Epilogue #2
Caleb’s foot eased off the gas instinctively. There was something familiar about that figure, that walk, that?—
Michael.
Of course, it was Michael.
Caleb slowed the truck, his brain trying to process what he was seeing. Michael was hitchhiking. In the same white shirt he always wore, like he had an endless supply of them or maybe just the one that never got dirty.
The man who had saved him in the warehouse fire. The man who’d appeared in a burning building and pulled two people to safety. The man who’d been shot in the chest, and stood up without a scratch. The man who was definitely, absolutely, impossibly, not human.
Michael turned as the truck approached, and his smile was wide. Knowing. Like he’d been waiting for Caleb specifically.
Caleb pulled over, the truck’s tires crunching on gravel. Leaned over and rolled down the passenger window. Jerked his head toward the passenger side.
“Need a ride?”
“If you’re offering.”
Michael opened the door and climbed in with easy grace, settling into the passenger seat like he’d ridden there before. The truck cab suddenly felt smaller, the air charged with something Caleb didn’t have words for.
Caleb shifted into gear and pulled back onto the road. Neither of them spoke.
They drove in silence for a mile. Two. Three. The sun climbed higher, painting everything in shades of gold. The radio didn’t work. The only sounds were the engine and the road and their breathing.
Caleb kept glancing at Michael out of the corner of his eye. The man … angel … whatever he was … sat perfectly still, looking out the windshield with that same calm expression he always wore. Like he knew exactly where they were going, even though Caleb had no destination in mind.
“So,” Caleb finally said, because he’d never been good with silence. “You hitchhike often?”
“When the situation calls for it.”
“And this situation called for it?”
“Seemed like you could use the company.”
Caleb huffed a laugh despite himself. “Yeah? What makes you think that?”
Michael turned to look at him fully for the first time. Those eyes were too knowing, too old, too full of understanding for any normal human. “You’re running again.”
It wasn’t a question. Caleb’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Maybe I am. So what?”
“So nothing. Running isn’t always wrong. Sometimes it’s exactly what you need to do.” Michael paused. “Sometimes you don’t have to have a plan.”
“Kid asked me about my plan this morning,” Caleb muttered.
“Smart kid.”
They lapsed into silence again. Caleb drove, watching the road unspool ahead of them, trying to figure out what to say.
How to ask the questions that had been burning in his head since that night in the warehouse, since Boston, since he’d first seen, caught a glimpse of Michael in a burning building.
Finally, he just said it. “You’re an angel.”
“Yes.”
No hesitation. No explanation. Just yes.
“And you just … appear when people need help?”
“Something like that.”
“Why me?” The question came out rougher than Caleb intended. “Why did you save me in that warehouse? Why did you pull me out when you should have saved Jamie? He was the one with his whole life ahead of him. I was … I’m just …”
“You were exactly where you needed to be,” Michael said gently. “And so was I.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I have.” Michael looked at him with those old eyes. “I go where I’m sent. I do what I can. The rest … the why, the what comes after … that’s not up to me.”
Caleb’s jaw worked. He wanted to be angry, wanted to demand better answers, wanted to understand why a twenty-three-year-old with a fiancée and dreams had to die while a washed-up lieutenant with a destroyed shoulder and a failed marriage got to live.
But he was too tired to be angry anymore.
“So what now?” Caleb asked instead. “You just ride along in my truck? Wait for the next person who needs saving?”
Michael’s smile was slight. “Would that be so bad?”
Caleb considered. An angel riding shotgun. Going wherever the road took them. Helping people who needed it.
It was insane. Completely, utterly insane.
And somehow, it felt right.
Caleb laughed, really laughed, for the first time in months. The sound filled the truck cab, surprising him with its genuine amusement. “You know what? I think you’d earn your wings a lot easier with a human to help. Someone who knows how to hot-wire a car or knows first aid or can actually drive.”
Michael’s eyes crinkled with what might have been humor. “I think you might be right.”
Caleb realized he had neither confirmed nor denied the comment about the wings.
“So you’re coming with me? Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“No angelic duties to attend to? No clouds to sit on? No harps to play?”
“I’ll manage.”
Caleb shook his head, still grinning despite himself. “This is crazy.”
“Probably.”
“I don’t even know where I’m going.”
“Neither do I,” Michael said. “That’s what makes it interesting.”
The road stretched out ahead of them. Empty and open and full of possibility.
In the rearview mirror, the sun was climbing over the mountains behind them, burning off the last of the morning haze and turning the peaks gold.
Willow Glen was back there, growing smaller with each mile.
Ethan and Lydia and the kids were back there, building their life.
And Caleb was here, driving away from it all with an angel in his passenger seat and no destination in mind. But for the first time since Jamie died, since his shoulder shattered, since his wife walked out, Caleb wasn’t running away from something. He was just driving.