Unbreakable by Alison Kent Page B

mother had sold sex at Bokeem’s Truck Stop. She hadn’t supported him with her waitressing income and tips after his father had left. And he’d known this the whole time he’d been at Crow Hill High, while she hadn’t had a single clue.
    How many others had known? Boone and Dax? The faculty? God, had his teachers known? His coaches? Her parents? Had Tess and Dave Dalton been aware of the life Casper had lived on Mulberry Street? For all intents and purposes, he’d raised himself, athought that had her chest growing tight around the sadness it contained.
    She couldn’t imagine growing up without her family in her business. Sure, she’d bitched about curfews, and weeknight suppers eaten together at a properly set table, and Sunday mornings at the First Baptist Church. And she’d acted out. Not as far out as Boone had, but still. She’d never felt alone or adrift. She’d had a foundation, a place to feel safe.
    How had Casper lived otherwise, knowing what his mother did, having no father or other family on his side? No Christmas dinner or help with homework or cheering section on the sidelines of the football field. Had that excuse for a home life been at the root of his hell-raising ways?
    She couldn’t blame him, even while finding it impossible to believe she’d never heard any gossip floating through the hallways at school, or in the parking lot of the Dairy Barn after. Especially the way everyone in Crow Hill loved knowing the business of everyone else.
    His revelation about his mother had Faith wondering the same thing Arwen had the other day at lunch—why
hadn’t
he arranged to unload that house? There couldn’t be anything there for him anymore—if there had ever been anything there for him at all. So why the obsession? Why not let it go? And why was she letting the things he’d told her get to her this way?
    That one, out of all the questions swirling in her head, was easy to answer. Thinking about Casper’s high school years kept her from dwelling on what they’d done. His body, her body, their hands and mouths and tangled limbs.
    She’d had sex, not a lot, and not often for a while, but enough to know what she liked, and she had no problem reaching that place on her own. But sex with Casper…
    He’d caught her off guard, unprepared. She had no idea sex could be like that in the real world, without actors playing the parts, or authors creating the words, without fantasies.
    She hadn’t thought herself naive. She and Arwen and Everly didn’t pull punches when talking about sex, or getting what they wanted from a clueless man. But what Casper had shown her…what he’d done with her, to her…
    How was she supposed to process something so far removed from her experience? She was out of her league in
such
a huge way. Even in college, with Jeremy, and Jon—
    No. She wasn’t going to go there. She cut off the thought, reaching for the distraction of the dust cloud coming toward her, and recognizing Casper’s big black dualie as the one causing the stir.
    Her thoughts of the past keeping her heart in her throat, she slowed, pulled from the center of the road to the side to let him pass. But he didn’t pass, obviously recognizing her car, too, and braking a lot faster than she did. His wheels locked up and his truck slid dangerously close to her front door before he straightened to come alongside her.
    They both waited for the air to clear before rolling down their windows. Casper was the first to speak. “If I’d known you were going to come back for more, I would’ve made sure to be here.”
    She stuck out her tongue. “I was dropping off some price lists for Boone. For the party.”
    “Boone doesn’t have any more money than I do. Just buy the cheapest booze and be done with it.”
    “You are such a man.”
    “And you like me that way.”
    She did, but he didn’t have to know it. Or to know how conflictedshe was about this thing they’d started. It couldn’t go anywhere. They were