Page 111 of Boots, Bucket Lists & Bad Ideas
My nipples?
Yeah, they’d beg to differ.
I reach over and turn the air down a few degrees.
“Take a right at the stop sign.” Without looking up, she stabs a finger in the air, pointing right.
I could make this simple and follow her directions, taking us back to the original plan, the route I chose. The one she’s now so eager to steer me toward.
I should make the turn.
My fingers curl around the wheel. The road stretches ahead in the wrong direction. I slow to a stop at the country intersection.
“Blinker. You’re turning right.” Her tone is bossy.
Eyes locked dead ahead, hands firm at ten and two, I press the gas and yank the wheel hard to the left.
She snaps up her head, eyes wide. “The right, not the left. What part of no detours and reckless driving don’t you get?”
She spins around in her seat to look behind us as if that will magically put us in the right direction.
“Relax.” I shoot her a grin. “Sometimes you gotta blaze your own trail. You’ll thank me later.”
“I will not thank you later. This is literally the opposite direction.”
“Jade’s become the fun police,” I tease, but she’s always been the quiet one who didn’t break the rules.
“As I recall, you were the one insisting we don’t have time to get off track.”
I was, but now an opportunity has presented itself. Even if she can’t see it, she’ll thank me later.
“This whole drive, you’ve been off track.” I swerve around a fallen branch on the road.
“No. I was taking a planned detour, giving us enough time to arrive at the campground before they shut the gates at four. But you’re going to get us lost.”
That’s the plan, but with time to spare. If she relaxed long enough to put two and two together, she’d realize this is for her.
“We’re fine.”
She looks out the window. “Fine, my ass. You take one more wrong turn like that and I’ll snatch that cowboy hat off your head and beat you with it ‘til you remember this ain’t Nascar and you ain’t Dale damn Earnhardt.”
I smirk at her. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Kinky Jade.”
“I am not the kinky one.” She turns her head to look out the side window.
She almost sounds like she’s convinced herself.
“You don’t have to lie,” I say. “It’s just you and me.”
“I can fix this.” She lowers her head and is back planning the next stop, but not before she turns the air up a few notches.
My poor nipples.
“The next stop has a creek right next to it. You’re gonna turn right—right. Not left. Not straight. Right. Then follow the creek. It’ll take us back to the road you ignored.”
Her shoulders drop as she eases back in the seat and opens our bucket list. The one we wrote together.
The hair from her ponytail flows over her shoulders in soft waves. Relaxed looks good on her.
