Page 18 of Just Ten Seconds

I shake my head. “I just … I don’t like the attention. And I get overwhelmed when I talk about my past.”

He takes a deep breath, and I recognize the flash of understanding in his face. “I remember being dragged to my first meeting by my mother. I wasn’t exactly making the best decisions and needed a place to go where I could talk without hurting myself.”

A wrench tightens on my chest. I can only assume he lost his wife. That means his sweet daughter has experienced the death of a parent at a very young age. I can still picture her curls sticking to her face as the tears gushed down.

“How’s Amanda?” I ask.

He takes a step closer, and the scent of leather inebriates my wits. “She’s good. It’s a fracture. I had no idea what to do. Turns out, there was an angel at the café who helped her flustered father.”

“I didn’t do anything spectacular.”

“Small acts of kindness go far in this world.” He runs a thumb over his lower lip as his eyes roam to the side and back to me in contemplation. “Do you want to grab a coffee?”

My brows rise in surprise. “Coffee?”

A stream of cars drives down the main road, causing wind to push my hair out from behind my ear and whisking the stray hairs across my cheek. I tame it back and look at him, wondering why he’s asking me.

“Or are you sick of coffee from working at the café? I worked at a donut shop in high school, and I’m still sick of ’em.”

“I drink coffee.” I sway my head from side to side as the nighttime chill has me hugging myself. “I don’t think—”

“I’m not proposing marriage. Just a coffee.” His gaze darkens in the moonlight. “Amanda is at a friend’s house, and I could use the conversation. Plus, I think you could use the company too.”

He’s a unique kind of man. A mix of confidence with an earnestness in his words. I might not be the expert on decoding honest men, but he looks you right in the eye while he speaks, and it makes me feel like he is a man of purpose. A man of integrity. It draws me to him like a moth to a flame.

“It’s the least I can do as a thank-you,” he adds, with a hand placed over his heart.

It’s just a coffee. You have coffee with Rita all the time. You can be a normal person and sit with this man for one cup of coffee.

“Sure,” I say and start walking toward my car before I change my mind.

He gives a low whistle and nudges his shoulder in the other direction. “There’s a diner not too far. We can cut through the park.”

I glance over to where he’s nodding. It seems harmless enough … for a serial killer. It’s a small wooded area along the main road with minimal light and the loud chirping of cicadas coming from inside.

I raise my shoulders with the twist of my neck, giving him a questioning glare. “How would you react if a strange man asked Amanda to walk through a dark park?”

“I’d freak the fuck out.” His answer is dead serious.

“Then, why should I go with you?”

He purses his full mouth and considers that question. “Because I’m not a stranger. I’m Dean.”

My shoulders fall with his matter-of-fact tone. “So, you’re not going to dismember me in the woods and leave me to die?”

“I wasn’t planning on it, but the fact that your brain went straight there is a little unnerving.”

“My mother used to say I had an overactive imagination.”

He smiles. A real smile. Not that guarded smirk or the casual grin. “Just like Amanda. Good thing is, I know how to hang with a girl with wild fantasies.” He nods his chin in the direction of the park. “You in?”

I don’t know this man from Adam, and yet I find myself walking with him toward the abyss. The trees in the nearby park are large and intimidating, covering the lights that are trying to brighten the darkened corner.

We walk side by side along the wooded area and listen to the crunch of the leaves beneath our feet. I pull the belt of my coat tighter as we stroll in silence for a few minutes.

“For the record, if Amanda ever followed a man she’d only met once into a park, I’d kill him and ground her. For life.”

“What if she’d met him twice?” I ask, more because I feel like pushing his buttons.