Roman Holiday: The Adventure Continues (2 page)

They bounced over something, and Stanley began lecturing Roman on his driving.

“Stop,” she groaned, turning the word into a long, drawn-out plea.
Staaaaaahp
. “I’m dying. You guys are killing me. Every single thing you say feels like a stab wound.”

Stanley talked over her, giving her license to attempt even greater heights of melodrama.

“It’s like a needle in my eye socket. Every insult is a leech, stuck on my eyeball, sucking out my soul. I would rather be riding
underneath
the car than listen to this. I would rather be tied
to the grille naked, with bugs splatting into me. I would rather …” Ashley paused to think up another form of torture and realized, abruptly, that the car had fallen silent.

“You’d rather what?” Stanley asked.

“I was going to say I’d rather have duct tape wrapped all over my body and then ripped off, but I thought it might be too salacious.”

“You’re nuts,” laughed Stanley.

“This from a man who just argued about the sacred rights of duck hunters with the guy who’s giving him a free ride,” said Roman. “Tell me the truth, Stanley—have you ever even been duck hunting?”

“Don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“You have a pet crow!” Ashley interjected. “Why do you have to argue with Roman about hunters’ rights?”

He shrugged. “Being ornery keeps me alive.”

“Yeah, well, you’re going to make him have a stroke and crash the car.”

Stanley turned to look at her. “You know what I don’t get about you, girl? Why you always care so much about guys who don’t even like you.”

All the air went out of Ashley.

“Roman likes me,” she said. “Don’t you?”

“I’m not having this conversation,” he said. “Not with him in the middle of it.”

“I’m pointing out what’s obvious,” Stanley said. “The girl needs someone to take care of her.”

“Ashley can take care of herself,” Roman snapped.

“Let’s hope so. Because if she keeps picking people like you—”

“ ‘Like you’? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Some rich bastard from Miami who only cares about money.”

Roman slammed the flat of his hand into the steering wheel. “That’s fine, from
you
. Because you’ve been doing such a grand job watching out for her. I’m sure you called her every day after the funeral to check how she was doing. And I know you must have welcomed her to your campground with open arms, because—Oh, wait! You didn’t actually do that, did you? You didn’t even come over to say hi. She had to go to
you
, and then—”

“What d’you know about anything, huh? Waltzing in and buying up her birthright
without so much as a by your leave—”

“Listen to me, old man, because I’m going to tell you something about Ashley Bowman that you
don’t
know—”

And that was all she could take. More than she could take, actually, of Roman shouting in that tone of voice, shouting about
her
as if she weren’t in the car, defending her as though she didn’t know how to defend herself, both of them making her a pawn in their stupid,
stupid
argument as if she hadn’t been through this her whole fucking childhood, as if she hadn’t learned that it was a zero-sum game and the person who turned out to be equal to zero was named Ashley Marie Bowman.

“Shut up!” she shouted. “Both of you! Shut UP shut UP shut UP SHUT UP—”

Bam!

It took her a moment to register the noise. Even after she heard it, she lost another few seconds putting it together with the odd shuffling sensation beneath her feet.

The Escalade lurched dramatically to the left.

“What’s going on? Roman?”

“Engine’s goin’,” Stanley said.

“Be quiet,” Roman threatened.

Stanley lifted up in his seat to peer past Roman at the dash. “I told you, you can’t ignore them indicators.”

Roman hit the turn signal and punched the button for the hazard lights. The Escalade decelerated rapidly, rolling to a stop on the shoulder of the highway.

“I knew a guy who ignored that light, burned up his whole engine,” Stanley said. “The car was only good for scrap after that. Fancier car than this one.”

“It’s not the engine,” Roman bit out.

“ ’Course, there’s no steam coming out of the hood,” Stanley said. “So maybe it’s not all over yet. Could be you’ll be able to get it fixed, if you can find somebody to tow you to a garage that stocks Cadillac parts.”

Roman slammed the car into park, cut the engine, and turned to face Stanley. The grooves alongside his mouth were as deep as Ashley had ever seen them, his jaw hard, his shoulders tight, and his eyes … She couldn’t see his eyes. She could only see his sunglasses.

Even his sunglasses looked furious.

“It’s a flat on the trailer, not my truck’s engine,” he said, and the effort he made to clamp down on his anger was terrifyingly apparent. “A flat tire. I’ll change it, and we’ll be on our way. And when I get back into this car, you are not going to speak. Not one fucking word, all the rest of the way to Ohio.”

Stanley produced a gravely grunt that somehow managed to be mocking. “Could be we’ll get back on the road,” he said. “If your girl has a spare.”

Two heads swung around to stare at her in the backseat.

“The thing is …” she said.

Roman sighed explosively and pushed his sunglasses onto the top of his head so he could wipe both hands down his face.

Ashley unbuckled her seat belt, resigning herself to how much her life was about to suck.

Which was a lot. And it
already
sucked a lot.

She pushed open the passenger-side door. “Let me show you what we have.”

Nineteen seventy-six.

Nineteen-seventy-
fucking
-six.

“You’re telling me,” he said.

And then he had to take a breath and let it out, because his fists were clenching, and that wouldn’t do.

He took a second one, just to be safe.

“You’re telling me, in all seriousness, that the spare tire for this vehicle is five years older than I am.” It was the most neutral thing Roman could think of to say. He was trying—trying very hard—to find solid ground again and plant his feet on it, because he hated feeling this out of control. He hated it more than he hated Stanley taunting him. He hated it more than he hated knowing, with crystalline clarity, that he’d made himself easy to taunt.

Because of Ashley.

“Well, it could be worse,” she said.

“How?”
Roman asked incredulously. “How could it be worse?”

“The tire is
thirteen
years older than me.”

For a second, he couldn’t process what she’d said. The tire. Five years older, thirteen years older—it was the same fucking tire, right? And was she …? She couldn’t actually
think—

“It’s a joke.” Ashley lowered her oversize sunglasses and looked at him over the top, the freckled bridge of her nose wrinkling. “Ha-ha?”

Roman turned away. He couldn’t look at her, because he wanted to shake her.

And fuck her.

And give her a hug.

For crying out loud. She was having a hard time, and he wanted to give her a hug. What was this woman
doing
to him?

“At least tell me you’ve got a jack,” he said, trying to focus on the practical.

Her whole face turned into a wince. “No jack. But listen, I’ve got something better.”

Roman hoped it was a bottle of bourbon.

“Actually, don’t listen. Hang on a second, I’ll show you.”

She turned away and let herself into the trailer.

Roman waited for her to come back. Cars flew past on the interstate, and he let his gaze wander beyond the road to the fallow fields bordering it, a small farm with cows and a couple horses, the woods in the distance.

It looked like Wisconsin. Like home.

But Roman’s home was in Miami. He’d gotten too far away from it, lost himself, and now he was losing his grip.

Was this what it was like to be Ashley? Did she feel this much all the time? Stanley had called him her boyfriend, and it had just about knocked Roman over with … he didn’t even know. Confusion. Anger. Possessive elation. How did people sort all this shit out?

He took another deep breath and tried to find some kind of equilibrium again, but the air he drew into his body tasted like a memory of country roads that slowed down through town and then sped back up, fifty-five miles an hour, a ribbon of clean, undulating asphalt with no end.

His sister, Samantha, behind the wheel. Loud music. Stolen cigarettes.

He missed her. He missed her, and he didn’t want to be here.

Ashley hopped out of the trailer, her sunglasses pushed up on top of her head, a large block of wood cradled in her arms. She took one look at his face and said, “Bear with me. I’m not crazy—this is actually what the manual says to do.”

“What is?”

Ashley squatted down and placed the wood in front of the intact tire in the pair that included the flat. Roman realized it wasn’t a block, it was a ramp—eight inches wide, about six inches high at the tall end, and a good three feet long at the base.

“We roll up onto it,” she said. “And then the other tire is high enough to change.”

That made sense. He could do this. He could focus on the tire, keep his mouth shut, lock it all down until … until it didn’t matter so much. Until later. “I get it. You want to drive or stay back here and signal?”

They both glanced in the direction of the Escalade. Just thinking about Stanley in the front of his truck made Roman’s fists curl again.

“How about I drive?” Ashley asked.

“Good call. Keys are still in there.”

She stepped toward the road at the same moment a semi blew past going much too fast. Without thinking, Roman grabbed a fistful of her T-shirt and hauled her back into his body.

“Hey!” she shrieked. Off balance, she stepped on his foot—by accident, he thought—and then elbowed him in the stomach, hard, on purpose. Roman doubled over, more from the shock of it than the pain.

“What the fuck?”

“You grabbed me!”

“You were walking right into traffic!”

“I was inside the yellow line!”

“That truck was going seventy miles an hour, Ashley. Use your fucking head!”

“I looked both ways, asshole!”

“You’re the one who told me not to go out into the road like that. Now I’m the asshole for trying to keep you safe?”

“No, you’re the
asshole
for
grabbing
me. You scared me!”

“Yeah, well, you scared me, too!”

They were head to head, Ashley twisted around with his hand still fisted in her shirt, her face inches from his, flushed, passionate—and he realized he meant what he’d said.

She’d scared him. She could get killed out here. And that thought made him feel …

Way too much.

It made him feel way too much.

He was trying to get used to it. Talking to Ashley last night, he’d stripped off layer after layer of protection until there wasn’t anything left, and now he had to live like this, exposed and blown all over the place by emotions he’d effectively locked down for years. He was willing to try it for Ashley, but he hadn’t counted on Stanley. He hadn’t guessed he’d have to spend all day with a guy whose idea of fun was searching out Roman’s sensitive spots and poking them with a stick.

It wasn’t until Stanley had made the crack about Ashley that Roman had truly lost his temper. Hearing him say she couldn’t take care of herself—that she was weak and that Roman was playing right into her most self-sabotaging tendencies—it fucked him up to think about it.

Stanley was wrong about her.
Everybody
was, because Ashley wasn’t weak. She was skinny and impulsive, and she cared too much about all the wrong things, but she wasn’t
weak
,
and Roman didn’t get why no one seemed to understand that but him.

He didn’t want to be the only person who saw Ashley Bowman for herself.

Ashley sighed. “You should’ve said something, not yanked on me like that. You can’t manhandle me whenever you feel like it.”

He unlocked his grip on her shirt, but only so he could gather a bigger fistful. When he raised his arm, she rose to her toes, and he pulled her closer until her breasts brushed his chest. “Can’t I?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She blinked. “I don’t—you just
can’t
.”

Slowly, with his forearm still flexed, he pivoted, taking her with him. He walked forward two steps, pushing his hand up to the middle of her back so she had no choice but to stay plastered against him, their legs interlaced. He kept walking—three steps, four—until she ran into the trailer and her chin lifted. Her back arched, breasts straining against the tight fabric of her shirt, flattened against him.

“What do you call that?” he asked.

She squinted up at him. He’d spun her into the sun, and her pupils were pinpricks surrounded by an unnatural blue, her eyelashes burnished gold in the bright light.

“I guess you
can
,” she said quietly. “If you feel like you have to.”

He wanted to kiss her. And shake her. And give her a hug.

He wanted to sink inside her, make love to her until she was trembling and breathing heavy, moaning his name.

He wanted to wrap her in his arms and hold her tight.

“Ashley.” When he lowered his head, it blocked the sun from her face, and her pupils bloomed in slow motion. She inhaled against his chest. In his grip, he felt the sweat-dampened skin of her back. “I have to.”

Her “Okay” was almost a sigh when he brought his mouth down to kiss her.

He wasn’t nice about it. He’d lost whatever filter made nice a possibility. Roman kissed her hard and touched her rough, pushing his free hand underneath her shirt and right up her back, under her bra strap, splaying his fingers wide. He let go of her shirt, got his other palm against her skin, rooting it under her bra, too, until he had both hands full of her breasts and his tongue in
her mouth and he felt, finally, like he could breathe. Like he wasn’t crazy, or at least like the craziness wasn’t inside
him
, because it was located somewhere between them and they could exorcise it if they just kept kissing like this, deep and hot and dirty, with the sun beating down on the back of his head and the smell of hot tar and exhaust making him dizzy.