Page 17 of Turn of the Tides
Which actually worried me, because I had to have been losing my mind to feel that way.
“You got quiet all of a sudden,” Beau pointed out as the businesses and storefronts of downtown Whitecap gave way to pretty homes with well-maintained yards. I knew if I were to roll down the window, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore would steadily grow louder as we got closer. We were quickly leaving the quaint, quiet neighborhoods I was familiar with and getting closer to the ocean, closer to the luxurious houses that lined the coast. Closer to where the town’s wealthiest residents lived. Becausetheycould afford those beachfront homes.
Of course this would be where Beau lived. I don’t know why I was surprised.
I stared out the window, refusing to look in his direction. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”
I heard him let out a snort and caught movement out of the corner of my eye. As discreetly as possible, I slid my gaze in his direction, taking in the way he drove with one arm lazily draped over the steering wheel, almost carelessly. His other hand rested on the console between us, his long fingers drumming out the beat of whatever song was playing quietly from the speakers. Looking at him, it was easy to think he was just a normal high school boy. The gorgeous, popular quarterback on the football team, not the spawn of Satan himself I knew him to be.
“Careful, Bubbles. You might end up bruising my ego.”
It was my turn to scoff, my eyes rolling so hard it was a wonder they didn’t get stuck facing the back of my skull. “Oh please,” I cried indignantly. “Narcissists can’t get bruised egos.” I waved him off. “Besides, there’s no way aloserlike me could ever make you feel bad about yourself,” I threw in, repeating the insult I’d heard his girlfriend use only a handful of minutes earlier.
“Don’t say shit like that,” he barked, his voice hard and bordering on violent. So much so that my head whipped around in his direction, my eyes bulging in their sockets.
I might have actually been frightened of the sudden change in his demeanor if the thought of him defending his spoiled brat of a girlfriend didn’t piss me off to no end. “Excuse me?”
But then he said something that struck me speechless, something I never in a million years would have expected him to say. “Don’t call yourself a loser,” he gritted out, his molars clamped together so tight the muscle in his jaw ticked like crazy. “You’re not a loser, so don’t say it.”
My mouth fell open so wide my jaw was practically resting in my lap. “I—what?”
His face fell, his expression growing dark in a way I had never seen before. “You heard me,” he grunted in response.
“I—I don’t think I’m a loser, Beau.”
He took his gaze off the road for a second to shoot me a frown. “Then why’d you just say that?”
“I was mimicking your girlfriend,” I replied snidely.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” he bit back. “And you shouldn’t listen to anything she has to say. She can be a real bitch when she wants to be. Which is most of the time.”
“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know,” I grumbled, deciding to ignore his comment about her not being his girlfriend. It was only a matter of time—probably hours—before that changed again.
“Anyway, I know I’m not a loser. I don’t care what other people think. I know exactly how awesome I am.”
He shocked me again by smiling, the mood in the car changing drastically for the second time in less than five minutes, and muttering, “Good. Because you are.”
Had something happened? Had I fallen on my way to get into his Jeep and given myself a concussion? Was I asleep and thiswas some kind of weird dream? Or maybe Beau had driven us right into an alternate dimension somehow where hewasn’ta raging hemorrhoid.
Or maybe this was another one of his twisted games.
My eyelids dropped into slits as suspicion took hold of me in an iron grip. “What are you doing?” I asked, my tone accusing.
His brows pinched together, his eyes coming back to me for a split second, just long enough to see that the normally frigid blue was decidedly warmer than usual. “What are you talking about?”
“Why are you being nice to me? You’renevernice. We hate each other.”
“That’s not true,” he argued bewilderingly. “I don’t hate you.”
Okay, maybe I wasn’t the one losing my mind. Maybe it was him. Either way, I wasn’t playing whatever this game was, so I decided to ignore him and looked back out the passenger side window.
I’d learned over the years that the best way to handle Beau when I wasn’t sure what he was up to was to ignore him. Easier said than done when I was stuck with him, but I’d do my best.
A few minutes later, Beau turned his Jeep into a circular drive, stopping in the middle of it right in front of one of the biggest houses I’d ever seen.
I knew my father had done some work on the Wade house a few times, but this was the first time I’d seen it, and it was just more proof that Beau and I came from two totally different worlds.
This house wasridiculous.