Lady Renegades (Rebel Belle #3)(24)
The giant Cadillac careened to a stop at the end of the driveway, and I grimaced as Aunt Jewel’s bumper took out one of our trash cans.
The car parked, she got out, wearing yet another rhinestone-studded sweater, this one in a pale pink with matching slacks. She was holding a plastic Piggly Wiggly sack, and I went around to her side of the Cadillac, giving Bee and Ryan a little bit of privacy on the other side.
“I knew that boy would be late if left to his own devices, so I decided to swing by and get him myself,” Aunt Jewel said, taking my proffered hand and hefting herself out of the driver’s seat. “I can still do that, right? Even though y’all aren’t together anymore?”
She didn’t even wait for me to answer, instead thrusting the Piggly Wiggly bag at me.
“Here, baby.”
I took the shopping bag and glanced inside. A rainbow of Tupperware stared back at me, along with several plastic sandwich bags, all holding, as far as I could tell, different types of cookies.
Reaching in, I lifted one napkin-wrapped bundle and held it up to my aunt, my eyebrows raised. “Um. Cake?”
Aunt Jewel shrugged and fiddled with the appliqué hummingbird on her shirt. “You girls will get hungry, and Lord only knows what you’ll find to eat out there. I figured better safe than sorry. And your aunt May went ahead and put her best cooler in the trunk, so make sure you grab that, and if you’ll just stop and pick up some bags of ice—”
I threw my arms around her before she finished, squeezing tight.
“I love you, Harper Jane. And I want you to promise me you and these girls are going to be very careful. And call me every night.”
“Every night,” I vowed, grateful for about the hundredth time that I’d decided to tell Aunt Jewel my secret.
Ryan and Bee had apparently said their good-byes, because they crossed around to the front of the car, their arms around each other’s waists. Blythe stood off alone but didn’t seem all that self-conscious. That wasn’t a surprise, I guess, seeing as how being self-conscious probably required an amount of self-awareness I doubted Blythe possessed.
“So how long will y’all be gone?” Aunt Jewel asked, and I stood up a little straighter.
“Two weeks. We’ll be back by the end of the month.”
Reaching down, Aunt Jewel plucked at her lace collar. “And if you don’t find David?”
“We come back anyway,” I said, enjoying how resolutely I said that. I just wished I felt as resolute. If all of this ended up being for nothing, if I sent myself traveling all over who knew where just to come home empty-handed . . .
No. Thinking like that had to stop. We had two weeks, and in that time, we were going to find David, find out what had happened to him, and stop it from happening anymore.
Somehow.
For now, I just gave Aunt Jewel another hug, and then, as Bee went to hug her, too, I turned to Ryan.
He stood there in another T-shirt and his basketball shorts, familiar as always, his hands held out to his sides. “Do we, uh, do we hug?”
I punched him lightly in the bicep and then wrapped my arms around his shoulders, giving him what was basically the most platonic hug known to man.
When we pulled back, he met my eyes, hands braced on both my shoulders. “You remember?” he asked in a low voice, and I glanced over at Bee, trying to keep my hand from straying to the bandage still taped over the tattoo on my back. It was just a ward, for the most part, but Ryan had added something extra to mine, something that could only be activated with a certain collection of words he’d taught me.
Something Bee didn’t know about.
I turned back to Ryan and nodded. “I won’t have to use it.”
“Let’s hope,” he answered, and then moved away from me.
Our good-byes said (and Aunt May’s cooler packed in the trunk), Bee, Blythe, and I got in my car. I looked at my house in the morning sunlight and told myself that I should feel excited. Anticipatory. Other words that weren’t “scared out of my mind” and “freaked out.”
Bee clearly felt the same because she reached over and gave my hand a quick squeeze. “We’ve totally got this,” she told me, and I made myself smile back.
“Of course we do.”
Starting the car, I glanced back at Blythe. “What about you, Blythe? You got this?”
“I told you,” she said, tapping her chest. “I can feel the spell we’re going to need. You help me find him, I’ll help you fix him.”
“Awesome,” I muttered, plugging the address she’d given me last night into my phone’s GPS. “So here we go.”
And there we went.
? ? ?
The motel attendant looked like Harper.
But then it seemed like every girl looked like Harper lately, that he saw her heart-shaped face and green eyes on everyone who crossed his path.
As the clerk turned away, tapping something into the computer, David closed his eyes, sucking in a deep breath.
“If we go to prom, do you promise not to wear pastel?”
They’re in his bedroom, Harper sitting primly at his desk chair while he slouches against the bed, a book on his upraised knees. He looks at her and feels that giddy drop in his stomach he gets every time he remembers she’s his girlfriend. That if he wants to, he can get up and walk over to her, drop a kiss on her lips, slide his fingers under the heavy, silky hair that falls against her neck.