stevie | outer banks | JJxOC

56- you're like your mother

It didn't take long for them to hurry into the Twinkie and bolt down to Goat Island on a mission to make it to the cross before the Limbreys and Rafe. With John B driving it didn't take long, however, the tide was coming in, leaving the road with rising water.

John B halted the car, worrying slightly if the Twinkie would make it across the road but was spurred on to keep going by Pope who pointed out the fresh tyre marks, indicating the Limbreys had come this way. "It's looking a little dicey." John B informed the group.

"Yeah, I would agree with you," Stevie said looking out the passenger window equally worried about the survivability.

"Clearly, they made it. No?" Kie asked, wanting John B to risk it.

"In a two-wheel drive, I don't know about that," JJ answered Kie, sitting in the back next to Pope. It relieved some tension that Stevie was sitting in the front next to her brother, with fewer chances for eye contact.

"Why are y'all acting like you not gonna do it anyways?" Sarah laughed. "Like when have you ever done the safe thing?"

Both Stevie and John B turned to look at each other with cheeky suppressed smiles, knowing Sarah was right.

"She's got a point," John B put his hands back on the steering wheel.

"We'll be fine," Stevie used her classic carefree, worry-about-it-later attitude.

"Speed is your friend," JJ used his car knowledge to help and encourage John B, "So, put her down in second and hammer down, brother"

Despite the backseat driving from everyone, John B managed to smoothly drive the car with minimal slippage, only lightly spraying water out from the side of the car. Not wanting to risk losing more time to Rafe and Limbreys, John B parked the van and the Pogues continued on foot.

"Word to the wise, definitely know that gators nest back here," JJ warned the group as he clambered out of the back of the Twinkie, "So keep your eyes peeled, okay? You don't want to be a Pat Womack, her calf was bitten off by a gator"

Yet another one of JJ's crazy rumours, this one Stevie knew not to believe, "That's not true, Pat Womack was injured in a car accident," She replied looking at Kie who agreed.

"Okay, just live in ignorance." JJ held his hands up. Maybe this is why the no Pogue-on-Pogue macking rule was a good idea. JJ and Stevie could not act normally around each other. There was this awknessness on top of the anger that they had for each other all hiding the unresolved love underneath.

Stevie could barely look at him, he looked so beautiful. Stevie loved his silly rumours and that he was hell-bent on believing in them. She hated that she couldn't laugh about them with him.

"Hold on," JJ said as he made it to the edge of the water thinking he saw alligators, "I see something."

"What are you doing?" Kie questioned as JJ squatted down to the edge of the water with a stick in hand. He quickly struck the water, causing ripples to spread out across the surface.

"Right. Wake them up." Sarah said sarcastically, "That's smart"

"I was just making sure it wasn't a gator," JJ tried to argue he was being helpful. "Evie," JJ said as he held out his hand to help her over the gap in the path. But she hit his hand out of the way. She couldn't fall back into the same swing with him, she wouldn't allow it.

"Don't call me Evie," She huffed as she walked on to catch up with Pope leaving him behind her. He hadn't thought his heart could get much more of a beating than it already had. Every single time she pulled further and further away from him his heart reduced in his chest. She hadn't said that since the beginning of the summer when she hated him, before any form of relationship between them, when they were practically strangers within the same group. It had started to feel like that again like they were strangers, but this time they knew too much about each other.