Don't Look / No Promises

Fifteen

Bella

It was 8:37 pm when Edward knocked on the door.

Her dad got there first.

“I don’t want any trouble tonight, you kids hear me?”

“No, sir.” Edward shook his head. He had his hands in his pockets but that was because his knuckle was surely broken from punching that fancy boy right in the face the other night. “It’s an important day.”

“That so?” her father asked, and Bella watched Edward stand up a little straighter.

“My brothers died two years ago,” he said. Plain and simple, but Bella could tell it hurt.

“Yeah, I remember,” her father mumbled. “The Cullen boys.” He looked off over Edward’s shoulder. “Damn shame ‘bout that, son. Damn shame.”

Edward nodded solemnly. “Don’t gotta tell me, Chief.”

“You doing something special?”

“We’re gonna drive up the mountain to pay our respects, sir.”

“Not gonna go crash your car up there, right kid?”

“I like her too much to die.” Edward tilted his head toward Bella, a slight smile on his face. “We won’t do anything drastic, but if you see some smoke, well . . .”

“Don’t come with your sirens,” Bella finished, glaring at her dad.

Her father stared hard at the boy on his porch for a minute before he nodded, his eyes pinching. “Fine. You got three hours. Make it quick.”

Edward grinned big and goofy and grabbed Bella by the hand, dragging her all the way to the car with a manic laugh in his throat. He squashed her into the seat and kissed her silly for a minute before she pushed him away.

“My dad!” she reminded him, shoving him aside.

“Old man likes me,” Edward smiled and gave the house a wave before he rounded the car for his seat. He wrenched the key, slammed the car into gear, and chain smoked up the mountain, singing and laughing and trying to get his hand between her legs all the way. His broken knuckles between her thighs. He’d told her what that boy said about her, why he’d hit the kid so hard and so many times and, even though there was a mean streak in this boy, he was honorable and sweet underneath it all.

She’d tell him tonight, she decided. Even if it scared him off, she had to tell him.  

They stopped on a curve, a big dead pine on the edge with a yellow ribbon tied around it. Bella peered at the tree through the windshield before looking carefully at Edward.

“We’re not really gonna-”

He was nodding.

---

Edward

It was August 17th.

Didn’t feel any different. He still woke up in his bed wanting to kiss the fuck out of the sweet little mouth and then the sweet little crease between the legs of one girl, and one girl alone. Still woke up hard and wanting and thinking of her. He didn’t even remember the day until he was in the shower, beating off to thoughts of Bella. By the time the water ran cold, the only thing he knew was that he wanted Bella, wanted her bad, and he wanted to destroy something.

“What are we going to do to it?” Bella asked him.

“Blow it up.”

“What?”

He’d only shrugged like he wasn’t sure yet, but he knew exactly what he was doing. Last year it had been Jasper’s wall, a half pint of gin, and a sledgehammer. This year, he had a ten gallon jug of gasoline, a book of matches, and Emmett’s tree was fucking doomed.

Bella sat on the hood and smoked a cigarette while he doused the tree, walked an endless circle around it until the can was drained, talking to Emmett the whole entire time. He didn’t even say anything important. Just stupid stuff about this girl he’d found and how he was starting to see the sun again, instead of all the black and gore and muck. About how their mom still made cake on their birthdays and they always ended up tossing half of it because no one had a taste for cake quite like Emmett and with him gone . . .

Edward threw the can at the base of the tree and said his goodbyes in his head, silent and staring, before he turned away.

“I think I love you, Edward Cullen,” Bella said as he approached, tossing her cigarette aside and splaying her legs for him to step between them. “I really think I do.” Her eyes were deep, like she’d been thinking heavy thoughts, and that adorable wrinkle was there between her eyebrows.

“You’re still thinking, doll? I’ve been done thinking for a while now.”

“You’ve known? All this time?”

“I knew from the moment you stole my Bird, baby. I’m pretty well gone for you. Real gone,” he admitted, throat tight.

She looked up from the flame, eyes wide. “How gone?”

“You make my brain slow down and my heart speed up.”

She put a hand to his chest. “Is that all?”

“Lord, no,” he groaned. “Not by a long shot.

“What else?”

You make my mouth dry. My cock hard.”

“I can tell,” she grinned and wiggled against him.

“You first.” He handed her a match and pulled her off the hood.

“What do I do?” she asked.

Edward pulled her close and thanked his lucky fucking bastard stars for this girl who was asking him how, not why. He kissed her good and thorough before he walked her toward the tree, leaning in close to speak low in her ear, with his arm around her shoulders and his heart beating hard enough to make him dizzy.

“Light that little fucker and run, doll. Light it and run.”

The End

Don't Look / No Promises

Fourteen

Bella

Edward spent exactly four hours in a jail cell.

Four hours before Bella tracked him down.

She marched Rose down to her dad’s office and right through his closed door without knocking. He fumbled off a phone call and blinked wildly at his daughter as she asked him how he liked their makeup, the heavy purple shadow they were both sporting. He was confused, poor guy, but only for a moment and he watched in horror as Bella wiped Rose’s face clean. When Rose admitted where the bruises had come from, he stood, silent and staring and shaking his head before walking down that long fluorescent hallway to set Edward free. Bella ran after him.

“Get the hell outta my cell, you stupid little shit.” Her dad grabbed Edward by the shirt, up off the cot, and onto his feet. He was kind of scary when he was in uniform. “No one likes a hero, boy, especially not me. You got some nerve,” he hissed.

“I’m no hero.” Edward shook his head, stumbling to his feet when the Chief dropped him. When her dad turned to look at her with his hands on his hips and his mustache twitching and his hair going grey everywhere now instead of just at the sides, he looked worried.

“You sure about this?” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder at Edward and Bella nodded.

“Yes. He’s important.”

“But stupid,” her dad muttered, turning back on Edward with a pointed finger and Edward had to good sense to flinch a little. “You want her, you stay on the straight, kid. Next time you play the Lone Ranger, I lock you up for real.”

----

It took six weeks for Rose’s face to heal up completely. Six weeks of coverup and ice packs. Six weeks of the three girls all sporting dark purple eyeshadow like it was their new dime or something. Six weeks of bruising up their eyes so that no one would notice Rose’s weren’t faked.

By the time the bruises had finally faded away, the Newton boys were still locked up.

It took nearly as long to convince Edward to let her drive the Bird again.

“C’mon baby,” Bella whined, wriggling in his lap. “I wanna drive her. Far and fast and hard.” She kissed his lips, hoping to convince him with her mouth and her innuendoes and maybe her tits rubbing up against his chin, but he shook his head.

“I’m still paying off the damage from the last time you wanted something like that,” he said.

“I’ll play nice. I promise.” She bit her lip, thinking. “You can tell me if I’m being too mean to her.”

“You know, you’re kinda cute when you’re nice.”

“What about when I’m not nice?”

“Fucking hot,” he grinned, grabbing her hard enough to make her squeal.

“You know what I want?” Bella said some time later when he was groaning into her neck and tugging her hips across his lap, slow and steady.

“Tell me,” he breathed.

“I want you to get me off.”

“Working on it.”

“While I’m driving.” She yanked on the hair at the back of his neck and he hissed as she pulled him off her neck, his eyelids fluttery and his mouth all swollen. He hadn’t shaved in two days and Bella was coated in rugburn. She loved it.

“Then you’ll really crash her,” he laughed.

“No way to know unless we try.”

---

Edward

Edward sat in the middle of the big front seat, his arm slung over the back and around her shoulders while Bella drove. Her hair was splattered across his chest and he had his hand under her skirt and she was breathing hard, blinking fast, knuckles white on the wheel.

“Take a right,” he commanded. Bella pulled them smooth onto the lonely stretch of highway that stretched clear to the reservation on the other side of the mountain. Desolate and pretty damn abandoned most of the time. He clutched her shoulder, pushed aside her panties, and got his fingers just wet enough to pull them free and taste her.

“Edward,” Bella gasped, turning the wheel a little late and veering over the line by a couple solid inches. She stared at his fingers tucked between his teeth. “Edward, maybe this was-”

“Watch the road, baby,” he whispered.

Edward slipped his hand back beneath her clothes and stroked her, keeping one eye on the road and one eye down the neck of her dress. Her legs clamped closed before they opened, her knees spreading and her hips pushing that spot right into his hand. He ground his teeth together as his pants tightened and he pushed her underwear aside again, this girl already dripping all over the seat.

“Fuck it all, babygirl. Fuck it all, except for this.” He meant to say something about her slick heat, her beautiful body, her fucking gorgeous face, but all he really knew right now was that he wanted to get inside this girl and he never wanted to come back out. Usually, girls just threw the door open. They didn’t even invite him in, didn’t say hello, just drug him inside and he always wanted out the moment he stepped foot over their thresholds. This girl though, Bella, he had to work for her. He had to knock, a lot, and yell, a lot, and even then she wouldn’t let him in. He was near ready to kick her damn door down by the time she opened up a little and then he had to coax her along to get over that invisible boundary of yes, yes I want you and no, no you’re not allowed here that blocked her entryway like a wall.

Now that he was in, really in, he didn’t give one single solitary fuck about anything else.

Bella groaned and pushed her hips, pulled him deeper, bit her lip, and let her hands go slack on the wheel.

“Hey, you’re driving us here, remember? You got a job to do.”

“I-” she stuttered, holding on a little tighter. “You’re making, making me, making it-”

“Making it what?”

“Impossible,” she exhaled, shuddering as he ran the pads of his fingers around every slippery inch of her. He pulled his fingers out again and pushed them up through her folds, through the slick, tugging her between his knuckles and groaning when she swerved again.

“Brakes, doll. Brakes,” he said and she lifted that shaky leg and he put a hand down on her knee to help her slow the Bird. Edward dropped to his chest on the seat and hooked his chin over her thigh. Dug his fingers in a little more and flicked his tongue out over her. She squealed and writhed and said his name at least twelve times before he stopped counting. Before he stopped licking or teasing and shoving one, two, three fingers into her and squashing that little nub of magic up there with his thumb. Before she threw her head back and came close to ripping his hair right out of his scalp.

He took her to the arcade afterward, a pocket full of pennies rattling at his thigh as he followed her around, helping her win. Giving her one or two or five coins at a time, slinging the last balls, hitting the last shots, winning her the prizes, but letting her pick.

He was lounging in the shade with a lemonade and the stuffed bear he’d won her six stalls down when that Teddy fucker, James, strolled by.

“Edward.” James stopped.

Edward tilted his chin, but didn’t say anything. James walked over anyway.

“Haven’t seen you ‘round at all. Find something to keep you busy this summer?”

Bella squealed.

She was across the way trying to toss ping pong balls into weighted cups and Edward was surprised she’d managed to win but, judging from her jumping and her clapping and the fish in a bag the gamekeeper handed over, she had. James lifted both brows and looked back at Edward.

“Saw you with that Dolly at the flicks the other night. I’m surprised you went all the way to the slums to find a girl. You could have just taken your pick from the meadow, the girls at school are all aflutter over you.”

“Fucking Judies,” Edward muttered. “You can have ‘em.”

“There’s something intriguing about low girls, though, isn’t there?” James asked, squinting at Bella.

“Low?” Edward didn’t like the sound of that.

“You know,” James drawled. “Low morals. Low intellect. Low standards.”

Edward swung. Sure and fast and straight into that Teddy fucker’s mouth. All he could hear was the Chief telling him not to be a damn ranger, but surely he’d forgive this. A brawl over his daughter’s virtue, her honor, surely he would. At least Edward hoped so, because he was gonna make this kid beg.

James crumpled. Crying and squirming and holding his face and Bella was beside Edward, tugging on his arm. Edward gave James one last solid kick to the ribs and spit in the dust an inch shy of the kid’s bloody nose.

“You so much as look at her sideways, I’ll show you low,” Edward growled and let his girl haul him off before he broke any more bones.

Next

Don't Look / No Promises

THIRTEEN

Bella

It took four rocks to get Rose to the window.

“Bella?” she leaned out, peering through the dark. Bella stepped into the light a little.

“Alice with you?” Rose nodded and Bella gave her the well, come on then head shake toward the street before she slipped back into the shadows. The girls came running down the darkened driveway ten minutes later, all giggles and holding hands until they saw the Thunderbird. They faltered, stopped completely, almost turned around, glancing at each other until Bella flung open the door to the back seat and waved them on. Rose crawled in first, then Alice, and Edward rolled the car clear down the hill before he pounded on the gas, the sudden angry growl from the engine sending all three girls in the back seat into a fit of fresh giggles.

Alice gave Bella a kiss right on the mouth and Rose handed her a bottle of something rose- colored and wickedly sweet, sweet enough to make Bella’s teeth ache.

“Something happened today,” she said, sounding ominous and braver than she really was.

“Newton and his boys. They got a lesson in manners.” Bella smiled.

“A lesson?” Rose asked. Alice was just staring at Bella with her mouth clamped tight to hold back a grin, because she probably knew exactly what Bella meant.

“A lesson,” Bella said, nodding

“An eye for an eye kind of lesson,” Edward spoke from the front.

“You didn’t!” Rose exhaled at the same moment Alice squealed, “You did it!”

Edward nodded and turned them sharp onto a back street, deep at the edge of town. Rose fumbled for Bella’s hand in the dark and Bella held her tight.

“I was gonna say, you look like you fell into a pile of fists.” Alice peered at Edward, his busted lip and that eyebrow that definitely needed the stitches he was still refusing.

“Hey, I gave better than I got,” Edward muttered.

“I’ll bet,” Alice laughed, launching to her feet and flinging herself across the seat to wrap her arms around him. “Thank you,” she said.

“No sweat, babe. I got your back.” He patted her arms with one hand and even from the back, Bella could tell he was smiling despite that lip.

“Stop the car.” Bella put her hand on Edward’s shoulder and he pulled the Bird up short beside a sleek white Roadmaster.                   

“This it?” he asked, glancing back over his shoulder at her.

“This is it.”

“I’ll wait.”

Bella shook her head, but he shook his right back.

“I’ll wait,” he repeated.

Rose was staring out the window at the white Buick, a pretty hard top, while Alice was staring at the exchange between Bella and Edward, her eyes darting back and forth between them.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

Bella grinned. “We have a car to lift, girls.”

They got it open in record time. Guess it wasn’t something that got lost even if was left forgotten for too long. Not something you exactly grew out of. Edward waited until Bella had the car revving before he slunk away, the growl of his engine finally roaring to life a block away and Bella jetted off toward the mountain, slipping easily out of town. Rose leaned over the back seat to wrap her arms around Bella, put a kiss on her cheek and mess up her hair.

“Missed you,” she said, before flopping back.

“Sounds like you’ve been having fun.” Alice grinned from beside her and Bella shook her head. Between the parking lot and the movies, the public spectacle she made of herself and then the boy in the tailored jacket printed houndstooth and the funny striped socks at the soda fountain, the one that called her Dolly . . .

“Today was the strangest day ever,” Bella said. “You won’t even believe it.”

---

Edward

There was a cop car in front of the garage when Edward pulled up.

He’d driven around aimlessly for a little while after he left the girls in that Roadie. Bella picked just fine, great even, when she tapped that car. It was a new model, which these days meant air conditioning and power windshield wipers. He ended up at the shop because he had nowhere better to go and recognized the cruiser immediately. Edward took his time going in, finished his smoke and then lighting another one, glaring at that car and wondering what was gonna happen just beyond that door there. He stubbed the second smoke out with his boot and grumbled all the way inside.

“Ed.” Jacob leapt to his feet, face ashen. Edward put a hand out to still his friend and looked right at Bella’s old man.

“Mr. Swan.”

“That’s Chief, son.” The older man extended his hand and Edward figured that was a damn good sign, this guy wanting to shake his hand first, so he shook it back, nice and firm and steady.

“What brings you down, Chief? That cruiser out there not runnin’ so smooth?”

“Not here about that, kid. Sit down.”

No handshake was gonna make those words sound any better than ever before. Edward sat and Jacob sat and the Chief sat after them, rubbing his hands on his knees.

“Seems the Newton boys saw a bit of trouble this afternoon. Know anything about that?” Chief asked.

“Yes, sir,” Edward said and Jacob shot him a stricken look, shaking his head frantically.

“You do?” Chief sounded surprised.

Edward nodded. “It was me.”

“You?”

Edward nodded.

“Just you?” Chief squinted at him.

He nodded again.

“Sixteen of them.” Chief squinted harder. “You,” he said flatly.

Edward nodded again. He wasn’t about to give up his boys, no fucking way, and he knew better than to bring the girls into it either. Some high school punks were one thing, but the real world was another. Most folk looked down on girls like that and wouldn’t give one raw fuck what happened to them, be it a fist or a boot or a gun. He was keeping this one all to himself.

“You lying to me, boy?”

Edward shook his head and the Chief sighed, shaking his own as he stood and fumbled with the  cuffs at his belt.

“Damn, kid. Was starting to think you were smart there for a minute, your dating my daughter and all, but you just went and proved me wrong.”

Next

Don't Look / No Promises

TWELVE

Bella

Dusk. The sky frosted pink around the edges and the fireflies out and the sun slipped away, the moon in its place.

That was Bella’s favorite time of day.  

The Bird was pulled into the last row at the drive-in, way back by the trees, the big white screen kind of small from this far away and the sound running slow, the actors’ lips one step ahead or twelve steps behind. The speaker was scratchy and warped, the voices droning loud and then soft and then loud all over again, but it didn’t even matter. Bella didn’t even know what movie they were watching. She didn’t even care and couldn’t even be bothered by the fact that she was wasting a whole entire dollar on her ticket.

Who cared about a movie when Edward Cullen had his hands up your skirt and your fingers were in his mouth?

Not her.

Not by a long shot.

He’d beat up Newton in a parking lot across town an hour ago and he looked a little worse for wear, but he was still the handsomest boy she had ever laid eyes on. The swollen lip and the busted eyebrow only made him look a bit more dangerous, and he looked dangerous enough most of the time as it was. He’d ditched the bloody t-shirt, used it to clean up his face, the thinning beater beneath doing very very little to help her keep her hands to herself. Watching him walk toward her through that brawl, through the blood and the beatings like he was some golden angel of war, made her feel a little bad that she hadn’t been back to church in so long.

Maybe God was trying to send her a message, this boy bursting through battle like he was bulletproof or something.

It seemed that her little stunt in the parking lot made her a bit more alluring too. Edward had barely taken his eyes off her since, pulling her to the middle of the seat when they drove away and paying for movie tickets with one hand, barely parking before he launched himself at her, advertisements for candy playing in the background while he breathed into her neck and dug beneath her underwear.

“I want inside,” he whispered. His voice came ragged and rushed and he was already pawing at her clothing, panting down her neck, but there were people everywhere, milling around between the cars and darting off toward the soda fountain that also sold hot dogs and snow cones, which meant they’d get caught.

Surely they’d get caught.

“No. No, we can’t.” She tried to shove his hands away but he was persistent and his mouth felt so good up against hers and he was fingering the folds between her legs like he was playing Mozart and she was just the piano. She gripped the collar of his shirt and tried to focus.

“We can. We should. I want it,” he panted, tucking his slippery fingers deeper. “You want it.”

“I can’t get caught. My dad. The guns,” she reminded him.

“I won’t get you caught,” he groaned.

“You will. You’re loud.”

“You’re loud.” He pulled away, his face accusing.

“That’s your fault,” she said and he instantly smirked.

“I’ll control myself.”

“Yeah, right,” she scoffed.

“Don’t trust me yet, doll? I ain’t ever done you wrong.” He still had his fingers buried and she was still clutching his shirt collar and she still hadn’t had her fill of this boy. Maybe she never would.

“If we do this, you have to help me with something later,” she said.

“Anything.”

“Anything?”

He nodded.

“You don’t even know what I want yet. It could be dangerous, it could be ridiculous, how can you just agree like that?”

“You’re underestimating.” Now he was shaking his head instead of nodding it.

“Underestimating what?”

“Me,” he said. “The deplorable things I would do for you.” He pinched her viciously, hard and fast at the very top of the slippery slide between her legs and her whole body shivered. “All you gotta do is ask.”  

Edward pulled away, withdrew his wet mouth and his slick fingers and sat back behind the wheel again. She’d messed his hair all up, flopping forward into his face and he slicked it back with both hands, his chest heaving. He caught his lip between his teeth as he started to unbuckle his belt, peeked sly at her a few times, then opened his pants and shoved them down his legs.

C’mere. Come sit on my lap.” He grinned at her, all sex and sneakiness because no one had any idea this boy was sitting there with his pants undone and his dick in his hand like it was nothing, just nothing, to do this in public. Bella flushed bright tomato red, hoping he couldn’t see it in the dark, but the far off lights were bright enough that she could see his bruises and they probably weren’t hiding her blush either.

It was obvious by now that he could talk her into anything.

She edged closer, a little panicky but really really turned on, really, and tried to straddle him, but he stopped her.

“We’re watching a movie, remember?” He winked at her and pointed at the faraway screen with the black and white faces flashing back and forth and back and she didn’t care at all about that damn movie, but she did what he said. Turned to face the screen, draped her legs over his and pressed her bare toes into his boots, his palms under her helping her settle on top of him. He sighed when she hit, rushed his hands up to her tits, and licked her neck.

“Hands on the wheel, doll. Hold on tight.”

---

Edward

She was wearing white. White patterned with tiny little black hearts and it almost did him in, this dress. It hugged every curve and fell right off her shoulders and poofed out in his lap like he was really sitting on a cloud and he had to push it aside to even see her ass pressed snug up against his stomach. Her knuckles were just as pale around the wheel and her breath was coming slow and shallow, but he wasn’t even moving. Not at all. Just sitting there using a good grip on her hip bones to pull her deep and then push her away. Tug her back and then slide her off. Smooth and slow, really fucking slow, so slow it would be hard to tell unless you watched, really watched, and watched for a while because the car wasn’t shaking, just his insides.

Bella squirmed a hand between his thighs and fingered his balls.

He jerked. Thrust. Hard. It was unintentional, a reaction, but fuck, a reaction felt good. He’d only told her to do that a few days ago, the ball thing. She’d been on her knees in the grass and he’d been lounging flat on his back on the seat of the Bird with her mouth wrapped around him and his fingers tangled in her hair. She drug her nose and her lips wet and slick clear down to the base of him and just her breath, just her breathing on him, it had him writhing. He tried to say yes, yes baby, yes, yes please, yes thank you, but he could just pant her name. She must have gotten the message, because his balls were in her mouth and her fist was pumping his cock and the next thing he knew, he was painting his own chest with his spunk.

Edward put his hand firm on the small of Bella’s back and she groaned. Loud.

“Quiet,” he warned, pressing down harder on her clit. She mumbled something and pushed herself upright, rocking her hips against his lap in a languid spiral. He wrapped his arm around her waist, burrowing beneath the fabric on a blind hunt for her slit and when he found it, finally, she fell forward against the steering wheel, more groaning, even louder. Edward pulled her off the wheel and slipped his hand over her mouth, his chest hammering up against her back and the shell of her ear right there at his mouth.

He pushed up, pushed forward, pushed deeper, and hummed in her ear. “Look at you... so fucking naughty, sitting on my dick in the middle of all these people,” he whispered. “I’ve ruined you.”

He sent her off for an ice cream afterward. Postcoital sweet tooth. Watched her run between the cars with her ponytail bouncing and that dress of hers kind of crumpled in the back from his hands. She was the fucking cutest thing around by far, for miles, clear to the sea and then even beyond that. Maybe the cutest thing on the whole entire planet and she’d been on him just moments ago. Him.

Him.

What a lucky bastard . . .

Edward lit a cigarette and it only took him thirty seconds but, when he looked back for her, the vermin had already struck. He was leaning up against the counter with his face too close to Bella and his hands just itching to touch her, Edward knew it.

Twitchy fingers, that Teddy boy.

Edward recognized him from the hallways at school, one of the upper echelon that crowded around their lockers and looked down on everyone who walked by. Money kids. They wore patterned socks and rolled their corduroys up around their ankles to show them off. Bow ties and pocket watches and big thick rimmed glasses, even when they didn’t need them, and they didn’t even drink. Stone cold sober, quoting dead dudes, but they didn’t even read Salinger. Edward didn’t read much, but that just seemed like blasphemy, ditching J.D. for Archimedes, picking Plato over Vonnegut. Edward usually had a greasy rag in his back pocket but these kids used embroidered handkerchiefs and they didn’t need those suspenders like he did either, their tailoring affordable instead of luxurious.

“What he say to you?” Edward asked when Bella plopped back into the Bird and handed him a dripping cone.

“Nothing really,” Bella shrugged, licking her ice cream, that pretty pink tongue flashing him.

“No, really. What did he say?”

Bella looked at him with a sharp face. “He asked my name and if I went to Public.” Her frown slipped suddenly, a sly grin crossing her face. “Why, Edward Cullen, are you jealous?”

“I got nothing to worry about,” he grumbled, licking his own cone.

When they pulled out of their spot a few minutes later, just before the end credits rolled, to miss the rush, that Teddy was standing under a light by the soda fountain, leaning up against a pole with a smug look on his face, watching as they drove by.

Next