Chapter 12 #2
If the goose bumps pricking her arms are any indication, she’s not “fine,” but I get the feeling she’d rather freeze to death than leave Noah out here alone with me.
“How about you, Lily? Will you be warm enough tonight?”
I narrow my eyes on her. What’s she trying to say?
Noah doesn’t miss a beat. “What do you mean warm enough?”
“You’re the one who sleeps in the gym parking lot, right? A few of the locals have seen you around town.”
My cheeks burn, the heat creeping all the way to the tips of my ears and wiping the last remnant of cordial off my face.
I should laugh it off, but the knot in my stomach doesn’t loosen at that thought.
I’m not sure what to say, but I know getting out of here would be a good plan.
“I should be going,” I say, hands fidgeting aimlessly with the cuff of my sleeves.
Turning, I reach for my door handle, but a hand gently tugs at my biceps. “Wait.”
His hand is hot, searing. His fingers splay wide around my arm, and my eyes widen along with Morgan’s as his touch lingers.
When I turn to face him, he drops his grip. “You’re sleeping in your car?”
My damn heart seems to beat more so in my throat rather than in my chest, and it’s only compounded when I look into Noah’s concerned eyes. Moreover, I hate the way he’s looking at me—pure pity.
I stare at Morgan, who’s averted her gaze to the ground. If she was aiming to humiliate me, she really should own it.
“I’m not sticking around in Pinebrook long. It doesn’t make sense for me to get a place.”
“You’re not?” Morgan latches onto that first part.
I shake my head. “I like to travel.”
Noah has yet to say anything, he just keeps looking at me.
Morgan’s expression shifts. The tension in her brow tightens, well-manicured arches drawing in as she asks, “You didn’t want to find temporary housing?”
I wrinkle my nose at her attempt to sound concerned about my not-so-long stay.
Noah still hasn’t said anything.
“I don’t make enough at the diner, and my hours got cut, so it’s not really an option at this point. It’s okay though, I’m used to it. It’s how I’ve been able to travel around the country for so many years.”
Morgan leans forward, peering into my car, and giggles.
“I could never, but you certainly seem like the type that could. Well, we better get gas. Hope you stay warm the next few nights. It’s going to be cold.
Noah?” She’s angled her body toward their side of the gas pump, eyes flicking between me and Noah, who’s now taken up staring at my car.
“You can’t stay in that.”
“Um, yes, I can.” I kick a piece of gravel with my boot and watch it skitter across the parking lot. Who is he to tell me I can’t? I’ve done this for years. Years!
“I can’t in good conscience let you. Call it my background in law enforcement or the ranger in me, alone at night, in the cold—it’s not safe.”
“She said she’ll be fine, Noah. Stop hounding her,” Morgan says, and for once, I agree with her. I’m not sure why he’s so worried. “He’s such do-gooder, this one …”
I give Morgan a tight-lipped smile in agreement.
I’ve gathered this. Especially once Noah came to check up on me in the hospital when he didn’t have to.
Or somehow snagged me a piece of cake. He seems like the guy to go above and beyond, never crack under pressure, and certainly isn’t too keen on letting me sleep in my car right now.
“I’ll be fine. You two look like you’ve got somewhere to be.” I pull open my car door and slide in.
“Lily. Wait—”
Before he can continue, I shut the door and twist the key in the ignition.
The car gives a weak whirr before fading into silence.
My stomach churns, heat rising to my cheeks despite the cool air seeping in from the cracked window.
A scoff echoes off the rusted pumps, and I avoid looking at Morgan.
I can already picture her annoyance that I’m not out of the way yet.
I try once more. This time it’s a rapid clicking that fills the air, mocking me.
“Come on,” I mutter, fisting the steering wheel.
Noah approaches my window, and I sigh, offering him a quick shrug, then twist the key again and again. The same whirring and clicking follow.
My heartbeat quickens. Of all the times for my car to break down, in front of all the people. It would be my luck. At this exact moment of Noah thinking I was crazy to live in my car, I just had to go a prove him right by it not starting. Unreliable piece of—
My door opens, and Noah ducks down to look inside my disastrous vehicle. I live out of here, and while it’s clean, it’s not clutter free. I attempt to pull the door shut, but he leans a muscled arm on the doorframe, and I choose to study a button on the sleeve of his uniform.
“Why don’t you come with us for now, and I’ll get a tow truck out here to pull it to Tommy’s, the local mechanic.”
“Tow truck?” I can’t afford that. “What am I going to do, just leave my car here?”
“Do you have any other option? You can’t stay at a gas station in a vehicle that won’t crank, Lily.”
His tone is stern, and something in me wants to crawl out of my skin with the command in his voice. Typical law enforcement—always with a hero complex. I don’t need him. I’ll be fine … right?
I glance at the darkened road ahead that’s progressively had less and less traffic, the uneasy realization sinking in …
I bite my cheek and twist the key harder this time, as if how hard I turn may result in something different, but it doesn’t. The car struggles to turn over, then sputters right back out.
“Come on,” he says. His brow is drawn together, the deep lines almost harboring their own anxious thoughts.
There’s the slightest twitch in his jaw as he presses his lips into an even tighter line.
I’m too stunned to say anything, and he takes the opportunity to continue.
“I have an extra bunk at my cabin. It’s not fancy but there’s a woodstove and hot water. ”
Morgan stutters a “w-what?!” that echoes across the parking lot and through the distant valley.
Noah removes his phone from his pocket. “Come on, Lily. I’m going to call a tow truck. It will take them a while to pick it up. You can ride with us.”
Still in the front seat of my car, I grab my hiking backpack from today that has all my essentials in it. More like a couple bucks, an extra pair of socks, and an empty water bottle, but I yank it out with me, nonetheless.
My first reaction is to refuse outright, but honestly, I truly don’t have anywhere to go. My second is to tell him to drop me off at a motel. However, I mentally count my cash on hand, plus what’s left on my debit card—it will not get me a room for the night.
I decide I can crash on his bunk for the night and call Mitch in the morning to ask for an advance on my paycheck to get my car from the tow company. As for the mechanic’s bill, I’m not even sure I want to think about how I’m going to pay for that.
Resigned to the fact Noah’s my best bet, I nod and exit my car while Morgan paces back and forth in her nude heels.
“I just need to fill up then we’ll be on our way.”
Noah slides his card and begins to pump gas, and I shuffle toward his truck. I’d already planned on sliding into the back seat, but it’s set in stone when Morgan quickly clicks her way to the front passenger side and hops in, leaving me standing outside the truck, backpack hanging off one shoulder.
After Noah’s finished, he turns to me. “Ready?”
No. “Don’t have much of a choice, so I guess.”
“You always have a choice,” he says, opening the back door for me. “We’ll drop Morgan off before we head to the cabin.”
I hadn’t always. He’s wrong, and the truth sours my empty stomach.
Once more I toss a look over my shoulder to my car sitting stranded at the pump across from us, and then I climb into the back seat.
It has a minor smell of dog, but it’s not as bad as I thought it’d be.
In fact, when Noah slides into the driver’s seat in front of me, I catch a whiff of his scent.
He smells like crisp air before a coming storm, fresh yet musky.
It clings to him as he starts his truck and eyes the rearview mirror.
I slouch down in my seat, annoyed I’m stuck in a truck with Barbie and the town’s Ranger of Virtue, and equally frustrated as the smell of Noah etches its way into my lungs and wraps me like a hug I didn’t know I needed.
Ridiculous.
With a quick fiddle, he presses a few buttons on the infotainment and out spits the most hellish jazz music there ever was.
Morgan wrinkles her nose and glances at Noah, confused. He ignores her, and me for that matter, as we leave the gas station.
As Noah pulls onto the road toward town, I lean my head on the cool window, ignoring the awkwardness emanating from Morgan and Noah in the front.
It’s then, in my peripheral, a shadowed figure steps out from between the gas station and the grouping of trees that collide with it.
A figure that slinks out of the shrouded night like a man.
We aren’t too far from town, and when Noah pulls into a modest single-story home near Pete’s Market, I’m confused.
The cab of the truck is silent as Morgan rustles around, reaching to pull her purse up from the floorboard. “Thanks for the save tonight, Noah,” she says, and places a hand on his forearm that rests on the center console.
“No problem. Have a good night.” He doesn’t get out of the truck and walk her to the door, like I assume a man of his virtuous being would if they were on a date, and Morgan … she hesitates like she wants to say more but thinks better of it after glancing over her shoulder at me.
“See ya,” she says.
I think it’s directed at me, considering the clipped tone, but Noah answers.
“Night.”
She scoots out, adjusting her too short dress and shuts the door. Then she climbs the front steps to her screened-in porch and, with another brief look toward the truck, unlocks the door and shuts herself in for the night.