His Lucky Penny (The Penny Books, #1) Page 4

  I can’t help but shake my head as I smile.

  He reaches forward with his fork and taps my plate. “Now eat your breakfast. And if we’re going to talk, you can tell me about your job and how you spend your day.”

  I purse my lips, trying to stop another smile that will only encourage him. “Bossy much?”

  “You have no idea,” he says cryptically, but it oddly has my stomach doing somersaults.

  After that, we eat and I tell him about the excitement that is my life. Either I work mornings as a cashier in a grocery store and then go to school at night, or twice a week, I work afternoons and go to school in the morning. I tell him that I’ve been at my job long enough that they let me have the weekends off, blah, blah, blah. I bore myself sometimes, but he seems to be listening like it matters. I even tell him a couple of funny stories about customers and it’s nice that he laughs.

  When we’re leaving, I try not to think about how it would take me a day and a half to make the hundred dollars he leaves as a tip for the waitress.

  By this time, I’ve decided to just be myself and have fun with him until he comes to his senses and moves on to the next girl he has a crush on. At least I’ve been honest with him and he knows I won’t sleep with him.

  As we walk back to the car, I’m wondering about this low-level hum of expectation I’ve got going on in my gut. It’s a bit . . . disconcerting. Since she told me straight to my face there won’t be any sex, what’s it about? I mean, yeah, she’s interesting to talk to, but I’m pretty sure my hair is not long enough to braid. The idea that we could be friends is ludicrous.

  I open the door for her when we get to the car, and her surprised smile conjures up one of my own and washes away all the doubt. Whatever. I like her. For now, I’ll take what I can get.

  When I get in, I don’t start the engine right away. “So, you want to go for a drive out to the coast?”

  A flash of unease crosses her face. But after a moment of deliberation, I guess she decides to risk my being a serial killer because a small smile appears on her lips.

  “Sure.”

  I start the car and pull out. “There’s a house for sale that I want to look at. Is that okay with you?”

  She shrugs. “I’m easy.”

  I just laugh as she turns red. “You’re hilarious, Pretty Girl.”

  “I’m glad I amuse you,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest, her lips ending up in a pout.

  I have the urge to kiss that pouty little mouth; it’s all I can look at, but unfortunately I have to drive.

  “Did your parents buy you this car?” she asks, making it sound like a bit of an accusation.

  What? Where did that come from? “I guess in a way they did,” I say slowly, surprised I’m about to tell her more. “I was an only child, and when they died, I inherited everything into a trust fund. When we were eighteen, Jason and I took some of the money and started flipping houses, and that’s what pays for all our toys.”

  Her brows pull together. “Your parents died?”

  I nod. “In a car crash when I was fourteen.” There’s suddenly a lump in my throat that I have to force down. Huh, that hasn’t happened in years, I think to myself.

  “And Jason’s family adopted you?”

  I take a breath and then swallow again. Thankfully, the lump loosens enough that I can talk without embarrassing myself in front of her. “Yeah, our families were always close growing up. I was lucky that it was already in my parent’s will that Jason’s parents should be my guardians. Otherwise, I’d have ended up in foster care.”

  “You don’t have any other family?”

  I take my eyes off the road for a moment to see that hers are big and bright. “No,” I say.

  “Me neither. I don’t have any cousins or aunts and uncles or anything like that. My mom and Charmaine are all I have in the world.”

  Her voice is sad enough that I’m reaching for her hand to chase the ache away. At the last second, I stop myself; she wouldn’t like it. At breakfast, after I called her out on that bullshit about not being good enough for me, she seemed to relax, so I don’t want to screw things up by setting her off again.

  “I was actually an accident,” she announces and it takes me a moment to follow her train of thought. “My parents were teenagers when I was born, and I don’t think they even liked each other when I was growing up,” she continues. “It all finally blew up at the beginning of my senior year of high school.” She takes a deep breath. “I won’t bore you with the details.”

  I glare at her. I hate that self-loathing shit she’s got going on.

  The look on my face has her grinning. “Sorry, I don’t want to bore myself with the details.”

  “Fine,” I tell her, feeling my expression soften. “You can tell me the details of senior year another time.” I pass her the iPod. “Here, pick something to listen to.”

  She looks grateful that I’ve given her an out, and again my eyes are sliding to her red mouth. Is it just naturally that color?

  The car fills with One Direction and I laugh.

  “Why exactly is this on here?” she asks me with a huge smile. “Is there something we need to talk about?”

  “No, no talking necessary. It just reminds me of Jenna, that’s all.”

  By the time we’re on the winding highway out to the coast, I’m completely content with her beside me as we chat about music. I start noticing that her jean shorts are riding up and the pockets are showing, and now all I can think about is running my fingers up the insides of those thighs until . . .

  I shift in my seat a bit and then reach for the overhead storage place for my shades. At least they’re mirrored and maybe there’s less chance of her catching me leering. When I’ve got the sunglasses on, I realize she’s staring at me with a smile plastered on her face.

  “What?”

  She just shakes her head as she digs in her purse and comes back out with a pair of almost identical aviators. We both laugh.

  An hour and a half outside the city, we come to the house that’s for sale.

  “I’m not sure why I like it,” I tell her, nervous for some unknown reason. “It doesn’t have a view of the water or anything.”

  “What do you mean?” she asks with her eyes glued to it. “You like it because it’s a farmhouse with a wrap-around porch.”

  “You like it?”

  She turns to me with excitement. “I love it!”

  “It’s on a lock box, so we can go in.”

  “Really?”

  She bounces along beside me as we make our way toward the house. She grills me for information, wanting to know every possible detail. Her enthusiasm makes me feel good. I can’t remember the last time I felt so much of anything so positive.

  The inside of the house is in bad shape, but that doesn’t dampen her excitement as we talk about ideas for either restoring it or gutting it.

  “But you can’t make any money on this house,” she says to me as I return the key to the lock box. “Look at how long it’s been on the market already.”

  I smile. “I told you I don’t know why I like it. Jason will never go for it. It would be a huge money pit and we’d get stuck with it.”

  “But that’s probably what you want. To get stuck with it so it could be yours.”

  I laugh now, not sure how she knows that. “You can never admit that to Jason. Otherwise my chances of convincing him are zero.”

  “You don’t do things without Jason?”

  “Never,” I say as I shake my head. “What’s mine is his, what’s his is mine.”

  She gives me a bit of a look as she gets in the car. “Well, just let me know if you want me to help you convince him.”

  “I’ll do that.” That she makes any kind of reference to the future makes me absurdly happy.

  I go around to the other side of the car and get in. “You want to go to the beach for a while?”

  “Sure,” she says, but it sounds wary again. I guess she’
s still not convinced about me.

  The beach is only a minute’s drive, so soon we’re getting out again. We meet each other at the front of the car, and before I know what I’m doing, I take her hand in mine. It just happens so naturally.

  Her reaction is shielded by her sunglasses, but she’s not protesting, so I don’t let go. Her hand is warm and small in mine and acts like a conduit for the electricity that flows between us. It’s pretty overwhelming, even for me, and once we’re halfway to the water, she plunks herself down on the sand, tearing her hand from mine.

  “Is it okay if I watch the water for a while?”

  Her use of the singular I is beyond irritating, but I just sit down beside her, watching as she kicks off her hideous sandals and stretches her long legs out in front of her. We sit in silence for a while, watching the waves and listening to the wind. The beach is deserted except for a few people down at the water off to our right, and I figure that here is as good a place as any to get to the root of her self-loathing and refusal to accept that we’re on a date.

  Am I being an asshole? Probably. But I want to know. Despite having just met, I feel a connection with her, and something tells me this is the right thing to do. She’s keeping something inside that will just have us going around in tighter and tighter circles until we implode. And I don’t want that at all. The details are a bit sketchy, but I want to see her smile and be happy. And in my mind, for some reason, that involves me.

  “Lily?”

  “Hmmm?”

  I reach for her sunglasses, startling her as I pull them off her face, but there’s no way we can have this conversation if I can’t see her eyes.

  “Were you roofied?”

  Fuck. If I’d had any doubt about Jason’s guess before, it’s gone now. Her face is alive with fear and shock and the previously mentioned self-loathing. She looks like I’ve slapped her.

  “Who told you that?” she whispers, pulling away from me.

  “No one told me. I guessed.”

  “Guessed?” She gets up like she’s about to flee, so I grab onto her hand.

  She stares down at our joined hands for what feels like an eternity but is actually only a few seconds. “Let me go.”

  “No,” I tell her calmly. “Sit down and talk to me.”

  There’s a serious amount of panic on her face now.

  “Lily? Please?” She hasn’t tried to yank her hand away, but I can feel it coming; the growing tension coiling inside of her is palpable. I get to my knees. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

  Her eyes are filling with tears and her bottom lip is wobbling. I reach out for her hip with my free hand and pull her to me. She doesn’t fight me as I wrap my arms tightly around her, my head pushed into her middle.

  When she starts trembling, I pull her down to sit sideways between my legs.

  “No one knows that,” she whispers, not looking at me. “How do you know that?”

  “You didn’t want me to get the beer from the bar, that’s all, Pretty Girl. That’s all.”

  I kiss her temple because it’s right in front of me. My hand runs up her arm and then pulls her against my chest. She turns into me, seeking the comfort that I’m offering.

  He knows, and I think I’m going to be sick.

  “Tell me what happened, Lily,” he coaxes, low and encouraging. The sound of it fends off the mounting nausea in my stomach.

  And then I shock the hell out of myself by speaking. “But that’s the problem,” I whisper. “I don’t know what happened.” Up until now, it’s only been me and the caged helplessness of not knowing, and the thought of sharing that burden with someone is a weakness I can’t resist. I take a deep breath before I continue. “I just remember being at a party freshman year. And then waking up in the hall outside my dorm room the next morning.”

  I’m shaking as the secret that I’ve kept hidden inside of me for so long finds its way to the surface. “And . . . and I was sore,” I whisper hoarsely with tears on my cheeks. “Down there.”

  His arms tighten around me. “And you never told anyone?”

  I shake my head. “I didn’t know what happened . . . exactly. And I felt so ashamed that I’d gone to that party by myself in the first place.”

  “Oh, Lil.”

  Now that the words have started, I can’t seem to hold them back. “But Dane? That’s not the worst part. A month after it happened, a guy came up to me, chatting me up and making me believe that he liked me. But then he passed me a note with an address on it, telling me that he knew what kind of girl I was. He said he and his friends would be waiting for me.”

  “What?”

  “And they keep doing it,” I whisper around a sob that wrenches itself from my throat.

  “What?” Dane demands again, this time more forcefully, making me flinch.

  “Sometimes six months pass, but sometimes it’s only a few weeks. I’m always so paranoid. And just when I start to relax, they do it again.”

  “So, that guy last night . . . ?”

  I finally look up at him. There’s anger on his face, and I’m so glad it’s not disgust. “Yeah. He told me he knew all about me, and that I was going to show him a good time. It scared me so much. It’s never happened off-campus before. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t been there.”

  “Well, I was there and nothing happened. It’s over now.” He pulls me back against his chest and strokes my cheek.

  “I’m just so afraid that something really terrible is going to happen to me one day.” I roll my forehead on his chest, shamelessly helping myself to that wonderful smell of his. “It’s so exhausting. I’ve been trying my best to hurry up and graduate to get away from that place, but now maybe that’s not going to help me. I don’t know what to do.”

  “You don’t want to report it?” he asks gently.

  I sniffle. “It’s been more than three and a half years. And I don’t even remember who gave me that drink.”

  “Yeah, but guys are harassing you now.”

  I haul in a deep breath. I’ve been over this many millions of times in my head. “But it’s never the same guy. And none of them has actually done anything to me.”

  He stays quiet after that, and I’m hoping against hope that he doesn’t think I’m some kind of horrible loser slut. The thought is unbelievably painful. And the longer he stays quiet, the more fearful I become. Soon the tears are flowing freely again. How could he have guessed my truth so easily? A truth that I’ve kept buried so deep I can barely find it?

  He pulls back to look at me, but I childishly hold on to him, unable to stomach the thought of his rejection.

  “Lily?”

  Please don’t say anything, I beg silently. Just let me pretend that I’m a normal girl sitting on a beach with a boy for a moment longer.

  “I’m so sorry that this happened to you. And I wish I could make it better for you. But you know what? I think you’re pretty strong all on your own. I don’t know how you’ve gone through that all alone.”

  His words roll over me; they sound positive, but they still leave me unsure.

  He continues, “I don’t think I’ve ever met a braver person.”

  I make a sniveling noise of complete disgust. “Don’t call me that. I couldn’t even go to the clinic to get a morning after pill. I just waited it out like a coward.”

  He sighs. “You’ve lost perspective, Lily. You’re a survivor and that’s what’s important.”

  His encouraging words are so incongruent with how I feel that I’m forced into silence.

  “But, did you go get tested for the rest of it?”

  I freeze, not wanting to answer him. Sometimes the depth of my shame is so overwhelming.

  He pulls back to look at me, but I can’t meet his eyes. “Hey,” he says, using his fingertips to pull my chin to face him. “We’ll go together, okay? This week. Me and you.”

  What? Shock reverberates through me. Why would he do that? He smiles at me and a twinge of somethi
ng wonderful starts growing in my chest.

  “I’ll make the appointment myself.”

  I don’t know what to say. It’s probably the nicest gesture anyone’s ever made in my pathetic life.

  “Okay?” he asks.

  I can only nod, fearful that I’ll start bawling again if I open my mouth.

  “Should we head back?” He grabs my sunglasses and then pulls me up with him. When we’re standing, he wraps an arm around my waist and starts walking. “What would you like for lunch?”

  He’s so close and I can’t resist the urge to rest my head on his chest. “I don’t really feel like eating,” I tell him.

  He scoffs. “By the time we get back, you’ll change your mind. I bet you’re a Taco Bell fiend.”

  “What?” I laugh weakly.

  “Oh wait, that’s me.”

  He opens the car door for me again. God, he’s so nice and funny and kind and not to mention beautiful. And I still don’t know what he wants with me . . . especially now that he knows.

  He gets in and starts the car. “We won’t talk about anything serious on the way home. Deal?”

  I smile with as much cheerfulness as I can muster. “Sure.”

  On the return trip, we talk about our favorite things and end up on some tangents, but I’m never nervous or worried about uncomfortable silences because there are none. And best of all, I’m able to forget my problems for an hour or two. When we get back to Eugene, we stop at Taco Bell because it’s his favorite.

  It’s 6:00 by the time he takes me to my front door. “So I’ll pick you up from work tomorrow night,” he reminds me. I still want to argue, but we’ve already been around this bush a few times and he’s not relenting. He doesn’t want me taking the bus by myself so late at night. In fact, we’ve made plans for him to pick me up every day that I work or have school late. That’s every day except Friday.

  “Yeah, okay. And thanks for breakfast and . . . the whole day. I had a really nice time.”

  “You’re welcome.” He steps closer to me, backing me up into the door. Reaching out with his hand, he runs his fingertips down the side of my face, sending my heart racing.