“I’d be happy if I was dancing with you,” he says quietly. “You’d make it worth it.”
The horde of butterflies all flap at once. “Go with Xander.”
“You’re the best,” he says nudging me with his knee. “Are you doing anything tonight after we clock off?” I shake my head, mind immediately running with a thousand different possibilities. “Don’t make plans. We’re going on a date.”
The evening is painfully slow in comparison to the afternoon and I spend my entire night clock watching, waiting to see what my first ever date is going to be.
Shortly after the kids are ushered to bed, Russ appears looking concerned, which immediately puts me on edge. I’m in comfortable clothes, like he told me to be when he left earlier, but having zero idea what’s going on is not my idea of fun. “We have a slight problem,” he says as he approaches me, stopping far enough away so that we don’t look over-friendly.
“What is it?”
“We need to sign out at the front office and it’ll look suspicious if we’re both signed out together.”
“We’ve done it before?”
“Not at night. You gotta admit that looks sus.”
He’s right, as much as I don’t want to admit it. I don’t even know what he has planned but I’m nervous and excited and I don’t want him to say we can’t go. “There’s a path that starts near the back of the kitchen that leads to a dirt track a few minutes’ drive away. I could sneak out, but you have to promise to not snitch on me because unlike you who’s breaking the rules left and right, I’m trying to repair my image.”
He rolls his eyes and his dimples appear as he fights a smile. “Is it safe?”
“Yeah, it’s an evacuation route that they put in decades ago. I’ll need a flashlight.”
He throws his truck keys at me. “I don’t want you walking in the dark. Don’t check the back or you’ll ruin the surprise.”
The excitement and nerves eat away at me as I keep a straight face signing out at the front office. When I’m safely in Russ’s truck, that’s when I give up fighting it. I keep the headlights on as I wait the five minutes it takes for him to find me and, as he jogs up to the fence line, I try not to drool when he jumps over it with ease.
Is everything he does hot or am I just easily impressed? One of life’s great questions.
Opening the driver’s door, he slides me along the seat and positions himself in front of the wheel. “I don’t even want to know how you know that barely-there path leads to here, trouble.”
“Am I trouble or am I an explorer?”
He throws an arm over the back of the seat as he looks over his shoulder to reverse up the dirt track back to the road. Again, hot or easily impressed? His hand twirls the ends of my hair and the definitive answer is hot. Definitely, definitely hot.
“Trouble. One hundred percent.”
There’s no one else on the roads this late at night but Russ concentrates as he follows the bend, one hand resting on my thigh, tapping the tune of the song playing in the car.
The song changes to an up-and-coming rock band Poppy likes, who are starting to get radio play. I bought Poppy and Emilia tickets to their LA show in a few months, but before I can tell Russ that, he changes the station. “You don’t like Take Back December?”
“Not really,” he lifts his hand from my thigh to rub along his jaw line. “It’s my brother’s band.”
Oh my God. “Your brother Ethan is Ethan Callaghan? How did I not spot that before? Emilia’s girlfriend loves TBD.”
“Yup.” He doesn’t sound very pleased about that fact and, after what I’ve learned about his relationship with his family, I’m not surprised.
He takes a right down an old track, taking the opportunity to look at me for a split second before putting his hand back on my thigh. “Your brother is famous, but you don’t want to go pro because you don’t want to be famous? As someone with a family –especially my sister—always in the press, you sometimes have no choice.”
“You’re not the only person to point that out to me recently, funnily enough. Ethan isn’t really famous though.” He squeezes my thigh, which I think was supposed to be a comfort, but I feel it everywhere. “Should we tell everyone we’re only children?”
“Definitely, but I’m a bit concerned it won’t matter anyway, since you appear to be taking me somewhere to murder me and bury my body in a field . . .” The truck throws us around a little as we drive over the uneven ground in the direction of an old, derelict building. “Where the hell are we? I am not fucking you in that haunted house if that’s your plan.”