed out her own threats, which by themselves aren’t all that frightening but when backed by a glaring Fischer are downright terrifying. He is Micah’s opposite in every way and would probably burn the world down for her if she asked him to. Throw in Brooklyn’s stepdad and extended family, and she has a whole army behind her in case I slip up.
She wouldn’t need them, of course. Over the last few months, I have fallen victim to plenty of Brooklyn’s pranks because the old Brooklyn has come back with a vengeance. And the crazy thing is each prank has always made my life better somehow. Like when she convinced my team to mess up the schedule one day, which meant every job I tried to do was already done before I got there, so I ended up with a down day to spend with my mom. Or when she hired a mariachi band to follow me around one day and the attention brought in some new clients because they loved my energy.
The longer I’m in this trunk, the more I’m thinking this has Brooklyn written all over it.
The problem is she would have to know I was going to propose if she wanted to get everyone in on it. Everything was supposed to be a surprise, so someone blabbed, and I can’t figure out why Brooklyn would hijack my proposal and force me into a tux.
Unless…
“Nearly there,” Chad says into the walkie talkie, and the car starts to slow. He takes a few turns, including three lefts in a row, and then pulls the car to a blessed stop. “Still alive back there, Torres?”
“Open the trunk and find out,” I growl back.
I hear him laughing as he comes around to the trunk and opens it up, blinding me with sunshine from the setting sun. “No hard feelings?”
I take his offered hand and scramble out of the trunk, only to discover we’re right back where we started, parked in front of the house where I set up my proposal. Maybe Brooklyn isn’t actually involved in this? She doesn’t know anything about this house.
Houston comes through the gate with a huge smile on his face, and I’m pretty sure he’s trying not to laugh as he takes in the sight of me. “What, did you get dressed in the trunk of a car or something?”
The only reason I don’t tackle him is because he’s only a week off of his surgery to fix his shoulder, which means his arm is bound up in a sling. That, and he’s wearing a tux to match mine.
