The Sinclair Brothers ✔️

(29) Pot of Honey

Instead of texting Theo how she imagined, Makennah thought it might be best to call. She hid away in her room for a spare moment while her friends clamored down the stairs.

Theo picked up on the third ring. His voice was a little husky. "Good morning."

"Hi um...do you have a full tank of gas?" She asked weirdly. Not how she imagined this going.

He cleared his throat. "What time is it?" He mumbled. She heard a rustling of sheets. He must still be in bed. "I can have a full tank."

Makennah scratched her head. It was now or never. Open or closed. Tell the truth or shy away. "Can you take me to see my mom? It's kind of a drive."

Theo was suddenly alert. "Of course." There wasn't even a hint of doubt in his voice.

She swallowed roughly. "I'm having Grace drop me off. I'm telling Carolynn that we are going shopping. I'll probably be there in twenty minutes."

"Alright, I'll be ready."

Twenty minutes later, after Makennah lied her butt off to Carolynn about shopping and stuffed a hundred bucks in her back pocket that Carolynn insisted she take, Makennah was climbing out of Grace's car. Penny and Meredith were stuffed in the back with their bags. Luckily they chatted amongst themselves and didn't notice her somber mood.

Theo was waiting for her in his driveway, leaning against his Lexus. He waved two fingers at the girls as they peeled away, yelling sexual jokes out the window like the mature high schoolers they were.

"You ready?" He asked, circling the car to open her door for her. Her face must have conveyed how that was weird for her. "What? Don't look at me like that."

"You've never done this before," she said quietly before she ducked inside.

"As I said last night, I'm showing you what it's like to be my girl." Then he shut the door and Makennah could barely breathe. His romanticism and her nervousness did not pair well together. She kind of felt like throwing up. "So where are we going?"

Makennah's mouth watered like she might actually vomit. She swallowed intensely. "Prison."

That didn't even phase him. "What's the address?" He held out his phone like that was all he really cared about. "You're shaking."

Makennah breathed deeply and accepted the phone to punch in the address. "I'm fine." She was shaking. Badly. Her hands trembled so much that she could barely type.

"Kennah." Theo took his phone and then captured her hand. Try as she might, she couldn't stop the shaking even as he tried to soothe her. He lifted her hand to his lips and gently kissed her palm. "It's okay. Nothing that happens today will change my mind about you."

She sighed. At least he recognized that this trip was about to change everything between them. She couldn't take back today and he couldn't unlearn these facts about her life.

"What do you know about me?" Makennah asked quietly as Theo reversed out of the driveway.

"I assume you mean about where you came from?" He asked for clarification purposes.

"Right." She kept her eyes on the road. Maybe if she focused on the facts, she wouldn't be so nervous and shaky.

Theo followed the GPS and merged into traffic on the highway heading north. "I didn't ask and Matt didn't tell."

That was good. That assured her somehow. Makennah could tell him the full first-person truth as the girl who lived to tell it. "I'm a foster child. The Sinclair's are my foster parents. This is my eleventh foster care family. I've also lived in three different girl's homes."