Page 63
He was forty-six.
She was eighteen.
She had belt scars on her back, nightmares that tore her awake, a raggedy bear named Shadow, and she’d once offered a stranger her mouth in a diner because that was the only language she knew. She deserved the moon. She deserved someone young and unbroken, someone whose hands hadn’t done half the things his had. Someone who could give her light without dragging any darkness behind it.
She deserved better than a forty-six-year-old whose closest relationship in the last ten years had been with an oblivious computer nerd and a flatulent grizzly bear.
The feelings were real. He wasn’t going to lie to himself about that anymore. Something about this girl had cracked open a door he’d welded shut years ago, and the warmth bleeding through it scared the hell out of him. He was going to stand on his side of that threshold and not cross it.
Not ever.
She was a kid. She was hurt. She needed safety, not a man with blood on his hands and a past that would make most therapists quit on the spot.
Platonic. Friendship. Protector. That was the line.
Then Sage made that small, appreciative mmm sound again as she sucked on the cherry lollipop, low and soft and way too pleased with herself. It slid right under his skin and exploded somewhere deep.
Cal’s hands flexed on the steering wheel.
Lord Father, he prayed silently as the truck rolled through the snowy streets, I’m going to need a lot more strength than I originally estimated.
He glanced at her. She smirked at him. He looked away.
A lot more…
He took the long way to Main Street.
No real reason. Just the way the road wound through the edge of the timber, the snow falling soft and steady, the cab warm, and a girl in his passenger seat humming quietly around a cherry lollipop. He wasn’t in any hurry to share this little bubble with the rest of the world.
She’d gone quiet. A good kind of quiet that was so different then the brittle stillness of last night. Just… peaceful. She sat with the lollipop resting against her lower lip, breath fogging a small circle on the window, her fingers tracing lazy patterns through the condensation while she watched the mountains roll by.
Cal glanced over once. The new clothes looked right on her — the black flannel hugging her curves, the long duster hanging open, those boots giving her an extra inch of height. She looked like she belonged here. Like she’d always belonged in this truck, on this road, in this wild, snow-heavy landscape that made everything feel small except the things that really mattered.
Hmmm…things that really mattered.
He turned onto Main Street.
He felt the shift in her before he saw it — the subtle tightening of her posture, the way her hand stilled on the glass. He followed her gaze to the empty stretch of curb three buildings past the hardware store. The mud-colored ’98 Cherokee was gone. It was already at Mack’s garage. He’d arranged for it to be towed early that morning while she was still asleep.
Head gasket. Possibly the block. Bald tires, dead heater core. That Jeep had carried her twelve hundred miles on pure stubbornness and whatever magical grace had kept her moving when everything else had given up.
Sage stared at the empty spot. Her jaw tightened. Something flickered behind her eyes — quick, raw, the kind of loss that meant more than just a vehicle. That Jeep had been her last thread to the life she’d run from… and her only way to keep running.
Then she blinked, squared her shoulders, and looked forward again.
She didn’t say a word. Didn’t need to.
Cal had already watched her make that same choice three times in the last twenty-four hours — to feel the dark thing, set it aside, and keep going. Not denial. Triage. The girl had been triaging her own survival for years, and she was damn good at it.
He let her have the silence.
They pulled into the diner’s gravel lot. The Mary Sue’s sign glowed warm in the front window, fighting back the cold. Snow piled soft on the awning. Inside, the lunch rush was in full swing — bodies, steam, the golden light of a place that had been feeding this town for thirty years.
He parked. Killed the engine.
Sage was already moving before the truck had fully stopped.
She popped out of the cab with a bright, bubbling giggle, boots hitting the ground before he’d even pulled the key free. The long duster flared behind her like a cape as she half-jogged across the lot, determination in every bouncy step. She was a woman on a mission, heading straight for the diner door like she’d die before she let him reach it first.
