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16

TATE

The roads still aren’t great, and a little bit into the drive, the sky opens up and it starts snowing again. This is the problem with traveling in winter I guess, especially when we’re headed to a small town.

The atmosphere in the car is tense, and it makes me wish we could go a bit faster than the forty miles per hour we’re creeping along the highway with all the other cars full of people with reason to be out here in this weather.

Brynn is riding shotgun. It’s a privilege Callan usually claims when we’re all riding together because he’s so damned big, but everybody had the unspoken agreement that sticking Brynn and Ares next to each other in the back seat would make this drive even worse than it’s already going to be. So Brynn’s next to me. Ares and Callan are silent in the back seat, and when I check the mirror, Ares is buried in his phone while Callan stares out the window.

Woof.

This isn’t ideal for me. There’s something in me that always wants to be a peacekeeper. Whenever tempers flare and people start to get heated, it’s in my nature to turn on the charm and smooth things over. I don’t care for conflict. This issue is over my head somewhat, since it’s so deeply rooted in who Brynn and Ares are and all the shit that happened between them before I knew Ares, but I know we’re not going to make it all the way to Hope Falls with the tension being the way it is.

I turn on the radio, leaving it on low, if only so the silence isn’t so thick.

It only takes a few minutes of whatever Top 40 song is playing for Brynn to start humming along, tapping her fingers against her leg to the beat.

I flash her a smile, taking my eyes off the road for a second to glance her way. She looks more relaxed than she did before, maybe the music or the fact that we’re finally moving toward our destination—and the end of this shaky alliance—putting her at ease.

“Does that just happen every time you hear a song?” I ask her.

She startles, like she didn’t know I could see and hear her. Her cheeks flush a little, and I worry that she’s going to go quiet now, self-conscious. But to my delight, she doesn’t. She just shrugs a little.

“It has to be a song I like, but yeah, I guess. I can’t help it. It’s like… the music gets into me, and I have to interact with it. I’ve always been like that.”

“Is that how you got into music?”

Brynn shrugs again. “If you ask my parents, I was always a musical kid. Singing and tapping out rhythms on things when I wasn’t supposed to be. I used to write poetry when I was younger too. Just little scraps of things that would pop into my head when I was supposed to be doing other things.”

“Like what other things?” I tease. “Homework?”

“Sometimes, yeah.” She smiles a little. “I’d sit down to write a book report and end up with a half-finished poem instead. None of it was very good, but it felt nice to be creating something.”

“It was good,” Ares mutters from the back seat. Brynn and I both look at the rearview mirror in surprise, but Ares is still in the same position, slumped in the back seat with his phone in his face.

Brynn blinks and then looks away, her cheeks darkening slightly.

“Well,” she says. “I guess it paid off.”

“Did you turn those poems into songs?” I want to know.

She laughs a little. “No, none of them were fit for that. I think the first poem I wrote was about not wanting to have pizza for lunch for the fifth time that month. But some of them that were deeper definitely inspired some of my earlier songs.” Brynn looks wistful for a moment before she shakes herself out of it to glance at me. “I don’t think I’ve ever asked what you do.”

“Oh, I’m a chef,” I say.

She perks up at that, looking surprised. “Really? That’s not what I was expecting you to say.”

“What, you pictured some other career for me?”

“I don’t know, maybe. I thought maybe you were in the acting field like—” She cuts herself off. “Or involved with the technical side of it or something.”

“God no. I’d suck at that. I know I’m charming,” I flutter my lashes at her for effect, smiling when she snorts, “but I think I’d get annoyed with people telling me what to do pretty quickly.”

Brynn nods, like that makes sense to her. “So why cooking?”

“I’ve always been good with my hands.” I pause to let her absorb that flirtatious line, and she rolls her eyes a little. “And I’ve always loved food and cooking. It was pretty much the only thing I had a passion for when I was younger, so I understand how it feels to be consumed by something like you were with poetry to music. My grandmother got me in the kitchen with her when I was ten, and I never looked back.”

She looks at me like she’s making this new information fit with what she already knows about me. There’s a new light in her eyes, and I wonder how this is slotting together in her brain. Is she going to think less of me now, or wonder if I’m a part of the toxic culture that usually comes along with professional chefs? I’ve been told more than once that I don’t seem like a chef because I don’t have a massive chip on my shoulder or a near crippling drug habit that keeps me going.