Harder (Caroline & West #2)(4)

I’m dying to know how he would react. If he’d jump or draw away. If he’d pull over and turn off the truck and talk to me. Touch me back.

“What do you smell like?” I ask.

He lifts his shirt to his nose to sniff it. I glimpse his belt buckle, and the sight slices clean through the twine I’d used to tie up a tightly packed bundle of conditioned sexual response. My cheeks warm. Pretty much everything below my waist ignites.

I have to turn away.

When I glance back his eyes are on me, which only makes it worse, because for a few heavy seconds counted off by my thumping heart, West doesn’t look angry. He looks like he used to when I was prone in his bed and he was crawling up my body after stripping off my panties—like he wants to own me, eat me, pin down my wrists, fill me up, ruin me for any other man.

I let out a deep, shuddering breath.

West concentrates his intensity on the road, frowning at it as though it might at any moment sprout a field of dangerous obstacles he has to navigate the truck around.

The charged silence lengthens. He exhales, slow. “Juniper.”

It takes me an eternity to remember I’d asked him what he smells like.

“Is that a tree or a bush?”

“Both,” he says. “Kind of.”

He taps the steering wheel with flattened fingers. His left knee jumps, jiggling up and down, and then he adds, “It’s a tree, but most of them are short like a bush. Oregon’s got too many of them. They’re a pest now, crowding other stuff out. The landscaper I work for uses the lumber for decking and edging, but I’ve seen it in cabinets and stuff, too. They make—”

He stops short. When he glances at me, I catch a strained sort of helplessness in his expression, as though he’s dismayed by how difficult it is to keep himself from talking about juniper trees.

He swallows. “I was chipping up scrap wood for mulch. That’s why I stink.”

I wait. His knee is still jittering.

Come on, I think. Talk to me.

“They make gin from juniper berries,” he says finally. “Not the Western juniper we have here. The common juniper over in Europe.”

“Is that sloe gin?”

“No. Sloe gin is made with blackthorn berries and sugar. You start with gin and pour it over the other stuff and let it sit forever.”

For the first time since I landed, I feel like smiling. Whatever’s wrong with him, however twisted and broken he is, this guy beside me is West. My West. When it comes to trivia like gin berries and juniper bushes, he can’t help himself. West is a crow about useless information, zooming down to pluck shiny gum wrappers off the ground and carry them back to his nest.

The girl who took my place—does she listen when he does this? Does it make her like him more?

If there even is a girl.

That same intrusive thought I’ve had a hundred times. A thousand.

Whoever she is, she’s not the one he called last night.

“I like the smell,” I tell him.

“When I’m here, I don’t smell it. But when I fly from Putnam to Portland, it’s the first thing I notice getting off the plane.” This time when he glances at me, his eyes don’t give anything away. “It was, I mean. When I used to do that.”

“I bet when I get back to Iowa, I’ll smell manure.”

“Only if you time it right.”

The silence is more comfortable this time, for me at least. West remains edgy, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel.

“Is this your truck?” I ask.

“It’s Bo’s. He lets me use it.”

Bo is West’s mom’s ex. She and Frankie lived with Bo until she left him for West’s dad.

Bo was at the trailer when West’s dad got shot.

Sticky subject.

“Is he still in jail?”

“No. They questioned him and let him go.”

“Was he …” I take a deep breath. “Did he really kill your dad?”

“He won’t say. He was there, shots were fired. There were two guns. I don’t know which one discharged, or if it was both or what. For all I know, it could’ve been suicide.” The anger is back, flattening out his voice so he sounds almost bored.

“Not likely, though, if they took Bo in for questioning.”

“What the f*ck do you know about what’s likely?”

“Nothing. Sorry.”

That’s where the line is, then. Junipers are an acceptable topic of conversation. His dead father is pushing it. Speculation about what’s going to happen next? Out of bounds.

West leans forward and flips on the radio. The music is loud, hammering hair-band rock.

I turn it off. “When’s the funeral?”

“Whenever they get the body back from the coroner.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not going.”

“Okay.”

More silence. Dark green forest closes in on both sides of the road. We’re climbing now, heading into the foothills.

“How long are you staying?” West asks.

“As long as you need me to.”

He stares at me so long, I start to get nervous we’re going to drive off the road. “What?”

“When’s school start?”