“Sorry,” he called. “I don’t have the car, so my brother had to drive.” He came around the front of the truck to meet her.
She cast a glance at Michael, looking flighty. “There’s a problem.”
“Is your dad still home?” Gabriel glanced at the front door, ready for her father to burst out with a shotgun.
“No . . . but Simon is.” She hesitated. “Our mom never showed up.”
The more he heard about her mother, the more Gabriel wanted to find the woman and shake some sense into her.
“He can’t stay home alone,” Layne rushed on. “I’d say you could come in, but if my dad came home early—”
“Statutory rape. I remember.”
Her cheeks turned pink. “Yeah.”
God, this figured. Nick taking the car was probably an omen.
Unless . . . could this be an elaborate way for her to back out? Maybe she’d had second thoughts when he’d pulled up the driveway. Maybe she didn’t want anything to do with him after all.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I get it.”
“No! I’m not . . .” Layne licked her lips. “I’m not backing out. I’m wondering . . .”
Some hair was coming loose from her braid, and if Michael wasn’t sitting right there, Gabriel would have tucked it back into place.
No, he’d be pulling the elastic free, unwinding the plaits . . .
Focus. “Wondering what?”
She took a deep breath. “Would it be okay if Simon came with us?”
CHAPTER 27
Layne sat at the kitchen table and watched Gabriel glare at his trig textbook. He had a fresh piece of notebook paper in front of him, a sharpened pencil clenched between his fingers.
A murderous expression on his face.
“Come on,” she said. “You can’t hate math that much.”
“Trust me. I can.” He glanced up. “You hungry? Want something to drink?”
“I want you to quit stalling.”
“I am not—”
“Oh.” She raised an eyebrow. “Does it usually take twenty minutes to hook up your PlayStation, or was that just for Simon’s benefit?”
His voice dropped. “I was hoping Michael would leave.”
His brother? Layne remembered Gabriel mentioning that they fought, but Michael had been perfectly nice to her. He’d barely said a word during the drive over here, and then left them in the kitchen with the excuse that he had work to catch up on.
“He said he had to run to Home Depot,” said Gabriel. “But he’s probably sticking around to make sure I don’t con you into going upstairs.”
The words almost made her breath catch. Thank god he couldn’t feel her heart rate stutter. “No chance.” She tapped the book with her pencil. “I’m here to help you work.”
“Hmm.” He leaned in and pushed a strand of hair off her face. “Is that a challenge?”
Now she couldn’t breathe at all.
She hadn’t bothered to look at the Internet last night. This morning, either. Kara hadn’t called, and she couldn’t bear to check her e-mail. She had no idea whether Taylor had ever followed through on her threat to put everything online, but if she had, what could Layne do about it?
Nothing.
And it was so much nicer to think about the moments with Gabriel, after the party. She’d turned his words over in her head all night. Not just the kind ones, when they’d been sitting by the water. The harsh ones, the really honest ones, when they’d sat on the tailgate of his car.
What do you think, that I’m some kind of thug player who’ll screw anything in a skirt?
“You’re blushing.” His breath was against her neck, his lips whispering into her skin.
“You’re still stalling. We need to—”
She gasped. His teeth grazed her jaw, the sensitive area below her ear. His hands found her waist, shifting her toward him. Everything suddenly felt ten degrees warmer.
“See?” he murmured. “Who needs math?”
That woke her up. She used her pencil to rap him on the forehead. “You do.”
He sighed disgustedly and drew back.
Then he went right back to glaring at his blank paper.
“It’s only ten questions,” she said, still feeling a bit breathless. “We’ll just work through these, and then . . .” She let the words trail off, but that open ending was just way too . . . open. “Then we’ll talk.”
He nodded. But he didn’t write anything down.
“Look,” she said, “I can’t help you if you won’t even—”
“Jesus.” His eyes flared with anger. “I know.”
Layne almost flinched—then reminded herself that his anger had nothing to do with her. “Truth,” she said softly. “What’s wrong?”
His expression was locked down, and she had a strong feeling he wasn’t going to answer. Every time he did this, it made her feel vulnerable. More so now that her secrets were all out on the table—and his weren’t.
“I need to pass.” His voice was low, rough.
“You will,” she said. “You’ll pass the test, get back on the team—”
“I don’t give a crap about the team.” He hesitated. “I mean, I do, but . . .”
She waited.
He kept his eyes on the book. “Nick told me last night that he wants to go to college. If I can’t pass math, I can’t even graduate from high school.”
She studied him. “Do you want to go to college with your brother?”
“No—yes—I don’t—” His pencil snapped. “Goddamn it.” He dropped the pieces in the spine of the book.
Again, Layne waited.
Gabriel looked up, meeting her eyes. “I never even thought about college. The only reason I bother getting halfway decent grades is so I can play sports. I mean, I just figured we’d keep helping Mike with the business.”
“What do you want to do?”
He snorted. “I doubt there’s money for Nick to go to college, so for me to go with him . . . I mean, he’ll probably get scholarships, but—”
“No. What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.” He was looking back at the math book again. “I never really thought I had a choice.”
Layne bit at her lip. She didn’t know the twins’ relationship well enough to judge them, and talking to Gabriel always felt like walking a tightrope. “Obviously Nick thinks he has one.”
That brought his eyes back up to hers. “He deserves a choice.”
“Why, because he’s a good student?”
Gabriel scowled. “He’s good, period.”
It made her think of her mother, volunteering for every charity under the sun—as long as she got to plan a party for it. Most people probably thought she was good, too, despite the fact that Layne’s father had worked himself to the bone to afford the lifestyle her mother demanded.
And then she’d left, like it wasn’t good enough.
No, because Layne and Simon weren’t good enough.
There were different levels of good, Layne thought. Had to be.
She tapped the math book with her pencil. “You deserve a choice, too.”
Gabriel took a deep breath and blew it out. He picked up the broken half of his pencil, the one with a writing end. “Can I choose to not do this?”
She wanted to hit him on the forehead again. “Don’t be such a baby. I can’t believe you’ll kick the crap out of Ryan Stacey but you’re afraid of a few equations.”
His eyes flicked up at her. “That’s because I don’t care what Ryan Stacey thinks of me.”