CHAPTER 5 JESSALYN
JESSALYN
Make it to Mississippi? Ha.
We were driving through rural Pennsylvania when an amber warning light blinked on, and I realised the temperature gauge on the car was creeping toward the red.
That meant it needed coolant, right? Shaun had promised to top it off before I left the Motor Mall, but maybe he’d forgotten?
Hell, I needed to find a gas station, preferably one with a helpful, capable attendant who knew where the coolant went because of course the owner’s manual was missing from the glove compartment.
A cup of coffee would be good too, plus more water for Shiro, although staying hydrated wasn’t so much of a problem seeing as it hadn’t stopped raining since we left New York state.
I checked my new phone for the hundredth time.
It had become a habit over the past day, but there was still no reply from Saylor.
I’d tried calling too, but all I got was a generic voicemail, and I needed to thank her.
Thank her for everything she’d done. For seeing what he’d done.
Everyone else had bought my excuses about hormones making me tearful or Shiro bruising my ribs, but not Saylor.
We only managed to snatch whispered words during dog training classes, but they’d been enough, and we’d stayed in touch via text and a secret email address she’d helped me to set up.
“This sucks, boy. But at least you’re not in the kennel, huh?” I tried to sound upbeat. Animals picked up on your mood. “And Ridge can’t threaten to leave you swinging from the garage door ever again.”
The needle crept higher, higher, in a game of vehicular Russian roulette, but my nerves gave out before the engine did.
Okay, just breathe. All I had to do was take a rest while things cooled down, and then I could find a gas station.
We were doing fine, I kept telling myself that.
We’d driven through five states, avoiding any toll roads, and survived a night in the car.
If I reclined the passenger seat back as far as it would go, then wrapped myself in blankets, it wasn’t too bad.
Better to sleep next to Shiro than next to Ridge, who expected me to spread my legs on command before he turned his back on me and snored until morning.
Plus Shiro took his role as head of security very seriously.
At two a.m., he’d hurled himself against the window, barking, and I’d poked my head out of the blankets in time to see a shadowy figure skedaddling into the darkness.
Who cared about diamonds? A dog was a girl’s true best friend.
I fed Shiro a treat, then closed my eyes. Only to be rudely awakened a while later by barking, but this time, the man watching me through the glass didn’t flinch. No, he peered closer, one hand shielding his eyes from the driving rain. I rolled down the window a crack.
“Howdy, ma’am. Everything okay?”
“Just taking a rest. I don’t suppose you know where the nearest gas station is?”
“About five miles south of here. You out of gas? I got a spare can in my truck I’d be happy to let you have.”
I tried to swallow the lump in my throat and ended up coughing. Kindness in a man both made me tearful and scared me. Ridge had seemed kind at first, and my dad was a big bad wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“I-I-it’s not the gas.” I still had half a tank left. “It’s the coolant.”
“You have a problem with the radiator?”
“I guess?” The amount I knew about car maintenance could be written on a fingernail. “I’m just waiting for the engine to cool. Maybe it’s okay now?”
“Did you add more coolant? Or water?”
“No?”
“How long have you been waiting?”
“Uh…” I checked my phone. “Almost an hour?”
“Pop the hood, and I’ll take a look.”
“Uh…”
“The release is on the left by the steering wheel. Used to have a buddy with an Altima.”
If I stayed in the car, I’d be safe, right? Plus Shiro had stopped barking now, and he was a good judge of character, much better than me. I mean, he’d bared his teeth at Ridge the first time he laid eyes on him. I opened the hood, and the stranger peered underneath.
“Yup, you need coolant. I’ll top it off with water for now, but you’ll need to add antifreeze when you get to the gas station. Automobile this age, you’ll want to get the radiator checked for leaks too.”
Did it leak? I thought back to the discussion at the Motor Mall, to Shaun saying the Crown Vic ran better. Had he knowingly sold me an unreliable vehicle? If so, that was just one more reason I’d never trust a man again. I could hardly drive back to Keene and complain, could I?
“Do you think they’ll be able to check that at the gas station?”
The guy scratched his chin. “Rufus is no mechanic, but he’ll have antifreeze. The auto shop is over in Hickory Hill—about fifteen miles from here. Do you know it?”
Kind of. I’d driven through there a half hour before the warning light came on, and it was in the wrong direction.
I didn’t want to go back toward Maine, not when I’d put so much effort into getting away from there.
And would I even be able to afford a repair?
I did some quick calculations—we’d driven over four hundred miles since we left New Hampshire, so the hole in the radiator couldn’t be that big, right?
As long as I carried spare bottles of coolant in the car, we’d be able to keep going through Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.
A thousand miles, and I’d be able to breathe again.
“I actually need to meet a friend in Baltimore this evening.” If the stranger thought I might be missed, then maybe he’d be less likely to murder me at the side of the road, right? “He can help me find a mechanic.”
Men would respect another man they’d never met over a woman standing in front of them; Ridge had taught me that much. And yet I’d spent years trying to earn that respect. Years trying to keep him happy at the expense of my own well-being.
In the end, it had taken one simple kiss for me to see the light.
Saylor’s new husband, Kevin, had come to pick her up after our training class, and I’d watched from the shadows on the other side of the parking lot as he helped her to load Snowy the husky into the back of their SUV, then opened the passenger door.
Before she climbed inside, he’d kissed her forehead.
That was it. Just one forehead kiss when he thought nobody was watching, but it showed me everything I was missing.
Kindness. Support. Love. I’d been living in denial for years, believing I was unworthy of a man’s attention unless the house was spotless and dinner was waiting on the table when he came home.
I’d played my part, but I still never got a forehead kiss, just a possessive hand around my wrist when we were out in public.
And I’d only gone to the training classes in the first place because Shiro hated Ridge. Such a smart dog. I’d had to train him well enough that he didn’t growl every time Ridge came near, otherwise Ridge would have taken him on a one-way trip to the veterinarian.
“Then stay on this road,” the stranger told me. “The gas station’s on the right, a small place with a blue canopy and a six-foot yellow chicken outside.”
“A six-foot chicken?”
“The feed store is on the same lot. Rufus’s wife runs it. Real nice lady.” He nodded toward Shiro. “Always has a bowl of doggie treats on the counter.”
“Thank you for your help.”
He tipped an imaginary hat. “You have a good day, ma’am.”
Good was relative, wasn’t it? But it couldn’t be worse than the last few months of my marriage to Ridge.