10. Dallas #2
We spend over an hour digging out the chassis, checking for leaks, knocking ice out of the wheel wells.
Nash slips twice, curses dramatically, and insists the snow is conspiring against him.
Clay drops a wrench into a drift, refuses to admit it, and spends five minutes burying his entire arm trying to find it again.
At some point, between digging ice out of the wheel wells and Clay losing a wrench in a drift, Mom steps outside with a bulky canvas bag tucked under her arm.
“This is Faith’s,” she says quietly, pressing it into my chest before I can ask.
That settles wrong somewhere behind my ribs. But worse than that is the looks my brothers are giving me.
They give me looks every few minutes. Little smirks. Raised eyebrows. Silent jokes that spark between all three of them whenever they think I’m not paying attention.
I am paying attention.
I’m just ignoring it aggressively.
Because if I don’t, I’m going to remember that kiss.
The way she tasted of cinnamon. The small, shocked sound she made when I finally stopped pretending I wasn’t thinking about her mouth. The way her fingers fisted in my coat because she needed something to hold on to, and somehow picked me.
She’d looked up at me afterward like she didn’t recognize herself. Which was fair. I didn’t recognize myself either.
I duck under the front end and check the steering linkage again. Focus. Tie rod’s straight. Nothing cracked. This is what I know. Metal, torque, pressure. Things that make sense if you pay attention.
People don’t.
She sure doesn’t.
I don’t know what that kiss meant to her, and I don’t want to find out. Not really. If I ask, if I push, it becomes a thing, with expectations and timelines and the potential to blow my life up if, when, it goes wrong.
After she left last time, I swore I was done with that.
I can still see that morning clear as day. Eighteen and stupid, watching her taillights disappear down Old Mill Road, dust hanging in the summer air, knowing even then that she wasn’t just leaving Buckhorn. She was leaving me.
She’d hugged me on the porch, smelling of vanilla and sunblock and goodbye, said, “It’s just for a little while, Dallas. Dad needs me.”
And idiotically, I believed her.
She didn’t come back. Not really. Holidays, a few days here and there.
Always with one foot out the door and her eyes on the city, on the life he picked for her.
I tried to stay her friend, tried to be happy for her “opportunities,” tried not to notice that every time she came home, she seemed a little smaller around the edges.
And then she stopped coming much at all. Phone calls got shorter. Texts got farther apart. Somewhere along the line, I figured out I could either sit in that waiting or pull my head out of my ass and move on.
So I did.
Belinda was not part of any plan. She was a whirlwind.
And then it was just me and a baby and the sound of my own breath in the night, listening for hers and having to remember, over and over, that it wasn’t coming back.
I loved once in that way. All the way. No brakes, no guardrails. Look how that turned out.
Now Faith’s back here, all wide eyes and apologies and a ring-shaped dent on her finger, and my idiot heart wants to jump the fence again as if it didn’t learn a thing.
Not happening.
“Yo.” Clay snaps me back. “You planning on moving in under there or what?”
I scoot out from under the truck, brush snow and road grime off my jacket. “Axle’s fine. Steering’s fine. We’ll swap that front tire when it’s not frozen to the damn ground, but she’s good enough to get to town.”
Boone straightens from where he’s been checking along the back. “No leaks under here either. Nothing dripping on the snow except Nash’s dignity.”
Nash squints at him. “You trying to start something?”
“You trying to finish your chores, or you gonna flirt with frostbite?” Boone shoots back.
Clay snorts. “He’s just mad Dallas loves this truck more than him.”
“Truck doesn’t talk,” I say. “That’s a point in her favor.”
“Wow,” Nash says. “Hurtful.”
I ignore them and bang the hood shut.
“She’ll drive,” I say, more to myself than anyone. “Short trips. Slow speeds. It’ll be fine.”
Boone nods. “You gonna tell her?”
“Yeah.”
Nash leans an elbow on the fender. “Want us to stand behind you and hold cue cards? ‘Play it cool.’ ‘Don’t mention your feelings.’ ‘Please stop staring at her mouth.’”
I grab a snowball off the hood and nail him in the chest with it.
He wheezes. “Rude.”
“Y’all can put the chains away,” I say, heading for the house. “I’ll handle the rest.”
Clay calls after me, full of a grin. “We talking about the truck or the existential crisis?”
“Both,” Nash adds.
I lift a hand without looking back and flip them off.
By the time I climb the porch steps, my ears are burning from the cold and the blood rushing around in my head. I stomp my boots off, more to buy a second than to save Mom’s boards, and knock once on the open doorframe.
Faith’s at the kitchen table with Mom, hands wrapped around a mug. Rose’s sweater hangs loose on her, sleeves pushed up, hair braided over one shoulder. There’s a little line between her brows. She’s been concentrating too hard on pretending she’s fine.
Mom’s face is carefully neutral, the way it gets when she’s trying not to scare off a skittish colt. She glances at me, reads whatever’s on my face in half a second, and pats Faith’s hand.
“I’m gonna go check on the roast,” she says, even though there is no roast. “Y’all holler if you need anything.”
Translation: I’m giving you privacy, try not to ruin your whole life in the next five minutes.
Faith looks up as Mom slips past me.
“Hey,” she says. “How bad is it?”
“Could’ve been worse,” I say, defaulting to the truth. “You kissed that ditch pretty good, but the frame’s straight. Nothing leaking, nothing bent that shouldn’t be.”
Her shoulders drop on a breath I can feel from here. “So it’s drivable.”
“Yeah.” My hands find my back pockets so I don’t shove them through my hair. “Drivable. Just don’t go racing Lawson’s boys on the way into town.”
Her mouth curves, the smallest hint of her old sunshine. “I’ll try to restrain myself.”