You Drive Me Crazy novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Seven Years

Cade tells her he ended the engagement and called forty times; they almost kiss, and Eli sees her flushed face.

Vivian left without another word, and her heels sounded like a clock counting down.

Nobody said anything for a while.

Amos found a reason to take Eli to the house for a sandwich.

I thought that was kind, and I thought it was a bad idea, and I let him do it.

When the door shut I went back to the floor pans with a cold chisel and no plan.

Cade never said a word about Vivian.

He worked at the other bench, cleaning the old carburetor with a toothbrush, until the sun went down.

At nine the lights in the bay hummed and the house had gone dark.

Eli was asleep on a cot in the office with a blanket Amos had found.

I should have gone home.

Instead I stayed, because the car did not know any of this, and I did.

"You've been here eleven hours," Cade said behind me.

"I've worked longer."

"I believe that."

He stopped a yard away.

The air in the garage had gone thick with the smell of old metal and his soap.

"Tell me why you left," he said.

"I told you. A better offer."

"Mara."

It was the first time he had said my name, and it went down my spine.

I put the chisel down.

"So that's how it is. All day, 'Ms. Tolland,' like we'd never met."

"You didn't say we had."

"You didn't either."

"I wanted to see what you'd do."

"Well, now you know."

"I know you lied to my face about the car."

"And I know your fiancee stood outside your motorhome at six in the morning wearing your shirt."

His jaw tightened.

"She was not my fiancee by that Tuesday."

"That's very convenient."

"It's the order it happened in."

"You never mentioned her."

"No," Cade said. "I didn't. That was the worst thing I ever did."

I had expected a defense.

I had not expected him to agree.

"I ended it that week," he said. "I called your number. The number was dead."

"Of course it was dead, I changed it."

"I know. I called it forty-one times."

"Forty-one."

"I counted. Then I called the shop. They said you'd quit. Then I called your father's shop, and a woman said there was nobody there by that name."

"My father was dead."

"I didn't know that either."

His voice cracked on the last word, and he looked away to cover it.

I had thought about this conversation for seven years.

In every version, I was cold.

In none of them did my chest hurt like this.

"You had no right," I said, "to let me stand in a room with that woman and not know what I was."

"What were you?"

"A mistake you hadn't gotten around to telling her about."

"You were the only thing that week that wasn't."

I laughed, and it came out wrong.

"That's a good line."

"It's not a line."

He took a step.

I should have stepped back, and I did not.

He was close enough now that I could see the gray at his temples in the work light, and a small nick at his jaw where he had shaved in a hurry.

"You're angry," Cade said.

"Yes."

"Good. So am I."

"At who?"

"At me. At her. At you, a little, for not picking up the phone."

"I was twenty-four and I'd just been made a fool of."

"I was twenty-nine and I was the fool."

His hand came up slowly and stopped an inch from my face.

I could feel the warmth of it on my cheek.

Every part of me that had been dead for seven years sat up.

"Tell me to move it," he said.

"Move it."

He did not move it.

"Mara."

"I mean it."

"Then say it like you mean it."

I looked at his mouth, and at the old ache of what I'd lost, and at the grease on his thumb.

I leaned the quarter inch.

His fingers slid into my hair, and the clip fell on the concrete with a click, and his mouth was on mine.

It was hot, and it was angry, and it knew exactly where I had been waiting.

I got my fists in his shirt and hauled him in.

He made a rough sound against my mouth, and my back met the fender of the Mustang.

His thigh pressed between mine.

I forgot the loan, and the hospital, and the car's smell of my father's cigars, and the sleeping child twenty feet away.

Then the thought of the child arrived, cold as a wrench.

I shoved him off.

We stood there breathing.

"That was a mistake," I said.

"It was a good one."

"It won't happen again."

"Tell that to your mouth."

I wiped it with the back of my glove, which was a lie in itself.

A small voice spoke from the dark of the office doorway.

"Mom? Why is your face all red?"

Eli stood there in his socks, blanket around his shoulders, gray eyes enormous.

And beside me, I felt Cade go very, very still.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend