Chapter 8 Liam
Liam
We hit a small town around noon, one of those blink-and-you-miss-it places with a single diner leaning against the edge of the highway.
The sign out front read The Griddle Palace in crooked red letters, like someone’s kid painted it twenty years ago and no one bothered to fix it.
“Palace, huh?” Jenny murmured.
“Don’t knock it till you try it,” I said, pulling in.
The inside smelled like coffee, bacon grease, and the kind of pie your grandmother swore could cure a cold. Poppy slid into the booth as if she’d been born in diners, ordering pancakes the size of hubcaps before the waitress even handed her a menu.
Jenny sat across from me, glancing around like she hadn’t been in public much lately. Which, considering she’d been hiding for over a year, made sense.
“You’re staring,” I said.
She blinked. “I’m not.”
“Sure you are.”
She looked at the window instead, but I caught the pink climbing her cheeks.
And hell, if that didn’t make something low in my gut tighten.