Make You Mine by K.T. Quinn

40

Charlotte

Day by day, my remaining community service hours dwindled. I stopped keeping track, because for once I didn’t mind the days spent in Eastland. Time flew while having someone like Jayce to talk to while we worked.

And someone like him to share my bed at night.

We were getting good at it. We were daring, even. The next night Jayce parked his bike around the back of the motel and came in through my bathroom window. He never said a word—he just removed his clothes and made love to me like he’d been waiting for it all day.

The next night I met him down the street after dark, hopping into his truck and ducking down to avoid being seen as he drove me back to his barn. After a night of sex—before bed, awoken once in the middle of the night, and then once more before the sun rose—he drove me back to the motel.

The danger of knowing the Copperheads could show up at any moment didn’t deter me. If anything, it added another layer of excitement to our affair. It gave our vigorous lovemaking a sense of urgency.

Sex was incredible when you thought it might be your last time.

Fortunately, the Copperheads didn’t bother Jayce. Word around town was they were moving extra loads of meth back and forth from Macon, so the town was nearly empty of gang members except for the few Copperheads who had been left behind. Soon it seemed like Jayce might make it to the end of his community service after all. Especially if I could convince him to leave once it was done.

But for now, despite all the talk of keeping it physical without any strings attached, we were like a new couple who couldn’t keep our hands off each another.

One day we were picking up trash on the far end of town when a thunderstorm came out of nowhere, dumping a torrent of rain on us in seconds. We were too far from the truck, so we abandoned our trash bags and sprinted into the surrounding forest where the thick canopy above shielded us from the worst of the rain. I clung to Jayce’s body for warmth, and he began kissing me.

“I want you,” he growled in my ear.

“Oh?”

“You’re a drug, Peaches,” he said in a deep whisper, “but without any kind of crash.”

I raised my lips to his. “Maybe you just haven’t gotten that far yet.”

Jayce grinned. “I doubt it.”

I gasped as he bent me over against a tree and pulled down my cut-offs and panties. I pressed my cheek against the wet tree as he entered me in one passionate thrust. Even after being together plenty of times, I was always shocked at the way he filled me so completely. It made me realize just how empty I was without him.

Jayce took me fast and hard. The moment his shaft filled me, I had to hold onto the tree trunk to steady myself from the intense ecstasy pulsing through my body. There was nobody around for miles to hear the cries of our unrestrained lust as we shook and shivered in release.

The rain faded enough for us to run back to the truck for cover, but it was drizzling too much for us to retrieve our trash bags and resume cleaning the road. Jayce opened a big bag of Doritos and we relaxed while passing it back and forth inside the truck while the rain pattered against the roof.

“You’ve never said much about your parents,” I said while munching on some chips.

“Not much to say.”

“I take it they don’t live in Eastland?” I asked. “Otherwise I’m sure you would have introduced us by now.”

He looked at me. “You didn’t see them?”

“Your parents? Not that I’m aware…” I gasped. “Wait. Flop and his ex aren’t your parents, are they? That would explain why you were sick of his Vietnam stories.”

I expected him to laugh and quickly deny it. But he said with a stone-face, “Their gravestone. It was next to my sister’s.”

My heart exploded, then clumped back together with duct tape and super glue, and then sank down into my gut. “Oh no!”

His mouth twitched in a half-smile. “It’s all right.”

I put down the bag of chips and twisted to face him. “Jayce! I’m so sorry! I didn’t know.”

“Seriously, Peaches. It’s fine. They’ve been gone fifteen years.”

He didn’t offer to explain how they died, and since I had already put my foot in my mouth, I didn’t ask. I rubbed his arm. “Aww. You’re an orphan. Like Annie!”

“Or like Batman,” he said with a small smile. “I’m a lot more like Batman.”

I leaned over to hug him tightly. He tolerated it but didn’t hug me back. “Whatever you say, Annie.”

He groaned and looked out the windshield. “Rain doesn’t look like it’s going to let up.”

“It’s really coming down,” I agreed. “But I’m sure the sun will come up tomorrow.”

“Stop it.”

“Bet your bottom dollar that, tomorrow,” I sang, “there’ll be sun!”

He tickled me until I was giggling too much to sing.

Scott called again while we waited. Once again, I let it go to voicemail and then ignored his angry follow-up texts. I’d gotten at least a hundred of them in the past day. They were all the same: demanding that I remove the purchase dispute from my credit card, asking why I was being so unreasonable, calling me a selfish person for torpedoing the business we had worked so hard to build.

He never called me names. Scott wasn’t the type who needed to. His manipulative nature, insisting that I was the one at fault, was much worse than calling me a bitch. But I was finally seeing through it. The texts that once would have crippled me with guilt registered only as amusing evidence that our breakup was for the best.

We went back to picking up trash half an hour later, which was a lot more annoying while stomping through rain puddles on the side of the road. We worked in silence for a while.

“Is that what the other tattoo is?” I suddenly asked.

Jayce frowned but didn’t look up from his work. “Do what now?”

“The 3194 is for your sister’s birthday.” I leaned over and poked the tattoo farther up on the bicep. “What’s significant about 8233? Is it one of your parents’ birthdays?”

He scratched at his beard. “So like, August second, nineteen thirty-three? Your math’s a little off, Peaches. My parents weren’t that old.”

“Grandparents, then?” I wondered out loud. “Or some other notable anniversary?”

He pointed at me with his stick. “Someday, if you get a few drinks in me, maybe I’ll tell you.”

“I only have a few days left in Eastland.”

“Then I guess you’ll never know.” He narrowed his eyes. “Too bad. It’s a good secret.”

“Aww, man!”

We were glossing over the uncomfortable truth: that my time here was nearing an end. Which meant our fun little “it’s totally a fling and nothing more” relationship was also nearing its conclusion.

But Jayce didn’t seem bothered by it, so maybe he was telling the truth that it meant nothing to him. Some meaningless sex to pass the time.

Jayce paid for my dinner that night at the diner. It was the same arrangement as before: we sat in separate booths, back-to-back, and whispered to each other while eating. Together and separate at the same time, which was an amusing microcosm for our not-relationship as a whole. Mindy muttered under her breath about how we were both damn fools as she delivered our food. Deep down, I knew she was right.

But I also didn’t care.

The next two nights were like the previous: sneaking away with Jayce, screwing until we were too tired to move, and falling asleep in his arms. Then came the night before my final day of community service. We continued our routine as if nothing was different: he picked me up from the motel, I fondled him through his jeans while crouched down in his truck, and then he ravaged me with his animal-like passion in his barn.

There was something different in his kisses that night. The way he cradled my face while driving into me on the bed, and the look deep in his cobalt eyes. Like he wanted to make sure he didn’t forget tonight.

I wrapped my legs around him, holding him inside me as deep as I could. I wanted to make sure he didn’t forget tonight, either.

Looking back on it, I never would forget that night. Not because it was my last night with Jayce.

Because it was the night I learned the truth.