she stayed on my lap, and then when she moved back to the other seat and put her pants back on, I put myself back in my own pants and got ready to drive.
“Where are we going?” she asked once I had the car back on the road.
“To Kate’s,” I answered. “Isn’t that where you want to go?”
“No. I want to go home with you.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I turned the car around and headed for the house in the mountains. It was dark enough that if we went around the other side of the house, she wouldn’t see the surprise that was almost ready for her. I was glad that she wanted to come home with me. I didn’t want to be another night without her. In fact, I never wanted to have another night without her. I was going to text Max when we got to the house and ask him how we could finish all of the last minute things that needed to be completed within the next twenty-four hours. I didn’t want her to go again without seeing it and seeing how much she meant to me.
As soon as I got on the road to the mountains, Brooke reached her hand over to my lap, and I put my hand on hers. She wove her fingers between mine, and I sighed with a huge release that I had been holding in. We drove the rest of the way to the mountain house in the silent darkness as Brooke looked out the window and gazed up at the stars. I opened the skylight in the car, and the farther away from the city we got, the clearer the constellations became until she was able to spot her favorite grouping of stars again. I smiled to myself, knowing that soon, hopefully, she’d be wearing one of those stars on her finger.
When we got to the house, I parked on the other side so that she wouldn’t see her surprise.
22
Chapter Sixteen (Brooke)
I was so conflicted when I woke up in Tim's bed the next morning. What a stupid thing for me to try to test him with in the car. It didn't prove anything. We both wanted each other and making love to him in the car was deliciously satiating. There was no pass or fail with that because we both craved it.
Tim must have already gotten up because when I turned to look, he wasn't beside me. I heard him talking to someone on the phone in the other room. It sounded like it might have been Max, but I couldn't really tell. I got up and got dressed and ready to leave, although I wasn't really sure where I was going since I didn't have a job to go back to. I also wasn't sure what kind of trouble I was in with the legal stuff.
"Good morning," Tim said as he walked back into the bedroom and saw me putting on my clothes."
"Good morning.” I smiled.
He always looked so good in the morning. His messy brown hair was just slightly messier than usual, and it gave him that sexy, disheveled look like he had just come from making love.
"You're not leaving, are you?" he asked.
"Well, I have to go figure out what I need to do about the jail situation, and I also need to figure out some sort of job because I can't expect Kate to let me live at her place for free. But I guess I can't go anywhere until you're ready to take me back to my car."
He smirked. Tim had forgotten that he had driven us here last night and that my car was still parked in the coffee shop parking lot since before the whole assault incident happened. I was his prisoner for lack of a better word.
"Well, the jail situation is resolved," he said.
"No, I don't just mean the bail," I said, still grateful to him for having paid that for me. "I mean the part about Chelsea pressing charges. I heard her say that she was going to, and I heard the cops talking about it on the ride to the precinct."
"I already took care of it this morning," he said with a smile. "Chelsea has agreed to drop all charges against you. There's nothing further that you need to do. Also, she's paying the bail money back to you, so you can give that to Kate for rent if you'd like."
"Wait. What?" My head was spinning. "Did you