Lennox (11 page)

“All right, all right, here’s one of my favorites. The
time Troy tried to be a good wingman for me.”

“Oh, boy,” Cyrus utters.

“Scary, right?” Jagger hunches his wiry shoulders. “So
we were at the roadhouse and there are these two
gorgeous
honeys at the bar alone, obviously out for a good time, best friends
or sisters or something, whatever, they were smokin’ hot. Legs
up to here and—sorry, Elena—best tits you can find this
side of the mountain, honest.”

“No offense taken.” I jab the neck of my beer toward him.

“So anyway, Troy sees me eyein’ them, and he dares
me—this was back in my shyer days—he says, ‘Jagger,
I’ll give you twenty bucks to go chat those girls up instead of
eyeballin’ them like a fucking creep.’ I said sure, as
long as he’d be my wingman, no harm, right?”

Jagger rolls his eyes. “Well, of course, as soon as we join
them at the bar, they’re both just all over Troy. It’s
like I’m a fucking hat rack next to him. To be fair, he keeps
trying to dump one of them off on me, but they’re having none
of it. So that motherfucker slips me the twenty bucks he owes me for
the dare and takes them both home.”

More laughter. It feels good to laugh with the boys again. To file
off the edges of this tension I’ve felt jabbing into my spine
ever since Lennox was released. Nash looks more at peace, too, more
like the laid-back guy I remembered as a teen, even though back then,
I only had eyes for Lennox. I’m not ready to get back together
with Nash, not until I untangle all these mixed-up feelings I have
inside. Maybe I should go along with it—it feels awful to say
nothing, to let him think it might happen. But he’s on the road
to recovery. I don’t want to lie and I don’t want to set
him off. No matter which I choose, I risk messing up all the progress
he’s made.

“How about you, El?” Cyrus asks. “You got any good
stories about Troy?”

“Oh, gosh, let me think . . .” I take
another sip of beer. “All right, I got one. I remember how you
boys were all fighting over that stupid BMW M3 we had at the shop
when the client backed out of the deal at the last minute.”

“Oh, my god,” Jagger howls. “That fucking car. I
wanted it so fucking bad!”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you all did. It was about to come
to blows.” I grin. “So Uncle D says fine, how about we
all race for it?”

Drazic laughs and crosses his arms. He remembers where this is going.

“So Cyrus, you go out and do a lap. Not bad. But then Nash, you
do the same lap in ten seconds less. Jagger, you totally skid out and
suck, sorry, honey, but it’s true.”

Jagger holds his hands out to his sides. “No, that’s
fair.”

“But Troy . . . he swaggers up to that fucking
Beemer and he schools you all. So much so that he slows down at the
end, knowing he’s got a few seconds to spare, then steps out of
the car like a rock star.” I grin. “But then Lennox is
all, ‘Sorry, boys, but I’ve been practicing with this car
all month.’”

What starts as warm laughter around me quickly dries out. Nash’s
expression goes hard. Shit. I shouldn’t have brought up a story
that involved Lennox. I just had to open my stupid mouth.

“Anyway,” I mumble, “even though Lennox won, he
ended up giving it to Troy. And Troy loved that goddamned M3. He
drove it until one of the wheels literally fell off.”

“That M3!” Drazic cries into the still-awkward silence,
clapping his hands together. “Oh, lordy, do you all remember
the time he entered it into the circuits, not realizing he hadn’t
refilled the nitrous?”

I know what he’s doing—he’s pulling everyone’s
thoughts away from Lennox. I flash him a grateful smile. The guys
continue swapping stories. As the beer keeps flowing, Nash gets
louder and sloppier. At least he’s happy—I can’t
begrudge him that—but I don’t like his hand that keeps
wandering along my back. I know we’re on a “break,”
which isn’t the same as strictly broken up—not that I
have any other boyfriends to judge this by—but it’s
really getting to me. When he gets up to use the restroom, I take the
opportunity to excuse myself from the group, and I wander off on my
own.

My parents’ plot isn’t that much farther up the trail
from Troy’s gravesite, though it’s more overgrown there,
shrouded with young trees. I scatter a few extra flowers at their
headstone and crouch down at the base of the nearest oak. I was only
eight years old the night it happened. They were headed home from
Uncle Drazic’s house, and a sleep-deprived soccer mom in her
giant SUV swiped them off the road. They were Croatian immigrants, my
mom and dad and dad’s brother. They’d survived the
breakup of Yugoslavia, and the Serbian and Bosnian wars, and
countless other atrocities besides, only to wind up crushed on the
side of the road. Their cheap old used car couldn’t stand up to
six tons of suburban safety features.

But it’s not like the woman who did it got off clean, either.
She went halfway through her windshield before her airbag deployed,
and ended up paralyzed from the neck down. She may not have died, but
she paid a heavy price. Is still paying it, as far as I know. Maybe
that’s why I don’t feel the same burning need for
vengeance that Nash feels. Hell, at this point, I can’t even
remember the woman’s name.

Lennox carries scars, too. Not just those ones on his right side—it’s
the kind of mental scar, the one that tells me he’ll never even
come close to driving drunk again. That he’ll never, ever
forgive himself for killing his best friend. Isn’t that enough?
Can’t that be enough for Nash?

But I don’t care about Nash anymore. I care about whether it’s
enough for me. And overwhelmingly, the answer is yes.

“Ellie.”

I twist around. Lennox is standing on the edge of the tree line, a
handful of grocery store flowers in one hand. He quirks a sad smile
at me and steps down the path toward my tree.

“What’re you doing here?” I ask. I don’t mean
it to sound accusing, but he winces, leaning back from me.

“I just wanted to pay my respects.” He glances down the
path toward the picnic shelter. We’re far enough away that
there’s no chance Nash and the others could see him, but he
looks nervous all the same. “I’m not interrupting, am I?”

I draw my knees up under my chin. “No. It’s just . . .
I don’t think Nash gives a shit about your respects.”

“Well, I’m not here for Nash. I’m here for Troy.”
He sighs. “So Nash is still furious?”

“He started out okay today. But then he got trashed, and he’s
getting all grabby, like I’m his fucking property again,
and . . .” I exhale. “Shit. I guess I’m
a little drunk, too.”

“You’re not ready to be his property again?” Lennox
asks, grinning wryly.

“I’m not ready to be his, period.”

I drop my knees and stretch my legs out in front of me. Lennox is the
last person I should be telling this to, but I have to get these
thoughts out of my head. I’m making no progress turning them
over and over in my skull.

“God. I wish I could just get out of here for a while. Leave
the boys behind. I’m not . . . I’m not
sure who I am without them.”

“I know that feeling.” Lennox sinks down into the grass
beside me. There’s a comfortable amount of space between us,
but I kind of wish there wasn’t. “That’s the thing
with crews. They’re one part family and one part cult.”

“Cult. Yeah.” I laugh, bitter. “Well, it really is
family for me. I owe Uncle D my life. I just . . .
sometimes I wish I could learn how to be my own person around them,
too.”

“You are you own person. Look at you.” Lennox waves the
flowers toward me. “You’re goddamned gorgeous. Clever as
can be. Good with cars, with numbers . . . And so far,
you’ve made good choices. Nothing catastrophic, you know?
Nothing you can’t come back from.”

I tilt my head back against the tree trunk. “No. Just a bunch
of promises I can’t keep.”

Lennox goes very still. Fuck. I’m way out of line, and we both
know it. He exhales and lowers his head. “Yeah, well, you’re
not the only one.”

I swallow and close my eyes.

“Maybe we could get away,” he says quietly. “If—if
you wanted to. Even if just for an evening. Leave Ridgecrest behind.”

I open my eyes again and meet his warm brown gaze. For all the
sadness around his edges, it’s still as inviting and comforting
as it was years ago. “Yeah?” I smile, nervous.
“You’d—you’d do that with me?”

“You know me. I’ve always been a sucker for trying to put
a smile on your face.” Lennox grins. He leans toward me and
tucks a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “And I don’t
think I’ve seen you smile—not really—ever since I
came back.”

My chest aches with sadness. “Things haven’t been easy
lately,” I admit. “Honestly, they haven’t been easy
for years.”

“Well, I’d love the chance to set things right.
Ellie . . . Sometimes, memories of you were the only
thing that got me through a rough night on the inside.” He
ducks his head, embarrassed. “I figure the least I can do is
return the favor, if you’ll let me.”

A chance to get away and sort out what I want to tell Nash. And a
chance to spend more time with Lennox. I’ve heard the crew’s
side of the story for four years, now. Maybe it’s Lennox’s
turn.

And this yearning in my gut—for control, for a voice in my own
life—makes it so hard to say no. Almost as hard as those warm
brown eyes of Lennox’s.

“Then let’s do it.” I reach for his hand. “Where
did you have in mind?”

Lennox squeezes my fingers, soft and reassuring. “There’s
a bar out past Highway 12, couple of towns over. They’re having
a pool tournament tomorrow night. No crews, no obligations, just fun.
I thought I might enter.”

“I remember you used to clean out Troy and Cyrus at pool,”
I say.

He grins. “I’m out of practice, but it could be fun. And
I remember you weren’t too bad yourself. Plus . . .”
Lennox’s eyes gleam in the sunset. “They say west of
Highway 12 is some of the best stargazing you can find out here.”

“Sounds like a dream come true.” Especially with Lennox.
I look down at our hands laced together. I’m scared to even
think of the promise he made me, way back when, but I can’t
help it. That fragment of hope I thought I’d buried has
resurfaced in me. “Yes. Let’s go. If you’re
serious . . . let’s go.”

“I’ll pick you up after work tomorrow.” He raises
my hand to his lips and places a lingering kiss against my knuckles.
Hot threads of hunger shoot through me. I can only imagine all the
other places I’d love to feel his lips . . .
“Then it’s a date.”

Elena

Lennox called it a date. Did he really mean it? I spend the entire
next day at the shop torturing myself with those words. Thankfully,
Nash, Jagger, and Cyrus are all too hungover from Troy’s
memorial to pop in, so it’s just me and Uncle Drazic, working
in our own separate corners of the shop. All the same, guilt and
apprehension sits like lead in my stomach every time Drazic and I
pass. I have to tell him something. I’m just not sure I’m
ready to tell him the whole truth.

“Hey,
djevojka
?” Drazic asks, after I finish
filing some papers for him. “Forgot to tell you. I’ll be
home pretty late tonight. The boys and I have some errands to run.”

Errands. Right. “Um, actually . . . I’m
going to be out, too. With friends,” I add, before I can stop
myself. Technically, it’s true. It’s just that I can’t
remember the last time I had a close friend who wasn’t a part
of the crew.

“Oh. Oh, okay, yeah. That sounds good for you.” Drazic
smiles, trying to be encouraging. “Just don’t drink and
drive, all right?”

“Please. You don’t even have to say it.” I purse my
lips.

“I know. I’m just—trying to do that uncle thing.”
He flicks the end of my ponytail. “Hope you have a good time.”

I certainly hope so, too.

I hear Lennox’s Mustang rumbling up the hillside not long after
I get home from the shop. He glances nervously up the drive as I hop
out, wave at him, and turn to lock the front door. “You don’t
have to look so nervous,” I tell him as I slide into the
passenger’s seat. “There’s no one home.”

“Sorry. Habit, I guess.” He turns and looks me over. I’m
wearing a fitted black dress with fluttery cap sleeves and lace
trim—soft and feminine while still matching my trademark
palette—and I spent way too long trying to figure out how to do
a decent job of eye makeup. The low, appreciative whistle Lennox
makes tells me it was worth the effort. “You look amazing,
Ellie.”

My face flushes with heat. “You always look amazing. I
mean . . .” I bite my lower lip and glance away.
“I mean . . . You looked great before, but now
you’re extra hot.”

Lennox laughs from his belly. The sound warms me up, easing away my
nerves. “Hot, huh?” He shifts the Mustang into gear and
heads for Highway 12, then reaches over to pat my thigh. “And
how long have you been keeping that little secret?”

“You don’t even wanna know.” I look down at his
hand resting against my thigh and blush again. This—us
together, us so at ease with one another, open and honest—feels
so natural to me that it’s hard to believe we never had this
before. It feels like we should have always been this way. Together.
Maybe we should have.

But maybe it’s better late than never to start.

“Okay. The tournament’s at eight. But first, there’s
a stop we have to make. Something I’ve been dying to do ever
since I got out. I used to fantasize about it back in my windowless
cell, in fact.”

Both my eyebrows shoot up. “Fantasize, huh?”

“Yeah.” He grins slyly; his fingers rub back and forth
against my thigh, teasing at the hem of my dress. “You’ll
see.”

Highway 12 winds across the high desert and into the foothills of the
next ridge over from Ridgecrest. We fall into an easy silence,
listening to the engine roar and the wind whip around the car. The
sky is a deep orange now, edged in purple, though once we get to the
other side of the ridge, I can see hints of blue and green against
the horizon, crowded around the hot disc of the sun.