The Apple Tree (Sunday Morning, #2) (48)

Most of the time, Eve surprised me with her maturity, especially with Josh. I never would have acted on the physical attraction had she not been mature in other ways first. But I never imagined having sex would make her more insecure and immature.

“Just …” She shook her head. “Don’t treat me like a child.”

“Then don’t act like one,” I said. Perhaps I had my own maturity issues. I needed to brush up on my verbal restraint.

The muscles in her jaw flexed. Then she glanced at her watch and shrugged. “I have to get home before my curfew because I’m a child. Good night, Mr. Collins.” She brushed past me.

I had to restrain my grin. Eve was a fiery individual, and I loved that about her because I was pretty fiery at her age, too. Had we been the same age and met ten years earlier, we would have burned down the town and ourselves with it.

Our age difference wasn’t unfortunate or inconvenient. It was necessary.

She hopped on one foot, then the other, pulling on her boots before she walked out the door without looking back.

Again, I tried to keep from grinning or chuckling as I followed her. She stomped along the gravel drive to where she parked by the mailbox.

I grabbed the back of her jeans, hooking my fingers into the waist to stop her.

“Hey!” Eve whipped around, and before she could say another word, I grabbed her face, grinned, and kissed her.

She resisted for less than a second.

After making my point, I released her. “Now you can go home and be mad,” I said before returning to the house.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN





BOB SEGER, “SHAKEDOWN”





Eve

“What happened?” Gabby asked, poking her head out of her room just as I stepped into the bathroom.

Our parents were in bed, but I knew my mom had her alarm clock set for midnight to see if I was home. It was only eleven.

I narrowed my eyes and whispered, “What are you talking about?”

With a sly grin, she slid into the bathroom with me and shut the door. “Where were you tonight?”

“Why?”

She sat on the toilet seat. “Michelle and Vicky came over, and they missed our drive, so they turned around at the end of Mr. Collins’ drive, and they saw your car parked there. Were you babysitting? Mom and Dad said you were with your friends at the movies. Why was your car there? What movie did you see?”

Kyle’s drive was the second to the last on our dead-end gravel road. My parents always turned right when leaving our house. They never had a reason to turn left, which meant they turned into our drive on their way home before reaching Kyle’s. That’s why my car was safe by the trees at the end of his drive.

I never thought my sister’s idiot friends would miss our drive and have to turn around in his.

“Well?” she prodded.

I had nothing. No good excuse. Lies usually came easy to me, but that was because I anticipated needing to lie and planned accordingly.

When I was Gabby’s age, my older sister, Sarah, confided in me about personal things that could have landed her in trouble. Eventually, everything did blow up on her, but not because of me. I kept her secret. And it made us closer than we had ever been before that.

Could Gabby be my friend and not just my sister? Having someone on the inside, helping me cover my tracks, seemed like a good thing. But I didn’t know if Gabby could keep a secret of that magnitude. She struggled to keep my last boyfriend a secret, and it wasn’t a big deal in comparison.

“Can you keep a secret?” I asked.

“Duh.”

“No. Not duh. This isn’t about me hiding alcohol by the creek or going steady with someone and not telling Mom and Dad. This is much bigger. Sarah level of big.”

Gabby’s eyes grew into saucers.

“You can’t tell anyone.”

Yes, I understood the irony in saying that to her after Kyle lectured me over telling Erin.

“You can’t tell Ben. You can’t tell Michelle or Vicky or Erica. You can’t squirm at the dinner table or make funny faces like it’s killing you to keep a secret. You have to guard this with your life. Can you do that?”

She gulped and nodded.

Just hours earlier, I made fun of her for having a crush on her math teacher. Oh the irony.

“I’ve met someone who I really like. And I was with him tonight. But he’s older, and as we know, Mom and Dad don’t like when their daughters fall for older guys.”

Had I fallen for Kyle? Yes. A thousand times yes.

Was a month long enough to fall in love? I didn’t know. I hadn’t been in love before.

Yet, he was determined to keep me at arm’s length while he decided if I was more than a casual date, a one-night stand. But dang, when he kissed me and told me to go be mad, I lost a part of my heart, left it on the ground by his boots. No one had ever let me be myself without fearing punishment, harsh judgment, or disappointment, until Kyle.

“How old?” Gabby asked.

“Twenty-eight.”

“What?!”

“Shh!”

She slapped her hand over her mouth.

I frowned. She was already proving to be too young to handle my secret.

“You made fun of me for calling Mr. Collins sexy, and you’re seeing someone his age?”