Chapter 34
Luke
Talon follows close behind in his truck and rolls in alongside, cutting the engine in one smooth motion.
The two men climb down from their cabs and get straight to work, moving with the easy coordination of people who’ve done this a hundred times before.
Chains loosen, metal clinks, and my car is carefully lowered until all four wheels settle back onto the ground with a soft crunch of gravel.
They exchange a few words I can’t quite make out from the distance. A small handful of bills passes between them, quick and casual, and then they shake hands. Tal’s friend backs up the tow truck, swings it around in a wide arc, and heads back toward the road without so much as a backward glance.
Talon doesn’t come inside. Of course he doesn’t.
Instead of grabbing a coffee or even acknowledging the existence of food like a normal human being, he disappears straight into the shed. A minute later he’s back out again, hauling a massive toolkit in those bear-like hands, already mentally somewhere else. Already working.
I watch him for a second, then sigh, shaking my head, though there’s a smile tugging at my mouth. Trying to change him would be like trying to hold back the tide. Pointless.
Better to meet him where he is.
Better to show up.
There’s still fresh coffee in the jug, so I fill a thermos, grab a couple of sandwiches, and cut a generous slice of the cherry cake Hazel insisted we take home with us this morning.
I stack everything into a small basket, add a napkin and a mug, then head back out toward the shed, the gravel crunching under my boots as I go.
He doesn’t move when I arrive, though he must have heard me coming. He’s bent over the engine, tools clanking against metal in a steady rhythm. The hood blocks his face, but I can picture the look anyway—total focus, like the rest of the world doesn’t exist.
I circle around, creeping closer, and wait for the perfect moment before slamming my hand hard against the door.
Disappointingly, he doesn’t jump or crack his head on the hood like in a cheap comedy. He doesn’t even swear. His head just shifts enough to send me a flat glare.
I waggle my eyebrows and grin.
“Always a classic,” I say as he straightens and takes the lunch basket from me. “So? How’s it looking, partner?”
“Not good,” he says. “Can’t say for certain yet, but it looks like the big end’s gone.” He wipes his hands on a rag.
“Big end? Sounds expensive.” I don’t know much about mechanics, but I know enough to hear the word engine replacement hiding behind that.
“Yeah. Either a full rebuild or a replacement. Rebuild means specialist work we don’t have here.”
“Then is it even worth it?” I nod toward the car. “On an old Impala?”
We both look at it for a moment, sitting there like it’s offended we’re talking about it. Talon exhales through his nose.
“You’re right,” he says. “But that means—”
“Yeah. Means she gets a new car.” I grin.
He looks at me like I’ve missed something obvious. “What’s to be happy about?”
“Oh, come on. If she’s staying up here, there’s no way she can keep driving that thing. It barely made it the first time—actually, it didn’t. I had to go get her.” I gesture at the car. “You really okay with her driving that through winter?”
He shakes his head, slow this time.
“Exactly. Let’s buy her something proper. Truck, preferably. Four-wheel drive, decent clearance, heater that actually works.” I shrug. “Problem solved.”
“It was hard enough getting her to accept help the first time,” he says. “I don’t know how to get her to accept us buying her a whole car.”
“Tell her it’s no big deal. Tell her you’re loaded. Tell her I’ll confirm you’ve got more money than sense.”
“I don’t think that will matter. It’s the principle for her.”
“Yeah,” I mutter, leaning against the car. “Well, this probably won’t help, but I don’t think she treated the last fix as a gift anyway.”
He frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I found this in your shed when I grabbed the tools.” I hold out the letter. “She left it with some cash. Goodbye letter. Mine was on her bed.”
I’d already read mine. Thank you, sorry, all that.
Like that was supposed to make it easier.
If I’d come back and she’d been gone, I would’ve gone after her. No hesitation.
She didn’t want to leave. That much was clear, even if she didn’t say it outright. She cares. That’s the part that matters.
Problem is, I’m already in too deep.
He takes the letter from me, sharp and quick, eyes narrowing.
“Didn’t read it,” I say.
Even though I wanted to.
He presses it briefly against his chest, then folds it and slips it into his back pocket, like it’s something breakable. He’ll read it later, alone. No chance I’m seeing that.
Damn.
“So,” I say, shifting my weight against the car. “There’s something else.” I hesitate, just a fraction. “About our fight.”
Talon gives me a dry look, waiting.
“This the part where you say you didn’t mean it?”
“Oh no, I meant every word,” I say. “Just shouldn’t have hit you that hard.”
“Hard?” he scoffs. “I barely felt it.”
“Oh yeah? How’s your nose?”
“Better than before. How’s your mouth?”
“Fantastic.”
He grins, shaking his head, and just like that, it’s done. No lingering tension. No drama.
I glance toward the house, then back at him, caught between going to Sierra and staying here.
I stay.
I’d seen Reid heading to her room earlier. They’re probably talking now—really talking. Years of unfinished business finally getting dragged out into the open.
I want in on that. Of course I do.
But not yet.
Patience isn’t exactly my thing, but even I know when to stay out of the way.
Still, it takes effort not to head back and at least hover nearby. I’m nosy by nature. I like knowing things.
But I make myself stay put.
And weirdly, when I picture the two of them alone together, jealousy isn’t what hits me first.
It’s worry.
Because I don’t just stand to lose Sierra here. I could lose all of it. Her, them, whatever this is becoming.
With two people, it’s complicated enough. With four, everything multiplies. Every feeling, every misunderstanding, every risk.
If this is going to work, it has to be built on honesty. On trust. On actually giving a damn about each other.
Otherwise, it collapses. Simple as that.
“Aren’t you worried?” I ask, watching as Talon dips his head back into the engine.
He glances at me.
“I mean about this… relationship,” I say. “It’s your first time in one. I bet it’s not what you expected, huh?”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t have any expectations.”
“What?”
“I didn’t expect anything,” he says calmly. “So, it doesn’t defy expectation.”
I blink. “What does that mean? You just thought you’d be alone for the rest of your life or something?”
He shrugs, and the casualness of it hits harder than if he’d made a big deal out of it. That really is what he thought.
And when I think about it, it makes sense. He spent the first twenty-five years of his life barely talking to anyone—just his grandmother and a handful of people he did business with in town. Silence and loneliness weren’t the things he feared. They were the things he already lived with.
The first time I met him, I genuinely thought he was deaf or mute.
He didn’t say a word, just grunted or gestured in response, and that was on a good day.
Sometimes he wouldn’t respond at all. I remember wondering how the hell Reid managed to do business with him if they couldn’t even communicate properly.
I even went as far as teaching myself some basic sign language, read up on selective mutism, tried to figure out how to meet him where he was.
Then one day Reid invited him to lunch with us, and right in the middle of the meal, Talon looked straight at me and, in perfect tone and cadence, asked me to pass the salt.
The look on my face must’ve been priceless, because Reid nearly choked laughing. Talon cracked a smile too, just enough to let me know I’d been played from the start.
That was the moment I decided we were going to be friends. Whether he liked it or not.
Even after that, he never turned into a big talker. Not with strangers, not even with people he knew unless he had something worth saying. You don’t spend that many years alone on a mountain and come back suddenly ready for small talk and polite society.
But I pushed him anyway.
Once we started working together, I dragged him into town, into bars, into conversations he didn’t want to have. I made him try.
He was terrible at it. Painfully so.
But he’s good-looking in a muscular kind of way, and he’s got that quiet, brooding thing going on, and there’s always a certain kind of woman who’s drawn to that. Still waters running deep, that sort of thing, so he got by. Not so much because of his charm, more in spite of his complete lack of it.
And once things got physical, that part at least wasn’t a problem. He figured that out fast.
Still, none of the rest ever stuck. He never learned how to keep someone, never showed any real interest in trying. No dates, no follow-ups, nothing that looked like a relationship.
So yeah, he’d already made peace with being alone.
Then Sierra showed up.
And suddenly that whole assumption just… cracked open.
I’ve seen the way she looks at him. The way she actually seeks him out, laughs with him, settles into his silence like it doesn’t bother her at all. Like she understands it.
And last night…
The way they looked at each other, the way he moved with her, slow and deliberate, like nothing else in the world mattered—
That wasn’t casual. That wasn’t just sex.
That was something real.
Which means this has to work.
Not just for me—for all of us.
The problem is, a lot of that hinges on Reid.
As far as I know, he hasn’t been with anyone since things ended between them. Whatever happened back then, it left a mark. He’s never talked about it in detail, but he doesn’t need to. You can see it in him if you look long enough.
The first time I met him, he was sitting alone in a bar, staring at a glass of brandy like it had personally wronged him. Not drinking it. Just staring.
I’d seen enough addiction meetings to know what that looks like. This wasn’t it.
He wasn’t fighting the drink.
He was staring at something inside it. Something only he could see.
That was enough to get my attention. I’ve always had a thing for people who carry something a little broken under the surface.
I slid into the seat across from him.
It took him a while to even notice I was there.
When he finally looked up, I smiled. “Hey.”
He didn’t smile back. Just gave me a look that clearly translated to fuck off, then went back to the glass.
“First time?” I asked.
Nothing.
“You know it tastes better once you actually drink it.”
“What do you want?”
“Would you believe me if I told you I wanted to be your friend?”
He gave me a slow once-over and shook his head. “I’m flattered, but you’re not my type.”
“You’re not mine either. Also, I’m not gay or bi. Just friendly. You look like you could use one.”
“You look like you could use an ass-kicking,” he said calmly. “Keep pushing, and you’ll get one, rich boy.”
I frowned. “How do you know I’m rich?” I was dressed down—plain white T-shirt, faded jeans. Nothing flashy.
“I can smell it on you,” he said. “Old money. Parents don’t give a damn, so you manufacture problems to get their attention.
You like getting a rise out of people, maybe even like getting hit.
That’s why you hang around places like this.
You’re not from here. Northeast, probably.
New York, New England. Came out here to reinvent yourself where nobody knows you. ”
“What the fuck?” I just stared at him. It was like he’d read me in under thirty seconds.
He didn’t look away.
“I’m not your entertainment,” he said. “Get lost.”
I didn’t.
By that point I was too interested.
I followed him. To the next bar, and the one after that. Kept talking, kept asking questions he refused to answer.
Eventually he ditched me.
And then, somehow, we ran into each other again at a Reiki class.
That was the first time he chose to talk to me.
After that, things just… clicked. We talked for hours that day, enough that it felt like we’d known each other longer than we actually had.
Still, there were gaps. Things he didn’t say.
Like her.
I didn’t know about Sierra back then. Didn’t know there was someone he’d been carrying around in his head for years. Didn’t know she was real, or that she looked like that.
Just then, my phone buzzes, dragging me out of my memories.
I fumble for it in my pocket, drag it out and answer without thinking.
It Sherriff Clay Dawson, of all people. I sigh inwardly.
That’s all we need. More hassle from the likes of him and that Yellowbrook guy.
But I try to be polite. Hopefully it’s nothing major.
“Oh, it’s you Sheriff. How are you doing? ”
“This isn’t a social call, Luke.”
“It’s not?”
“No. I’m calling to warn you, seeing as you’re almost a local boy now.”
There’s a hesitation before he continues, and just that is enough to put me on alert.
“You know I like you, Luke. In point of fact, I’ve come to think of you like the son I never had.”
“Oh yeah…” I draw it out, waiting.
“I was wondering how much you know about your business partner.”
“Reid? Why?”
“Because someone’s been digging into his past,” he says. “And they’re accusing him of murder.”