Act Your Age, Eve Brown (The Brown Sisters #3)(98)
“Woo. Touchy.” Tessa smirked, hit the brake for the thousandth time in the last ten minutes, then pulled up the handbrake. In front of them, what looked like a mile of cars sat bumper to bumper in the late morning sunlight. It was, Jacob thought dully, a beautiful day. Pity he wouldn’t be able to enjoy it after his head inevitably exploded.
“You’re thinking about Eve again, aren’t you?” Alex prodded. “You ever consider, I don’t know—calling her?”
Well, there was a diamond fucking idea. Except . . . “I’m trying to be romantic. You know, like in books. She’s into that stuff,” he mumbled. “Anyway, you know I’m better in person.”
“Oh, yeah. Good point,” Alex allowed.
“I think it’s sweet,” Tess said. “I think she’ll be thrilled.”
Jacob’s heart leapt. “Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah. Unless she hates your guts for sending her away, in which case she might laugh in your face and tell you to jog on.”
Jacob’s heart sank. “Oh.”
Tess winced. “Oh my God, Jake, no, that was a joke! I’m sorry. I was joking.”
Unfortunately, the situation she’d laid out seemed all too likely. But Jacob couldn’t see a world in which he didn’t try his fucking hardest for Eve Brown, and if that meant setting himself up for the most brutal rejection of his life, well. He supposed he’d just have to deal with it.
“Leave him alone, Tess,” Alex ordered, leaning between their seats. “Hey, do you hear that? Wicked purr.” She squinted at the road. “Is that a Triumph?”
“Alexandra,” Jacob said, “I truly could not give a fuck.” But he saw the Triumph—couldn’t miss it, a flash of blue on the other side of the road, steered by a lanky bloke in leather, winding through the traffic with enviable speed. Still, when the temporary traffic lights on that side turned red, the bike had to stop just like everyone else.
Jacob sighed and screwed his eyes shut. Maybe he should call Eve. Because with every second he spent not fixing things, all he could think about was the look on her face when he’d pushed her away. And if he thought about that too much, his heart might break as surely as his goddamn wrist.
*
Red’s motorbike turned out to be an excellent idea, because on the way to the Lake District they hit unbelievable traffic. Eve squeezed her eyes shut, took shallow breaths to minimize smog inhalation, and tried not to die of nerves.
Grand gestures were supposed to be executed immediately, otherwise one got all tangled with violent emotion. Like the growing fear that words might not be enough, and the urge to see Jacob now, now, now, anyway.
Then, out of nowhere, she did see him. Jacob, that is. She looked up through the visor of her helmet as they reached a temporary traffic light, and on the other side of the cones sat Jacob’s car, with Tessa at the wheel and Jacob himself in the passenger seat.
“Oh. My. God.” The wind whipped her words away. Which is why, instead of screaming for Red to pull over properly, she pinched him in the ribs. Then she screamed. “Pull over pull over pull over pull over pull—”
The lights turned to green, but instead of racing away, Red guided them steadily to the edge of the road and kicked off the engine. “What?” he demanded as he yanked off his helmet. “You dying or something?”
Eve barely heard. Her braids spilled over her shoulders as she removed her own helmet and shoved it at Red before getting off the bike. The other lights would change soon and then Jacob would be gone. He couldn’t be gone. She pinned her gaze to the sharp lines of his profile, the glint of his glasses and the sheen of his perfectly neat and tidy hair, and ran—
Except no she didn’t, because Red grabbed her wrist in an iron grip and yanked her back. “Eve! Would you watch the road? If I let you get hit by a car, your sister will fucking garrote me.”
She spun around to scowl at him. “I was watching! Sort of.” She really hadn’t been.
“Where the hell are you going? I thought we had to find this guy in—”
A flat, impenetrable voice rose over the rumble of traffic. “Let. Go. Of. Her.”
Eve turned to find Jacob standing beside her like a column of frost and fury. Judging by the look on his face, if Red didn’t respond in an appropriate manner, Jacob might commit roadside murder in her honor. Which was very romantic. She nearly swooned, in fact, but then she decided that losing consciousness would not be conducive to getting him back.
Red’s coppery eyebrows flew up as he stared at Jacob. Then his surprise faded into a slight smile, and he released her hand. “You good, Evie?”
“Mmm hmm. Yep. So good. Super good. Thank you for the lift okay bye now!” She grabbed Jacob’s arm and dragged him away.
This road was long and narrow, bracketed by the copse-heavy edges of two country fields. Sections of daisy-dotted grass and massive, ancient trees lined the tarmac, and it was into their sunlight-dappled shadow that Eve towed Jacob like an unusually agreeable boat. His out-of-character docility could bode well or ill; she hadn’t decided which. Then again, she was struggling to think straight enough to decide anything. All she could do was stare at the man in front of her, from the starched collar of his perfectly ironed shirt to the familiar name tag on his chest that read HELLO, MY NAME IS: JACOB with more cheer than he’d ever managed to offer a stranger. She swallowed hard, her throat drier than a desperation desert. Now seemed like the perfect time to speak, to say the countless things she’d rehearsed on the way here—except her heart was melting like chocolate on a summer’s day, dripping down through her rib cage to pool in her stomach, and the sensation was rather distracting.