Where are we going?” I asked as we barreled down the interstate.

“It’s a surprise.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Don’t mmhmm me, lady.” He pinched my leg and I swatted his hand away as I watched Exit 3 pass us by.

“Okay, so we’ve passed Auburn… so it’s not a frat party.”

His eyes cut over at me. “A frat party? Really.” An arrogant smirk flashed over his lips. “Do I look like the frat boy type?”

“Of course not, so”—I looped my arm through his and leaned my head on his shoulder—“where are we going?”

“Patience is a virtue; any preacher’s daughter should know that shit.”

“Wow,” I laughed. “You are just…” Everything I need and want and…

A few minutes later he veered off the interstate, taking a right down a two-lane highway.

“You’ll love it,” he said, tapping his hand over the steering wheel. “At least you better or I’m questioning our friendship.”

Friendship? My heart sank a little, but I shook it off. What does it matter anyway? It doesn’t. “Mmhmm.”

“God, you and that mmhmm.” We turned onto a dirt road, and half a mile down the headlights shone over a large No Trespassing sign nailed to a tree. Noah, of course, drove right past it.

“Um…”

“Yeah?”

I thumbed back toward the sign. “That said No Trespassing.”

“Yup.” There was a slight smile on his face.

“And…”

“I’m illiterate. What did you say it said?”

“Noah!” I slapped his arm, letting my hand linger over his bicep for a second.

“Ah, come on, country girl, don’t tell me you don’t know that anything they tell you not to do is more than worth doing.”

I sank down in the seat. A tingle of a thrill darted up my spine while my conscious whispered to me that this was not a good idea. I glanced over at Noah, all bad-boy smiles and tattoos, and I knew that wherever he was taking me might end with a night in jail, but when you’re with Noah Greyson, well, a night in jail doesn’t seem so bad.

We came to the top of the hill and he put the truck into park, cutting the engine. “Alright.” He grinned while he threw the door open. I watched through the windshield as he rounded the front and came to open my door. Without a word, he grabbed my hand and yanked me out. There was nothing around us but a field and at the bottom of the hill, a string of lights. “What are we—”

He placed a finger on my lips, shushing me. I was tempted to jab my elbow into his ribs, but he threaded his fingers through mine and dragged me to the back of the truck. There was that southern silence surrounding us: the cicadas, a plane humming in the distance. “Alright,” he said, placing his hand on my waist and lifting me into the bed of his truck. “Promise not to scream?”

A nervous laugh slipped through my lips. “Okay, I’m not so sure I like the way this sounds…”

“Nah.” He winked as he hopped over the side of the truck, climbing in and taking a seat next to me. “But really, don’t scream.” He grabbed onto me and pulled me back against his chest.

His fingers went to my hair, brushing through while he hummed in my ear, and just when I closed my eyes and relaxed into him, the roar of the plane grew louder and louder. I tensed, and he squeezed me. “It’s fine.”

The rumbling got so loud, I went to cover my ears and then—whoosh—my hair whipped across my face. The smell of jet fuel permeated the air as the plane whizzed right over us. The red flash of the landing lights danced over the top of the truck before the tires screeched against a runway. Adrenaline shot through me.

“Woohoooo,” Noah shouted. “That’s a rush!” He held me tighter. “Isn’t it? Makes you feel alive?”

“That thing was like a hundred feet above us… if that.” I was still clutching my chest, waiting for my pulse to calm.

“I know,” he said against my ear, excitement dancing in his voice. Most guys get excited over sports cars, money…the fact that living excited him was intoxicating and addictive. I’m not sure I’d ever met a person who simply enjoyed life the way Noah did, and it made me want to be around him. He was infectious in the best way, especially to my worried heart. He made me forget, all the while making me feel things I had never felt before. And that was the first moment where I felt unexpectedly safe in his arms. My chest went tight. Things like that, you just kind of wait for them to fall apart. Careless things never last. And we were careless…

“How did you find this place?” I asked.

“In high school, I worked for some guy that had a house right here. Airport bought it from him. His house used to be”—he pointed behind the truck,—“right there. Paid him like four hundred grand for this little shitshack. He died a happy rich bastard.”

“That’s sad.”

“What, that he died?”

“Yeah.”

“Nah, Cletus—that was his name—he was damn near eighty. He had a grand ole’ time before he died. Last thing he sent me was a postcard from Bali.”

“Bali?”

“Yep, someplace with a bunch of monkeys, evidently it was a bucket list item for him. He crossed off his bucket list from selling this land. You can’t beat that.”

“I don’t guess so.”

“So, what’s on your bucket list?”

“I don’t know…”

He huffed. “Come on.”

“Seriously, I’ve never really thought about it. I guess, going to Paris.”

“Wow. Paris,” he laughed. “How original.”

“Let me guess, yours would be skydiving, swimming with Great Whites, something that could possibly kill you.”

“I mean, the Great White thing sounds pretty fucking amazing.”

I rolled my eyes.

“I want to travel. I want to pay my grandma back for everything she’s done for me. And, you know, Great Whites and skydiving, making millions of dollars, yadda yadda yadda.” An uneasy laugh rumbled from his chest. “Maybe prove to my parents, wherever they are, that they made a mistake.”

“That bothers you,” I said as his hand lazily trailed over my arm.

“I wish it didn’t. I shouldn’t care.”

“How could you not?”

I felt him shrug.

My jaw clenched. It made me angry that not one, but two people could abandon their child. Just up and leave. It made me hurt for him that the people who should have made him feel safe and cherished and loved made him feel like he wasn’t good enough. I sat up and took his hands in mine. “They don’t deserve you.” I shook my head. “I don’t care how bad you say you are, Noah Greyson, you aren’t. You can pretend all you want, say you’re a Tin Man, but you’re a good person, and they don’t deserve so much as a fleeting thought from you.” All I wanted to do was make him believe he was good enough.

A slow smile worked over his lips and he brushed his fingers across my cheek. “I hope no one ever really hurts you because it’ll make you as cynical as me.” A line sank between his brow. “So…Paris, huh?” He leaned back against the side of his truck.

“Yeah, Paris.”

“You want to go because of the Eiffel Tower, because it’s the City of Romance?”

“No, I want to go for the food.”

He laughed, ducking his chin to his chest. “The food.”

“Heck yeah, I’ve heard they have the best food.” Another plane engine fired up, whirring and buzzing as it started down the runway.

“And here I thought I had you figured out.”

“What, you expected me to want to go for the lovey-dovey aspect of it?” I shook my head. “Please, I just want the baguettes and the chocolate.”

“Fair enough. Fair enough.”

“So… you know, maybe if you moved to Australia like you said you wanted to do, far away and all that jazz, then you could dive with the Great Whites—no cage of course— and get picked up by the Discovery Channel, in turn making millions of dollars and yadda yadda yadda. Kill three birds with one stone.”

The rumble of the plane lifting off whooshed over us, the wake blowing my hair across my face. I watched the plane climb with its passengers clearly visible through the tiny bubble windows, and I wondered where they were going, what they were doing.

“I don’t know that Australia sounds like such a good idea anymore,” Noah said.

“Oh, and why’s that?”

He grabbed my face, pulled me toward him, and pressed his lips over mine. “Because I’ve not had near enough of this yet, and I most certainly can’t find this in Australia.” He kissed me again, sweetly. Softly.

Hot air swirled around us when another plane passed overhead. That kiss felt like a promise, one that said I’d never find anyone like him ever again even if I searched the entire world.

It was a little after midnight when he dropped me off with a kiss goodnight. That blissful euphoria of the what might bes, the what could bes buzzed through me like an electric current, but that sense of happiness went out like a match in a thunderstorm the second I stepped inside and found Daddy sitting on the couch with a picture album opened on his lap and his eyes swollen from tears. Reality quickly set in and it made watching planes take off and stolen kisses seem so unimportant.

“Daddy,” I whispered before sitting on the sofa next to him. I put an arm around him and rested my head on his shoulder, breathing in the scent of Polo aftershave that always reminded me of him.

“I’m sorry,” he exhaled. “I just…” He swallowed, staring down at the page with a picture of me, Momma, and Bo putting cookies out for Santa. “I just don’t know how you lose someone that means so much.” His breath hitched. It’s a terrible feeling when someone you love hurts, when you know there’s nothing you can do to make things better. So instead of lying and telling him it would be okay, I said nothing.

“She’s just such a good person, and I don’t…” He took a breath. “I don’t understand why.”

“There is no why, Daddy.”

He shook his head. “Go on to bed, baby girl.”

“I’m fine.” And I sat next to him as he flipped through the album and cried. Sometimes the worst part of losing someone is feeling alone. I didn’t want him to feel alone.