Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
GIA
If I hadn’t been numb with shock, I’d probably never have climbed into Timothy’s black truck and let him drive me away. Too much had happened. Too much in too few hours. My mind felt packed with glass. One wrong thought and everything inside me might splinter.
Timothy eased out of the crowded parking lot with one hand on the wheel, phone pressed to his ear. “Hey, Angie, I need the lunch special for two—pickup.” He paused, listening. “Perfect. Ten minutes. Thanks.”
The normalcy of a casual call for food in the middle of my world detonating hit somewhere tender in my chest. He was taking care of things, quietly, like it was the most natural thing in the world to gather up my broken pieces and carry what he could.
“I’m not really up for going somewhere and sitting down,” I admitted, picking at a thumbnail until it stung.
“I figured.” His voice softened. “That’s why I got it to go. There’s someplace quiet I want to take you.”
Not a demand. Not pressure. Just a place he wanted to share. A place for me.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Silence settled between us, thick with everything unsaid. My stomach knotted harder with it. I stared out the windshield. “I’m sorry about last week. About the way I left.”
His hands tightened slightly on the steering wheel as he stopped at a red light. He turned, his gaze was steady, warm, and carrying regret that made my chest ache.
“I’m the one who’s sorry,” he said. “I pushed too fast.”
A weak laugh slipped out of me, brittle around the edges. “Pretty sure nothing in that bedroom qualified as fast. Quite the opposite.”
His mouth tipped into a grin. “No, not that.” He shook his head. “That part went pretty well.”
Despite everything pressing on my ribs, I smiled. Then the smile faded just as quickly, drowned beneath shame, grief, and that awful hollow feeling Justin always seemed to leave behind. My voice came out thin. “I’m sorry about Justin.”
Timothy immediately reached across the console and wrapped his hand around mine. “We don’t need to give him space in this truck right now. Every one of us is on your side.”
My throat tightened. No one had ever said “us” to me like that before. Like there was a line in the sand, and people would stand shoulder to shoulder with me.
A crooked smile tugged at Timothy’s mouth. “I think Dante might be the scariest of the lot of us. He’s a good sheriff. It’s why people voted for him.”
A startled laugh broke out of me.
He pulled up to the old gas station diner that had been a hangout, gossip mill, and unofficial town hall for generations. He picked up our food from the tiny drive-through window.
Twenty minutes later, deep in Hurst land, he turned down a dirt path lined with pines and backed his truck into a spot by the lake.
Timothy hopped out, dropped the tailgate, and motioned me back.
I climbed up beside him in silence, sitting thigh to thigh while he unpacked sandwiches and fries like this was some ordinary afternoon instead of the aftermath of my world caving in. Then he reached into a cooler tucked in the bed and pulled out two beers chilled in ice.
I blinked at him. “Do you drive around prepared for emotional emergencies?”
One shoulder lifted. “Sometimes the days get long. I come down here, drink a beer alone, and clear my head.”
That answer lodged somewhere sharp in my chest.
Not I go with friends.
Not I blow off steam.
Just…I come down here alone.
He twisted the cap off one bottle, handed it to me, then tapped his against mine before taking a sip.
“So,” he said gently, staring out over the water, “you want to tell me about him now?”
I looked at him. Really looked. I noted the shadows carved beneath his eyes.
A tightness lived in his shoulders like he wore the weight of half the county there.
He hid exhaustion behind easy smiles and that steady way he moved through chaos like he was built to carry it.
Suddenly, I couldn’t talk about Justin. Not when the man beside me looked like he was quietly breaking himself in half to hold everything together.
“I’m worried about you,” I said.
His head turned sharply, genuine surprise flashing across his face. “Me?” He snorted a small laugh, like the idea was ridiculous. “Why? I didn’t have the day you had.”
“You ended up trapped in a life you didn’t want. You fought real hard against it.” My voice softened. “You run two businesses. That alone would bury most people. Then you took on raising Sofia by yourself.”
“Well…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “My parents help a lot with Sofia.”
“You’re the one getting up in the middle of the night when she cries.” I held his gaze. “You’re the one building fairy treehouses and making waffles. Somehow, you still show up for everyone else.”
He stiffened.
“So, tell me, Mr. Overachiever…” I nudged his knee with mine. “How are you, really?”
His mouth flattened into a thin line. “I’m good.” A small pause. “It’s fine.” The words came too fast. Too polished. A script he’d repeated so many times he probably believed it.
“Bullshit.”
He laughed softly, but there wasn’t much humor in it.
“When was the last time you took Sofia to the beach? Or Disney? Or anywhere that wasn’t work, church, or some other sort of obligation? When was the last time you took two or three days in a row off? No work. No phone calls about work.”
His eyes dropped to the beer bottle in his hand, thumb worrying at the label. That silence was answer enough.
I tried again, quieter this time. “When’s the last day you had where you didn’t carry the whole world on your back?”
He shrugged, but it looked tired, not indifference, but surrender. “I’m handling it.”
No. He was surviving it.
The thought of him wearing himself down to nothing while smiling through it, insisting he was fine while quietly bleeding himself dry for everyone he loved hurt me more than it should have.
“It’s okay not to be everything all the time,” I said softly. “You know that, right? What do you do for fun? For stress relief?”
Another shrug. “I run in the mornings.”
I made a face. “The way you say it doesn’t sound like fun.
I appreciate that it keeps you in disgustingly good shape…
” I let my eyes drift slowly over him. “I would absolutely volunteer as part of your stress-relief plan. For therapeutic purposes, of course. Maybe for my own refresher course on exactly how good that shape is.”
That finally pulled a real grin out of him, however brief, crooked, and tired around the edges it was. It made me want to kiss him and cry at the same time. Then another thought hit me. What if it wasn’t that Timothy never took a vacation… What if he simply had no one to go with on vacation?
That thought sank straight into my chest and sat there, heavy.
“I think the state fair starts next week,” I said suddenly. “Would you take a day off in the middle of the week—say Wednesday or Thursday—and take Sofia and me to the fair?”
“The big fair in Raleigh?” His startled gaze found me. “With you?”
“I’m looking for the full experience.” I pointed my beer at him for emphasis. “Not the polished Instagram version. I want the authentic, sweat-soaked, mildly miserable North Carolina fair experience.”
He leaned back a bit. “Oh yeah?”
“Oh yes. I want forty-five minutes of circling for parking while everyone in the car gets progressively more angry. I want fried food so battered my stomach hurts. I want sticky toddler fingers, stroller traffic jams, Sofia melting down halfway through because her feet hurt even though she refused to sit in the stroller twenty minutes earlier, and you dropping fifty dollars trying to win some enormous stuffed alpaca the size of a loveseat that we absolutely do not need and somehow have to buckle into a seatbelt for the drive home.”
His grin spread wider.
I continued, “I want a sunburn and powdered sugar in places powdered sugar should never be.” I lifted my brows. “The whole package.”
He released a real laugh this time, deep and easy, the kind that made his shoulders finally loosen. Then he raised his beer. “Next Wednesday. It’s a date. But only if…”
When he didn’t finish, I asked, “What?”
His eyes flickered down my body. His voice came out rough, “I get to find the lost powdered sugar.”
I touched my bottle to his. A promise.
Then softer, because this mattered more, I said, “You’re not doing as well as you want everyone to think you are.
” I held his eyes. “Promise me you’ll never feed me that polished bullshit line you hand everyone else.
Tell me the truth. I won’t think less of you if you admit it’s hard or things are out of control. ”
He looked down at his beer and exhaled through his nose. Then nodded.
He pulled out his phone to read an incoming text and muttered, “Motherfucker. It never ends.”
“What’s wrong?”
“One of the new farm hires shattered the driver-side window of our only functional tractor.” His eyelids dropped closed as his lower jaw worked back and forth for a moment.
I blinked. “How?”
“Coby says he drove too close to a tree.”
I stared.
He kept going, dead serious. “I’m revoking his tractor privileges. Last week this kid drove into the side of the sawdust shed. Cost me two grand to fix the entryway and make sure the whole thing doesn’t collapse. The tractor has a fucking dent in the front of it.”
I choked on a laugh. “He drove into the sawdust shed?” I wiped at my eyes. “Sorry. I can’t… I mean, how? That opening is so wide you could fly a small aircraft through it. It’s basically impossible to miss.”
He turned to me, finally losing it. Full laughter broke free. He shrugged.
I asked, “Does this guy need glasses? Or maybe an exorcism?”
“I’ll ask the Baptist pastor about exorcism, but I’m pretty sure that’s not in his wheelhouse.” He laughed harder, shaking his head.
For the first time since I’d gotten in the truck, he looked lighter—like maybe for one minute he’d set down everything crushing him.
He bumped my shoulder gently with his. “I’m ready for the story about him.”