Chapter 1 #2
“Get in.” He frowns, clearly annoyed by my indecisiveness. He carries my groceries through the rain and puts them in the backseat. I have no choice but to follow. I get into the passenger seat, closing the umbrella and leaning it against my leg. As I fidget with the seat belt, he gets in the car.
He’s dripping water, and despite everything, I am mortified.
I should be angry, but the fear of being recognized by this man who turned me away from his door more than ten years ago is too overwhelming. I wet my lips. “Thanks.”
He glances at me. “Sure. You would have been out there all night.”
As he starts the car, he asks, “So you’re a tourist or—?”
“We just moved here.” My voice is faint. “My daughter and I.”
His eyes go to my hand, and he observes lightly, “What about your husband?”
My fingers immediately touch the empty ring finger, and I rub the place where a band would be. “I—He works overseas. We see him a few times a year.”
The lie is pure survival instinct.
“Oh.” The soft disappointment in his tone has me grinding my teeth, a wave of unbridled anger washing over me. I catch him glancing my way again, this time confusion in those gray eyes of his.
“Where do you live?”
“Why?” I snap.
Marcus blinks. “Ah, so I can drop you home?”
My eyes flutter shut in embarrassment. “Oh.”
I rattle off my address, and he makes a U-turn, leading us back the way I had come.
“Where does this road lead?” I ask, looking over my shoulder.
“Private territory,” Marcus explains. “Deep in the forest. It’s very unsafe. Lots of wild animals.”
My brows knit together. “And people want to live there?”
He grins, barely. “Maybe it suits them.”
“If you say so,” I mutter, looking out the window.
We drive in silence for a few seconds, and then he suddenly looks my way. “So, what’s your name?”
I press my lips together, really wishing this town had taxis. A taxi driver wouldn’t ask me what my name is. He’d mind his own business.
“Jessa Hale,” I finally reveal cautiously. My eyes flicker toward him to catch a reaction, but his face betrays nothing. Relief and anger war within me. He doesn’t remember me.
Good.
Asshole. But good.
“That’s a pretty name.”
I turn my head to look out the window and roll my eyes.
“You’re not going to ask me mine?” He laughs quietly. “Given how suspicious you were of me, I thought for sure you’d want to know.”
“Why?” I ask, pretending to be disinterested. “Are you someone important?”
I know I’m being rude, and I know he can tell. But he doesn’t seem to mind for some reason.
“I’m not important now,” he murmurs, turning a corner. “Marcus Steele.”
“The soccer player?” I turn my head toward him. “I thought you retired.”
“I did. It’s been close to a decade now.” He slows down the car to let one pass him. “I’ve decided to live a slow life.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
He raises his brows, looking at me. “Did I upset you in some way?”
I clamp my mouth shut, straightening up and muttering, “No. I’m just tired.”
The rest of the drive passes in a silence I don’t bother filling. He pulls up outside my building, wipers still losing their war with the downpour, and cuts the engine.
“This is you?”
“Yeah.” I’m already reaching for the door handle. “Thanks for the ride. Seriously.”
“Let me walk you up.” He nods toward the rain sheeting across the windshield. “It’s coming down hard.”
“No.” It snaps out before I can dress it up. “Thanks. I’ve got it from here.”
He doesn’t argue, which somehow irritates me more. I twist around for the bags in the backseat, get both arms under them, then shove the door open with my shoulder into the wet.
The paper’s soaked through. I feel it go the second I lift, that sodden give in the bottom seam, and I try to clutch the whole mess to my chest. It doesn’t help.
The bottom tears open, and everything goes, cans rolling, a carton of eggs splitting on the curb, an orange bouncing off into the dark, the cereal box Mia made me swear to get face-down in a puddle.
“No. No, no, no.” I drop to my knees in the runoff, grabbing at things that won’t stop rolling. “Are you kidding me right now? Tonight, of all the—”
“Hey.” His door’s already open. “It’s okay, let me—”
“I’ve got it.” I’m scrabbling for the eggs, what’s left of them, my hair plastered to my face. “I don’t need—just, can you not?”
“I’m trying to help you.”
That stops me. Four quiet words with no heat in them, and I hear how I sound. A woman screaming at the one person who stopped on an empty road, kneeling in a gutter and snapping at the man she’s hated for ten years because he had the gall to be kind about it.
Heat climbs up my neck. I hate it.
“Sorry.” I shove the word out, and it scrapes my throat raw. “I’m sorry. That was—I’m not having a great night.”
“I noticed.” There’s no smugness in it. He crouches across from me, already gathering cans into the crook of one arm. “Truce?”
I don’t want his truce. I don’t want him within a hundred feet of this curb. But I’m out of bags, out of dry, out of pride, so I press my lips together and nod.
He scoops the wreckage up without effort, the dented cans, the rescued cereal, the one surviving carton, then stands before I do. I push myself up and reach for it all.
“I’ll take them.”