Chapter Seventeen
Molly
The Ironwood Diner’s neon sign spits red and orange across the parking lot when I pull in, buzzing with the sickly persistence of a bug zapper in mid-August. It’s just past one, the hour when only shift workers, ghosts, and trouble still walk the streets.
My truck grinds into gear, clattering over a pothole and shuddering to a stop beneath a streetlamp that flickers a Morse code warning — don’t, don’t, don’t — before settling into a dull, dying glow.
The chill tonight sticks to the skin, wet and heavy, like someone’s breathing down your neck.
Evan’s sedan is already here.
Of course it is.
He’s not inside. He’s out by his driver’s door, hands in his pockets, shoulders tense like he’s been walking circles. When my headlights sweep over him, he looks up fast, as if he feels me before he sees me.
I kill the engine and sit for half a breath, staring through the windshield.
Then I shove the door open and climb out.
Evan meets me halfway across the cracked asphalt. No smile this time. No easy flirt. Just that steady look in his eyes that makes my stomach do something stupid.
“You okay?” he asks.
“I’m here,” I say. “That’s as okay as I get at the end of a shift.”
His mouth twitches like he wants to laugh but knows better. “Fair.”
A truck rumbles past on the road behind the diner, tires hissing on wet pavement. The lot smells like fryer grease and old coffee. A couple of smokers stand near the entrance, hunched in hoodies, not paying us any mind.
Evan glances toward the street as if he’s checking angles.
“What is this?” I ask, sharp. “Because you said you were waiting, not… lurking.”
“I’m not lurking,” he says, then immediately looks like he knows that sounded like lurking. “Come on.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“Get in your truck. Follow me,” he says.
My spine stiffens. “No.”
His eyebrows lift, just slightly. “What’s wrong?”
“No.” I jab a finger toward the diner door. “If you want to talk, we can talk in there. Under fluorescent lights. Near witnesses. Near pancakes.”
His gaze holds mine — steady, serious, confused. “No, not in there.”
“Why not? I’ve been on my feet all damn day and night and they have pancakes, so if you better have a damn good reason why not.”
He exhales, slow. “Molly, just trust me for five minutes.”
Trust. The word snaps something in my chest. Like it’s a simple thing. Like it doesn’t come with teeth marks.
I take a step back on instinct. “I don’t follow men into the dark.”
Evan’s jaw tightens. He looks at me like he’s weighing options, then he lifts both hands, palms out. “Okay. Then don’t. But listen to me.”
“I am listening.”
He steps closer again, close enough that I can smell him. Leather, pine, a faint trace of engine oil. His voice drops even lower.
“Do you remember senior year?” he asks.
My throat goes tight. “Yeah.”
“Behind the gym after that pep rally,” he says. “You looked like you wanted to punch me and kiss me at the same time.”
“That’s my default.”
A ghost of a smile crosses his mouth and is gone as fast as it comes. “You trusted me then.”
“That was eighteen-year-old me,” I say. “She was an idiot.”
“She was cautious,” he says quietly. “And she still chose to trust.”
The smokers by the door laugh at something. Maybe me, for being dumb enough to stand in the parking lot listening to a guy who wants me to just ‘trust him’ and follow him to an unknown location at one in the fucking morning. The diner’s bell jingles as someone leaves. Normal sounds. Normal night.
My pulse doesn’t care. It’s thudding like I’m standing on a ledge.
“I’m not asking you to get in my car,” he says. “I’m not asking you to go somewhere isolated with no way out. You’re in your truck. You’re behind me. You can turn around any second you want.”
I don’t answer.
He takes one step back, giving me space.
“I want to show you something,” he says. “Somewhere public. Somewhere open. I just… don’t want a bunch of people listening in.”
“Why?”
His eyes flick away, then return. “Because it’s about you.”
My stomach flips, mean and sharp. “About me, how?”
He's quiet for a beat, as if he's deciding how honest to be. Evan’s voice is rougher now. “Because I can tell you’re one bad day away from snapping in half and pretending you didn’t. Because I can tell you’re trying to carry everything alone, like that’s the only way you’re allowed to exist.”
My nails dig into my palm. “I didn’t ask for a therapy session.”
“I know,” he says. “You don’t ask for a lot of things, even if you need them.”
The air between us tightens. The old memory of a stolen moment — his mouth on mine in high school, my back to brick, his hands careful like he was afraid to scare me off — flares hot and unwelcome.
I take a half-step back. “Evan, stop fucking around. What are you doing?”
“Asking you to trust me.”
I let out a laugh that has no humor in it. “You’re persistent.”
“Yeah.”
I stare at him, drinking it all in. Drinking in the steady set of his shoulders, the way he isn’t moving toward me, isn’t trying to touch me, isn’t trying to charm me into it.
He waits.
He’s asked his question, and now he’s just… waiting respectfully, like a fucking asshole.
My chest rises and falls. The night air tastes like wet asphalt and coffee, and I want to get back in my truck and drive away from this man who respects me and treats me like an equal and makes me feel so utterly disarmed that I’m terrified.
Finally, I say, “Five minutes.”
“That’s all I need.”
I point at him. “If this is some weird kidnapping thing, I will rip your eyes out and shove them down your throat.”
His mouth twitches again. “Noted.”
“And I’m not turning off my location services,” I add, feeling the need to say it out loud, even though I know he expects it. “If I disappear, my people will come for you.”
“Good,” he says. “Keep them on.”
Without another word, I turn on my heel and stalk back to my truck, my breath leaving little clouds in the air.
I yank the door open, climb in, and slam it hard enough to make the whole frame shudder.
For a few seconds I just sit there, hands braced on the steering wheel, staring through the windshield as if maybe I can see the next ten minutes of my life written on the glass.
I watch as Evan gets into his sedan and starts it up; the headlights throw pale cones across a couple of stray shopping carts and the battered newspaper dispenser by the curb. Then he pulls out.
I follow.
His taillights cut two red slashes through the dark as we leave the diner lot and merge onto the road. The trees crowd close, the town thinning behind us.
My phone vibrates in the cupholder. It’s a text from Riley: u dead yet?
I almost laugh. Instead, I type back: still breathing, 8/10 prospects of survival.
I set my phone back down. Evan’s sedan is three car lengths ahead, not trying to lose me, not trying to get me to speed up. Just guiding, as promised.
My pulse keeps whispering the same thing as I stay behind his car: this is either worth the five minutes, or it’s the start of my biggest mistake.