Junk Miles (22 page)

Then he pulled away suddenly, his eyes wild.

“
Go home, Bren,” he ordered.

My eyes went wide, and I felt a shaky nervousness. “Jake, I think we should…”

“
Go the hell home!” he snapped. He looked furious. “Go home now, Brenna!”

I ran out of the greenhouse, and it felt a little like my heart was cracking apart. That delicate bubble of hope burst and was replaced with despair. I got on my bike, my legs jelly shaky, and pedaled away. I wasn’t going towards home, and I wasn’t going towards school, the only two places I really knew the way to. I just pedaled blindly, flying past houses I vaguely knew and going down roads I didn’t know at all. Finally the sun was high, I shook with cold, and I had no idea where I was. I bit my lip to stop myself from crying. I would not cry!

I slid my cell phone out of my pocket, already hating the idea of calling my mother. She wasn’t a fan of my riding my bike anyway. This call would be handing her a free pass to complain and nag every time she thought it wouldn’t be safe for me to go out. Which would be every time I wanted to go out. I scrolled through my contacts and stopped at the one that was so obvious but also still unexpected.

“
Hey,” Saxon said on the fifth ring. He sounded like he was sleeping.

“
I…uh,” I began, and then I was crying.

“
Brenna!” He sounded fully awake. I wanted to curl up and fade away. This was getting ludicrous. “What’s wrong?”

“
I’m lost,” I gulped out.

He was silent for a minute, then he laughed. “I was a Boy Scout for like three weeks. I’ll come and find you. Anything nearby?”

“
I passed that big mansion off of Plains.” I breathed in and out steadily to keep my voice from shaking. “I went past the emu farm, the one with the dead chickens always in the road. Now I can see the back of the mansion and there’s a brick ranch with an old car on concrete blocks.”

“
Is it a Mustang?”

“
Saxon, how the hell would I know…wait, it has a running horse on it.” I peered at the silver emblem on the front of the car.

He laughed. “How did you get behind the Garbage Castle?”

“
Is that it?” I looked at the turreted monstrosity that I had seen so many times. “You know where I am?”

“
Yeah. That’s Roger Benson’s house. His dad’s had that Mustang since the 70’s. It’s incredible.” His voice got dreamy.

“
It doesn’t even have wheels,” I said, my teeth clattering. “And it looks like one of the doors is rusting off.”

“
You have to look at the inner beauty, Blix. The potential.” He was quiet a minute. “Are you shivering?”

“
It
is
January.” I tried not to be too ungrateful. He was, after all, willing to help.

“
I’ll be there in eight minutes.” He clicked off.

I didn’t know where Saxon lived, but eight minutes was probably the amount of time it took if he broke every imaginable traffic law known to man on the way over.

I checked my watch, just for fun. It was twelve forty-seven.

At twelve fifty-four, I heard the rumble of his engine. He pulled way too close to me, popped the passenger door open and came to get my bike. I got in the car and put my hands to the heat vents, blowing a full stream of hot air.

He got in next to me and grinned. “So, I guess I’m gonna be your knight in shining armor whether you like it or not.”

“
I’m not usually so dumb,” I apologized.

“
What brings a lovely, sexually tempting young thing like yourself to a nearly deserted country road at lunch time?” He held the wheel with one hand and leaned back as comfortably as if he were in a recliner. I loved the way he looked when he drove. I felt a lot of warm feelings towards Saxon when I compared his recent behavior to Jake’s.

“
I just got lost.” My words rang false in the hot interior of his car.

“
Don’t bullshit me, Blix.” He popped his cigarette pack out of his pocket and pulled one out with his lips. He took out his lighter and tried to light it, but the bumps in the road didn’t make it easy. Neither did the fact that he was doing just under sixty-five. I grabbed the lighter and lit the cigarette. “Thanks, friend.” He took a long drag. “Now, what’s up?”

“
I went to see Jake.” I couldn’t say any more. The whole thing was so melodramatic and horrifying.

Saxon rolled his window down and blew smoke out of it. “I guess it wasn’t all wine and roses?”

I shook my head miserably. “He was pretty pissed. He told me to go home. He was so mad. I’ve never seen him that mad.”

“
Did you expect a parade? You broke up with him after he gave you his fucking ‘protect my heart’ ring. He went on a limb for you.” Leave it to Saxon to put the truest version of my behavior out in the cold light of day.

Saxon’s lack of sympathy, though right, was upsetting. “He didn’t go on any limb,” I said softly. “Giving me that ring was just the next logical step for him.”

“
Well, yeah.” Saxon flicked ash out the window. “I told you, he’s had his fun. He’s not worried about screwing anyone else…”

“
I’m not thinking about that!” I interrupted, feeling the burn of a lie, even though I really wasn’t thinking about that. Was I?

He chuckled. “You may not admit it, but I can see you salivating when we’re in a room together. Your pheromones are practically choking me.”

“
I’m not thinking about sex with anyone,” I repeated. “Like I need any more complications in my life right now.”

“
Your life has been one big complication since you came back from your Danish romp,” he scoffed. “And you’ve loved every damn minute, so stop lying to yourself.”

Then the car stopped. We were in front of an enormous, white, modern house. “This is your house?”

“
Nope.” He pushed his door open with his shoulder. “We’re breaking in.”

I was about to talk him out of it, calmly, to hide my panic, but then he shook his keys at me with a smirk and waved me to the door. We entered the cavernous house legally, and I hid my sigh of relief.

The front foyer had a fountain. A real fountain like they have in Chinese food restaurants. It was tiled in something dark and incredibly shiny with little lichen-like fossils in it.

The living room had whatever would be beyond a cathedral ceiling. Hanging from the middle was a colossal chandelier made of swirling metal and colored glass. There was a big furry carpet over super shiny dark wood floors and several weird-shaped red sofas and chairs. Outside the enormous windows, there was an in-ground pool, covered for the winter.

“
Holy shit.” I gaped and my voice echoed off the walls. “Saxon, your house is…”

“
Incredibly ugly.” He looked around with cold eyes. “Yeah, I know. Notice there’s no Christmas tree? Lylee finds them ‘too quaint.’ It’s like living in a really pretentious museum.”

It was weird to see someone look so ill at ease in his own home, especially one as incredible as this one. Saxon led me to a huge white-tiled kitchen with stainless steel counters and cabinets. He opened the fridge, which was the kind that had two full doors.

“
Hungry?”

“
I am.” I peeked over his shoulder. “Wow.”

“
I’ll make us sandwiches.”

The interior of his fridge was so enormous that someone could have easily lived in it. Maybe even an entire small family.

Saxon got out plates and condiments and meats and cheese and bread, like a normal human who was about to make some food to eat. This felt so unlike Saxon, it was a little disconcerting to watch.

“
So.” I pulled up a stool. “Where’s Lylee?”

Saxon put mayo on both sandwiches without asking me if I wanted it. I did.

“
She is in Greece.” He spun the cap back on the mayo jar.

“
What? We just got back!”

“
From France. She wanted to go to Greece. I think she has some man-whore on Crete.” He shrugged. “Whatever makes her happy.” His voice was flat and bland.

“
I’m sorry.” I took the meat-stuffed sandwich he held out.

“
Don’t be.” He bundled up all the food and stuffed it back in the fridge. “Life is a lot easier when she’s not around. Lylee is hard to live with when she’s totally happy, and that’s not often. C’mon, we’ll eat in my room.” He got up and grabbed two sodas, and I followed him down a hallway lined with modern art in thick metal frames.

His room was the one place that looked like what I’d expected. It looked like a dirty teenage boy’s room was supposed to look like, just bigger. And possibly messier. He popped a window open. “Sorry. It smells like gym socks, right?”

He looked so handsome and boyish, and that was at odds with the way I typically thought of him. Saxon always struck me as something wild, like some feral creature that slept in a tree at night. When we had talked about him as a pet in Paris, the image of him as a huge, coiling snake or ravenous wolf made sense.

“
It does. You could clean it,” I suggested.

He looked around without much interest. “No point. It would look like this again in no time. I have to try to be here when Carmella comes over, or she cleans it even though I say not to. She doesn’t make nearly enough to deal with this crap.”

“
You have a maid?” I asked.

“
You think Lylee does housework?” he returned.

“
I guess she doesn’t seem that domestic.” His room was so unlike Jake’s it was crazy. We were sitting on small couches, set up on one side like a little sitting room with a chipped but expensive-looking coffee table between them. There were thick rugs over the hardwood, littered with Dorito crumbs and spilled who-knows-what. The bed was at least a queen, maybe bigger. It had gray sheets, and you could just tell from the way they bunched and piled so beautifully that they were something expensive. Maybe silk? The walls had framed art, mostly post-modern stuff, nothing I really knew. And there were band posters, the kind they use to advertise shows. I didn’t know many of them either. There was a desk with enough computer equipment to fill a NASA control room. Clothes were everywhere, and there were old plates, empty soda cans and, on the floor, what looked like a condom wrapper. What was it with the boys I cared about and suggestively placed condom wrappers? “Maybe you should just give Carmella a bonus and let her in here.”

“
It’s freaking you out, isn’t it?” He looked around, and I imagined he was trying to see it through my eyes.

“
It is.” I squirmed a little, equally fascinated and horrified. “Your dirtiest private dirt is crawling over everything in here. I can smell you. I can see evidence of you. It’s like looking at you under a microscope.”

“
So this room is like my nasty little personal Petri dish?” He seemed unaccountably happy with the idea.

“
Yes. You are one huge, gross science experiment.”

“
You crack me up.” He laughed and his eyes got a glint I didn’t completely trust. “I don’t have many people in my life who make me laugh. I guess I don’t have that many friends in general. I’ve fucked it up with a lot of my guy friends, and no girl wants me for anything but what I can give her in bed.”

I rolled my eyes, but it was mostly to stay my panic. “If I have to hear about how good you are in bed one more time, I’m going to scream,” I joked. Though the delivery would have been smoother if my voice hadn’t wobbled. My attempts at levity were lost on Saxon. His black eyes were honed on me, and I knew for a fact I was trapped.

He moved across the space between us with all the feline grace of a jungle cat and then he was next to me. His body was warm and his skin emitted that amazing smell that was only Saxon’s and made me crazy. I tried breathing through my mouth, but I was no good at denying myself things. It just went against my nature.

“
You think I’m exaggerating about how good I am?” His voice dripped with sex. “I’m not. I want to show you. I’ve thought about what I would do to you if I got you in my bed from the first minute I saw you.”

It felt like there was something crushing my lungs. I knew what he was saying wasn’t even just cheesy romance talk. I could see sometimes, when he looked over at me, that he was thinking things no normal human would entertain in public, even in his head.

“
I kissed Jake when I saw him,” I confessed, desperate to derail this before it started, whatever it was. “Or I kissed him back. He kissed me first.”

“
I don’t like it.” Saxon shrugged. “But you aren’t mine. Oh, wait. You’re nobody’s girl, right, Blix?” His eyes were bright with mockery. “You’re your own girl.”

“
I am,” I insisted.

“
Then stop pussyfooting around. Come to bed with me,” he lured.

“
No.” I shook my head. Jake hadn’t wanted sex. Every time we were together, I knew he was going to talk me out of it. And that was a good thing. I wasn’t good at talking other people out of things. Especially things I could potentially like.

“
Did he want you? Did he tell you to wait for him?” Saxon’s voice was so melodic it just couldn’t be sinister. Could it? My brain was fogging.

“
No.”

“
You want him back?” Saxon asked.

“
Yes.” I did. Badly.

“
But you like me?”