Page 80 of Road Trip to Forever
“With everything I have.” My phone buzzes in my pocket, the alarm I set to keep track of time going off. “I don’t want to rush you, but if we could start working our way back to the car, that would be great.”
“Are you hiding something from me?” She pokes my chest and I capture her hand with mine. I press a kiss to each of her fingertips, my eyes never leaving hers.
“Only one way to find out.”
TWENTY-TWO
LOLA
“Your surprise is here in Florida,”Patrick says. He spins the baseball hat on his head, and my mouth goes dry.
What is it about a man in a backwards hat that makes me weak in the knees?
“Is it?” I manage to say.
The words taste like dust. I’m remembering that hand on my thigh, up under my shirt, tracing my breasts with the faintest of touches. His lips on my shoulder and the sound of his sigh echoing in my ear.
“Surprises,” he says as we pull out of the convention center parking lot. The right side of his mouth lifts as he glances over at me. “Two of them.”
“What do you mean, two?”
“More than one. Less than three. C’mon, Lo. You’re a smart girl.”
I narrow my eyes and cross my arms over my chest. “We agreed on one.”
“We agreed on nothing. You got me two. The museum and the escape room.”
“That was one and a half, if we’re being generous. You don’t need to stretch yourself thin on my behalf.”
“Sometimes you do more for me, and sometimes I do more for you,” Patrick says. “That’s how friendship works. Are you keeping a scorecard I don’t know about?”
“Of course not.”
“I’m not either. Let me do this for you, yeah?”
I nod and play with my bracelet. “Okay.”
Admitting defeat isn’t easy, but I’m too tired to argue, my limbs heavy and my eyelids beginning to droop.
“When it comes to you and making sure you have a good time, Lola, I don’t give a flying fuck how much effort it takes or how much money it costs,” Patrick says.
Holy shit.
That wakes me up.
I blink at him and stare into his eyes, watching the vibrant green shift to dark emerald. His knuckles flex around the steering wheel, and I inhale at the sight of his corded forearms, veins running up to his elbows.
My cheeks heat. I wiggle in my seat, blood rushing to the surface of my skin the longer our gazes hold, a prickly sense of awareness of howattractivethis man is.
Kind and generous and gentle, yes.
Handsome and gorgeous too, with sharp lines and devastating features. He’s so captivating, so entrancing, I can’t look away.
I’m still waiting for it to feel wrong that I’m gaping at him, gawking and leering in a way I’ve never done before, but the wrongness never comes.
“Right.” My voice squeaks with the word, and I clear my throat. “Do I get a hint?”
“All I’m going to say is there’s something in the car that would give away one surprise if you found it.”
