Chapter Four
~ Josiah ~
I took the last turn off the mountain highway with my pulse beating in my palms, the way it used to when I was seventeen and sneaking out to race up and down the county line road.
McKenzie River welcomed us like a punch in the gut—same tired strip of gas stations and antique stores, same blue haze curling off the valley from woodstoves lighting up for the night.
The sun hung low and mean, gold leaking between the black spines of the fir trees. I rolled down the window, let the cold cut the last of the road grit out of my lungs.
Bo didn’t say a word the whole last ten miles.
He sat folded into the passenger seat, boots on the dash, cheek pressed to the window.
If I didn’t know better, I’d have said he was asleep, but I caught him watching me through the glass every time we hit a patch of slow traffic—like he was waiting for me to flinch, to change course, to hand him back over to the next disaster.
Instead, I kept driving, steady as a metronome.
When we reached the first proper intersection, the natural thing would have been to bank right and take the long road out to the McKenzie farm, where the promise of a hot meal and a night on the couch would have gotten Bo halfway to recovery before sunrise.
I didn’t do that. I hung a hard left, cut through the side streets, and nosed the truck up the hill toward my place.
Bo lifted his head, wary. “We not doing the family reunion thing?”
“Not tonight,” I replied.
He watched me, then the town outside—nothing but dark porches and the green blink of a traffic signal at a crossroads nobody used after six. “Where we going, then?”
I didn’t answer until the truck rounded the last curve and the old shop came into view: three stories of battered brick, “MOXLEY’S GARAGE” painted in silver block letters across the broad side, half the bulbs on the sign burned out.
A pair of ancient oaks flanked the lot like bouncers. There was nobody parked out front except a battered F-150 and the rusted-out Impala I’d been “fixing” for the better part of a decade.
Bo huffed a soft laugh. “Didn’t even know you lived here. I thought you lived with your Ma.”
“That’s because you never stayed put long enough to ask,” I said, shutting off the ignition.
He didn’t argue. Just peeled himself out of the seat with a wince, left hand clamped over the spot on his ribs where the worst bruise was blossoming.
I went around to the passenger side, met him as he slid down from the cab. My hand found his elbow on instinct, not forceful, but not letting him wobble, either.
For a second, we stood there, the silence stretching.
“You can let go,” he said, and it wasn’t defiant, more like he just needed to say it.
“I’ll decide when you’re steady.” I left my grip for one more heartbeat, then dropped it.
He glared, but there wasn’t any heat behind it. Just that endless, tired hunger that never left his eyes.
I led the way around the side of the shop, to the back door that doubled as the entrance to the apartment above. The exterior stairwell creaked under our weight; every step up was a test of whether the old lumber would hold, but it always did, same as me.
Halfway up, Bo stopped and looked through the wire-reinforced window into the garage below. “Holy shit,” he muttered. “You got a goddamn museum in there.”
He wasn’t wrong. The floor was laid out like a surgeon’s table: tool chests lined up military straight, every lift and bench scrubbed down, everything with its own place. The bikes—my bikes—sat in a row, polished to mirror shine even in the low light, like they were waiting for the next world war.
“Don’t touch anything unless you can put it back better than you found it,” I said.
He gave a crooked smile. “Maybe I’ll tag the bathroom. Just to keep it humble.”
We kept climbing. At the landing, I unlocked the door—thick wood, reinforced hinges, good deadbolt. Bo shuffled in behind me, blinking like a man surfacing from a cave.
The loft wasn’t much, but it was mine: open beams, high ceilings, kitchen to the left, living space straight ahead.
The furniture was a mix of leather and thrift, but every surface was clean, the rugs vacuumed in straight lines, the counter clear except for a couple bills and my keys.
Big windows looked out over the valley; I liked waking up to the fog boiling off the river in the morning.
Bo stood in the entry, uncertain. “You want me to take my boots off or is this a shoes-on kind of cult?”
I jerked my chin toward the hooks by the door. “Leave ’em. You’re not bleeding on my floors, are you?”
He checked his hands, the knuckles scabbed and healing. “Not today.”
I moved past him, flicked on the lights. The place warmed up instantly, yellow bulbs turning the cold dusk into something softer.
Bo wandered into the living room, eyeing the bookshelves and the walls, which I’d lined with old shop calendars, a few abstract paintings, and two framed photos: one of me and my dad, elbows deep in a ’69 Charger, and the other of my first dog, Bandit, grinning with a socket wrench in his mouth.
“Nice digs,” Bo said, but I could tell he was trying to see if there was any trace of someone else—a girlfriend, a roommate, a secret family. There wasn’t. Just me, my mess, and whatever I could fix with my own two hands.
I watched him limping a little, the effort it took not to favor his bad side. He was proud, but the way he kept looking to see if I’d noticed told me everything.
I grabbed a chair from the kitchen and set it near the window. “Sit,” I said. “You look like you’re about to collapse.”
He obeyed, but made a show of doing it his way—sitting sideways, one knee hooked over the arm, like he was afraid the chair might bite if he got too close.
I watched him for a minute. The light from the window caught the fading bruises on his face, the yellow and purple leaking down his neck like watercolor.
He wasn’t pretty, not in the way people meant when they said the word, but he had a kind of raw, cut-glass beauty that was hard to look away from.
Especially when he was hurting.
I walked to the kitchen, grabbed two glasses, and poured water from the Brita pitcher. “Want something stronger?” I offered, nodding toward the bottle of Jameson by the sink.
Bo shook his head. “Just water. Head’s still spinning.”
I handed him a glass. “Drink. You’ll need it if you want to get through tonight.”
He took it, sipped, then eyed me over the rim. “You planning to sleep or are we gonna watch each other until morning?”
I almost smiled. “You’re staying here. That clear enough?”
He set the glass down, but his hand shook a little when he did. “You always this bossy?”
I leaned back against the counter, arms crossed, and let him stew in the silence. “Just with people who need it,” I finally said.
Bo looked out the window, but I could see the way his body relaxed, just a shade. Like maybe he didn’t hate the idea as much as he wanted me to think he did.
The valley outside was filling with mist, the whole town going silver and dark. We stood in that small, warm circle of light for a long time, neither one of us wanting to break it.
When the silence got too thick, Bo reached into his jacket and pulled out his sketchbook—the one rescued from the wreck. He flipped it open, found a blank page, and started to draw.
“Hope you don’t mind,” he said. “I do my best work when I’m held hostage.”
I grunted, but there was a flicker of pride in my chest. “Just don’t draw me naked. Or do, but make me look better than real life.”
He snorted, but didn’t stop sketching.
I let him work, moving around the kitchen, putting on a pot of coffee and setting out two bowls for soup. I’d made a batch the night before, not knowing why I bothered—nobody to eat it but me.
Now it felt like the universe had sent me a reason.
“Why don’t you go lay down for awhile?”
He stood, stretched, and said, “You got a bed or am I crashing on the floor?”
I jerked my chin toward the hall. “Bed’s through there. I’m making dinner. It’ll be ready soon.”
He looked at me, then the hall, then back before walking away. I watched him disappear down the hallway, the lines of his body gone loose and tired. When he was out of sight, I closed my eyes for a second, and let the relief wash over me.
He was safe. At least for tonight.
I could live with that.
And maybe, if the world didn’t fall apart by morning, I’d finally get a chance to show him what it meant to stop running.
I watched the doorframe where Bo vanished, listening for the sound of the bed springs or the signature crash of him face-planting into something solid. Nothing—just the hollow hush of a space built for one, struggling to fit a second.
I went to the kitchen, hands on autopilot, heated up the soup I’d made and then started the coffee brewing though it was hours too late for caffeine.
Maybe I just needed to keep moving.
“Food’s hot.”
A minute later I heard the soft pad of footsteps, and there he was, lingering in the archway, eyes a little glassy, but tracking me.
I jerked my chin at the table. “Sit.”
He dropped into the nearest chair, the movement barely controlled, every muscle telegraphing fatigue. He slid his sketchbook onto the table, still open to a half-done sketch: a rough outline of the shop’s bikes, shadowed by broad, smudged shapes I recognized as mine.
I slid two ibuprofen and one of the prescription painkillers the ER sent home onto a napkin and set it next to a glass of water. Bo eyed them, then me, like I was laying out a test he might fail.
“You gonna force-feed me?” he said, trying for a sneer.
I didn’t bother answering, just ladled out the soup and set the bowl in front of him, steam curling up between us. “Eat. Take these.”
He snorted, but the sound was more fragile than I expected. His hands hovered over the spoon for a second, like he was working up the nerve, then he picked it up and dug in.