Chapters (44)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Books by Julie Murphy
- Back Ad
- About the Publisher
Waylon Your Queen: Don’t you need some kind of certification to work on people’s cars?
Tucker: It’s not like we’re charging. Think of it like changing your mom’s tire.
Tucker: My dad was a mechanic, so I’ve got everything we could need.
Waylon Your Queen: Have I mentioned how much I dislike manual labor?
Tucker: You can be the beauty. I’ll be the brawn.
Waylon Your Queen: Fine. But we have to wear matching coveralls.
Tucker: Yes, your highness.
Clem steps through my open door, catching me mid-giggle. “What’s so funny?”
My smile falls. “Nothing.”
“We need to talk, Waylon.”
I let out a long groan and bury my head in a pillow.
“I’m tired of this weird, polite silent-but-not-silent treatment you’re giving me. You won’t even yell at me!” She sits down on the corner of my bed. “I’m not leaving until we talk.”
I’m not ready for this conversation. I don’t think I’ll ever be. “So if I say nothing, you won’t abandon me for Georgia?”
She shoves my shoulder. “That’s not fair.”
I close my eyes and inhale deeply, trying not to say something I’ll regret. “What’s not fair, Clem, is that we had a plan.”
“You keep saying, but you had a plan, Waylon. It’s always been your plan. We were supposed to go to Austin Community College to figure out who we wanted to be and what we wanted to do. But I know those things already. I want to go to engineering school, and I got in. Dad has spent his whole life building and fixing things and now I want to learn how all those things work. I want to know the science and reasoning behind it all. Isn’t that great? I know what I want to do and someone is going to let me do it. Can’t you be happy for me?”
My shoulders sink. “Honestly? I’m having a really hard time with that. I’m not sad that you know what you want to do.” Except . . . maybe I am. Maybe Clem knowing what she wants not only makes me feel like a failure, but also deeply lonely. “You could have told me this months ago and I would still have had time to make other plans or at least process this. We’ve been connected at the hip for eighteen years, Clem. If you’re going to pull the rug out from under me, you could at least give me a little more warning. Were you just going to leave one day and call me from the road?”