2. Dallas #3
The universe doesn’t answer, but the cold does. It nudges up under my collar, reminding me I’m sitting out here in twenty-degree weather with my coat half zipped, and my thoughts turned up too loud.
I’m halfway through my coffee when I see them.
Headlights at the end of the drive. Just a pair of white beams cutting through the dark, growing brighter as they swing off the highway and onto the gravel.
I frown, instinctively calculating. It’s late for visitors out this way on Christmas Eve. Mom’s not expecting anyone else. Boone and Rose are already here. Nash is home. Clay’s inside. Nobody called about an emergency, or Mom would’ve told me.
The hair on the back of my neck prickles.
The lights move too fast. Too damn fast for this night.
“Easy,” I mutter under my breath, as if the driver can hear me from fifty yards away. “Slow it down.”
They don’t. The beams bounce as the vehicle hits the first set of ruts in the drive, then the second. The engine revs, higher than it should. The snow out there looks solid, but an inch down, it’s all slick. I know every patch, every deceptive stretch. Whoever’s behind that wheel clearly doesn’t.
My chest tightens, muscles coiling. I set the mug down on the step, coffee sloshing over the rim, and stand up.
The sound reaches me a heartbeat later.
Tires skidding on packed snow. A high, panicked whine of brakes. Then a muffled thud that I feel in my own bones more than hear.
Everything goes quiet.
“Damn it,” I breathe.
Adrenaline takes over. I’m down the steps before I realize I’ve moved, boots pounding across the yard. Rusty, roused from his place near the door, barks once and trots after me, nails clicking on the boards before switching to a muted crunch in the snow.
I grab the heavy-duty flashlight we keep by the porch post, flick it on, and its beam slices through the darkness, cutting a clear path ahead.
The cold bites at my cheeks as I jog down the driveway, breath puffing in sharp bursts.
Gravel and ice shift under my soles, but I’ve been walking this stretch in every season since I was old enough to toddle.
My body adjusts without asking my brain’s permission.
“Please be okay,” I mutter, scanning ahead.
Just past the bend where the driveway curves around the old cottonwood and dips before the cattle guard, I see it.
A navy pickup, nose-first in the ditch. One headlight broken, the other pointing up at the sky.
Steam curls up in ghostly white threads from under the crumpled hood, disappearing into the falling snow.
My stomach drops.
I tighten my grip on the flashlight and cut across the shallow drift to the driver’s side, boots sliding a little as the ground slopes. Rusty hangs back, whining low in his throat.
“Hey!” I shout as I get close, heart hammering. “You okay in there?”
The driver’s door is half open, snow blown in across the seat. Rusty hovers a few feet behind, whining low in his throat.
For one breath-stopping moment, my mind jumps straight to the worst. Somebody slumped over the wheel, hurt or worse.
Then something moves.
A figure struggles, tangled in shadows and fabric and… what the hell is that, lace? The person shoves at the door, shoulder first, and it jerks open wider with a protesting squeal. The flashlight beam catches on a flash of white and shimmer, of tulle and satin, and a veil snagged on the frame.
My brain short-circuits.
She looks ghostly. Layers of lace and tulle are twisted around her legs, the bottom hem already gray with slush. Her bare shoulders shiver in the icy air, skin goose-pimpled, collarbones sharp under the strapless bodice.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a denim jacket crumpled on the passenger seat, as if she got too warm somewhere between here and wherever she came from and shrugged it off.
Her hair, honey blonde, full of curls that are starting to frizz in the damp, has half fallen out of some fancy updo, pins winking as they tumble loose.
She braces one hand on the door, the other on the frame, and hauls herself to her feet in the ditch, slipping on the uneven ground. I instinctively reach out, fingers brushing her elbow, steadying her before she goes down.
And then she looks up.
Green eyes. Wide and shining, ringed with smeared makeup. A dusting of freckles across her nose, a little fainter under the layer of foundation but still there if you know where to look. Her lips, painted some soft pink that doesn’t belong in this cold, part on a shaky breath.
The snow around us seems to pause in mid-air.
The years fall away in an instant. Nights on Old Mill Road, passing a contraband flask back and forth. Afternoons at Buckhorn Lake, her laughter ringing across the water. The smell of vanilla and pine every time she hugged me goodbye at the end of a long day.
There’s no way.
But there she is.
In my driveway. In a wedding dress. On Christmas Eve.
“Faith?” I hear myself say.
Her fingers tighten on my arm. She’s not sure if I’m real either. Her throat works, and when she speaks, her tone is hoarse.
“Hi, Dallas,” she whispers.
And just like that, my whole world tilts.