Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

The road stretched out endlessly in front of me. Why had no one warned me that middle America was barely anything but cornfields and long, flat stretches of road? I hadn't even hit traffic since leaving Kansas City. Normally, I wouldn't have complained about that, but it might have been soothing to know that other people still existed. Every time I saw a lone car, I let out a sigh of relief.

It was a problem of my own making.

Two weeks ago, I decided not to fly to a convention in Kansas City, Missouri. My bosses' had all tried to encourage me to book the flight, but they hadn't warned me about how boring the drive would be. I was too focused on the idea of a road trip, seeing the country from my car window. I thought about different places I could stop off, places I'd never visited. Unfortunately, I'd not considered the distance between these places.

Mainly, I'd wanted to see Nashville and St. Louis, both of which I'd visited briefly on my drive the week before. Now, I just wanted to get home. Too bad I couldn't just leave my car behind and catch a plane, but that would be impractical. I looked at my GPS and sighed.

I'd only been on the road for two hours. It felt like longer.

I turned up my music and decided I would find a rest stop soon. Stretch.

Soon turned into two hours, because the truck stop I'd chosen to stop at reminded me of something out of one of the creepy post-apocalyptic video games my little brother, Ryan, liked to play. There was no way I was going in there.

The truck stop I ended up at was pretty basic. There were magnets in the shape of Missouri and hot dogs on a warmer that looked like they'd seen better days. A few truckers sat at a table in the Subway attached to the truck stop, talking over foot longs. My stomach grumbled, and between the choice of a sandwich or leathery hot dogs, the sandwich won. It was better than my original plan of hitting a drive thru for lunch and eating while I drove. It meant a break from the roads.

Thirty minutes later, I was back in my car, listening to a driving mix Ryan had created for me. Ten minutes later, I felt like my eyes were glazing over. How was it possible for a road to be this flat, for scenery to be this dull? Missouri had to end sometime, right? When I saw a sign for St. Louis less than fifteen minutes later, I began to get excited.

Finally, civilization.

That was when I saw him. A figure in the distance, arm out as he walked backward down the road. He was dragging a wheeled suitcase, and as I got closer, I could see the straps of a backpack. I could practically hear Ryan cautioning me about serial killers. Logically, I knew the mental voice of my younger brother was probably right. I should drive on, past the man's outstretched arm. I could leave him for the next person. Except I hadn't seen another car since right after I'd left the truck stop.

I sighed as I hit my caution lights and rolled down the passenger side window.

He looked confused for a moment as I slowed to a stop beside him. Then he smiled, and I forgot every bit of worry I had about pulling over. His smile was breathtaking. His entire face was: dark brown hair fell into eyes that I couldn't tell if they were blue or gray, perfectly straight teeth, and an angular chin that brought to mind some kind of fantasy elf. He leaned against the rolled down window.

"Hey." His voice was deep, the kind of voice I heard in my dirtiest dreams.

Was he some kind of hallucination? Because there was no way I had stumbled upon a manifestation of my wet dreams on a stretch of road in Missouri of all places. That was just statistically impossible.

I realized I probably needed to stop staring at him and greet him. Otherwise, why had I stopped? "Where are you headed?" That seemed like a normal question to ask a hitchhiker.

"East," he told me vaguely. "What about you?"

"The coast." I didn't want to give him too much information, not if he wasn't giving me a lot. Except it felt weird, only answering vaguely like that. The coast was a big place. Maybe not quite as big as ‘east', but still… What if he was heading east as in New York? I clearly wasn't built to be playing games. "South Carolina."

"Really?"

I nodded and hit the unlock button. "Meaning I can take you about anywhere from here to there. Wherever will get you close to your mysterious ‘east'."

He opened the back door and put in his suitcase and backpack. A few moments later, he was sitting next to me, buckled into the passenger seat. I forced myself to focus on the road as I drove off, not on the man next to me. I was doing a stranger a favor. He didn't need me leering at him while I committed him to memory.

We drove in near silence to St. Louis, with only the sound of the music to keep it from becoming too awkward. I wondered if I should offer him the aux cord, but what if he had terrible taste in music? Besides, I was driving, and my family had always had the rule of ‘driver picks the music'.

When we hit traffic in St. Louis, the silence began to grow deafening. I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, unsure how to break it. I could feel his eyes on me after a few moments. I snuck a glance and watched him turn his head toward the window quickly, faint color coming to his cheeks. I took that as a good sign. Clearly he wasn't planning my murder or anything, or he wouldn't be blushing.

"So, why were you hitchhiking?" I asked after another few moments. I had to start some kind of conversation, right? We couldn't just drive in silence for the next fourteen or so hours, depending on how far he needed me to take him.

"My car broke down a few miles back," he answered, turning to face me. He looked relaxed, the complete opposite of how I'd be feeling if my car broke down while I was driving in the most boring state to ever exist. "So I figured I'd get someone to drive me to St. Louis. Catch a bus there or something."

"You probably should have said something if you only needed a ride to St. Louis," I pointed out.

"Yeah, but I'm going to South Carolina, and you're going to South Carolina…" He shrugged, like it was obvious. "I get that it's a big state, but I can probably call a friend to come get me from somewhere in South Carolina. Easier than asking them to come get me from bum fuck Missouri." I couldn't help myself. I let out a loud bark of laughter. Bum fuck Missouri? What the hell did that even mean? "I mean you don't have to take me all the way to South Carolina. I know that's a pretty long ride with a stranger. If it's too big of an ask, you can just drop me at the next major city and I'll catch a bus from there."

"I'm good with taking you to South Carolina." I looked at the GPS. "Assuming you're okay with the fact that I was planning on grabbing a hotel tonight. No way can I do seventeen hours in one stretch."

I was thinking about either Kentucky or Tennessee. I'd learned my lesson about getting a hotel in Illinois, which I'd done on the way to Missouri. The motel I'd stayed in looked like it hadn't been updated in years, and the front desk clerk had seemed shocked to see someone checking in late at night and alone. Judging by the sounds I heard through the paper thin walls, he probably was. The whole place gave me the vibe of a place that charged by the hour. On my way to the ice machine, I'd seen some really suspicious guys hanging by a car. I kept my head down, got my ice, and practically ran back to my room.

No way was I repeating that experience again.

"If we're going to be sharing a room, I might be more comfortable if I had your name," the stranger in my passenger seat commented. "Plus it might make this whole trip a lot less uncomfortable."

So it was weird for him too? That was a relief. Somehow, hearing him say that relaxed me a bit. "Jasper," I told him. "My name's Jasper. What's yours?"

"Callum."

"Where are you from, Callum?"

"California. I was doing the whole drive across the country thing, until my car decided to take a shit on me. I got it to a mechanic, but from how they were talking, the repairs would cost more than it was worth. So I figured I'd cut my losses. He offered me some cash for the car, and well, here I am."

"What's bringing you to South Carolina?"

"I've got some friends out there. Figured I'd pay them a visit." He said it like it was just a normal whim to follow. "Not like I had a lot else going on." I raised an eyebrow toward him as we inched forward. "Lost my job a few weeks ago. My friend, he works for some big tech company, and he suggested I come check out the town. See if I liked it. So I might be moving out east."

"And you thought driving there was the best idea?"

"I don't like planes," he admitted, shifting in his seat. "Being closed up like that with a bunch of strangers in a death machine? No thank you. What brought you out… here? I'm not actually sure where you started."

"Kansas City," I supplied. "I had to go to a convention for work. My boss told me to fly there, but I figured a quick road trip might be nice. See some places I'd never seen before." I paused. I could feel the smile playing at my lips. "Unfortunately, no one warned me that the area between those places? Boring as hell."

"Where were you wanting to see?"

"Nashville and St. Louis, honestly. I wanted to see the arch, and there's just a lot of music history in Nashville. Ended up staying there a bit longer than I planned, so I didn't make it quite as far into Illinois as planned before I needed to pass out for the night."

"What all did you see in Nashville?"

I started talking about the few hours I'd spent in Nashville. I told him about the Parthenon there, and he asked if I liked Greek mythology and my favorite stories. When I mentioned visiting the Musician's Hall of Fame, he asked questions about my music taste and shared a bit of his with me. It turned out, we had similar tastes in music. Which took away the nerves that maybe I should have been sharing the aux cords. As we drove deeper into Illinois, Callum felt like less of a stranger. He was a great conversationalist, and I was beginning to feel at ease around him.

"Did you see anything cool driving over from California?"

He started talking about a few things he'd seen. He'd been on the road for almost a week already, taking his time and exploring things that caught his interest. He pulled out his phone and started to show me a picture of him at some cheesy ghost town he'd visited before I reminded him that I was driving. Listening to him talk, I no longer minded the fact that we were driving through another boring stretch of road.

Because Illinois was just as boring as Missouri.

After an hour of conversation, he started putting some of his favorite songs into the queue. There were a few I'd never heard, and the ones I liked, I asked him to like for me so I could listen to them again later. There were some that were already on my favorites list, and that lead to other avenues of conversation. We discovered that we were both big Fall Out Boy fans, and he told me about all the times he'd seen them live in concert.

I was hanging on his every word, especially when he began transitioning into other concerts he'd seen and music festivals he'd attended.

"You've gone to a lot of shows," I muttered as he finished talking about a festival he'd gone to in Palm Desert.

"I take it you haven't?"

"I've been to a few, but nowhere near as many as you've been to."

Which got us talking about my favorite concert I'd ever been to. It was at a small bar in King's Bay, The Rusty Nail, and my ex-boyfriend had been the drummer for this local band. We'd still been together at the time, and while there'd been only about fifty people there, the energy had been great. I'd loved watching him on that stage, chasing his dreams.

"Wait, boyfriend?" Callum's words came just as I finished the story and set off the first alarm bell I'd had since I'd picked him up.

"Yes." I tried to keep my voice from being too firm. Just because he questioned the boyfriend thing didn't mean that he had some kind of negative thoughts about a guy having a boyfriend.

I still felt like I was holding my breath until he answered. "Cool. My ex-boyfriend wasn't anywhere near as cool."

I exhaled. Okay, I wasn't about to be hate crimed in my own car, but I did notice that the feeling of him looking at me lingered a bit more as we drove.

I also noticed a bit of tension that hadn't been there before.

Maybe it was all in my head.