Chapter 3
Chapter Three
“Can you breathe?”
Lily jumped, her heart still hammering away in her chest. Sheriff Rush Callahan already intimidated her on a good day, but scowling at her from across the bench seat, he looked downright lethal.
She’d seen her share of those cop shows, and the sheriff looked every inch the tough, hard cop, with black hair, a couple days of dark scruff on his jaw, and a tall, hard-muscled body that seemed to fill every inch of the cab. She’d sing like a bird if he ever interrogated her.
She nodded quickly, the medicine easing the tightness in her chest. I am a still lake.
At her feet, the massive dog tilted its head, staring at her with an expression she could interpret only as disdain and let out a low growl.
“Quiet,” Rush barked. Lily flinched before she realized he was talking to the dog, not her.
Adrenaline still pumped through her veins like wildfire as she processed what had just happened.
She twisted around in the seat, pushing down the layers of tulle to look out the back window.
The church doors flew open, and there stood Tucker, fists planted on his hips, his face twisted with fury.
His mother hovered beside him, her lips pressed into a tight line of disapproval.
Tucker’s eyes locked on hers as they sped away.
Holy shit. She really had done it.
A small, hysterical laugh burst out of her. It bubbled up, spilling over until she was clutching her stomach, her whole body shaking with laughter, tears streaming down her cheeks.
The sheriff shot her a sharp glance. “Put your head between your knees.”
“I’m fine,” she gasped, still laughing. Her chest felt looser than it had all day, her lungs working properly for once. Lord, she must look unhinged, but the absurdity was too much—it was just not how she saw this day ending.
Her fingers instinctively found the rose quartz pendant at her throat, the one thing she had insisted on wearing. She rubbed it between her fingertips, grounding herself.
She peeked at Sheriff Callahan from the corner of her eye. Not on her bingo card for her wedding day: Northfield’s sheriff driving the getaway car.
Her sisters called him “Sheriff Sexy” when he first came to town, striding around in his charcoal-gray uniform and silver badge, a tan Stetson shadowing his eyes.
He was always impossibly composed and untouchable in the authority of his uniform, but Lily’s nervousness around him came from something else entirely.
It was his rugged, unapologetically masculine presence that had always made her tongue-tied and feel slightly out of her comfort zone.
But here in the cab of his truck, he looked different.
The Stetson was gone, replaced by a beat-up cap.
The pressed uniform was now well-worn jeans and a shearling-lined coat pulled high against the cold, his broad frame even larger wrapped inside it.
Her gaze drifted to the wheel, where his big hands gripped it tightly.
His knuckles were bruised and scabbed, like he’d just been in a fight and won.
A shiver of wariness curled through her at the blunt reminder of the differences between them.
Really, it was embarrassing every time they ran into each other in town. He was one of those people who made her forget how to act normal, so she just ended up smiling like a dummy while her face turned beet red. He must think her head was as fluffy as her dress.
The thought made another nervous laugh bubble up. Lily Hart, rule follower, people pleaser, had just blown up her life like a runaway bride in a rom-com.
The sheriff’s jaw was set, his eyes locked on the snow-covered road ahead as if this were just another day at the office for him.
Tucker always made fun of her when she talked about people’s energy—he called her a hippie—but Lily was a big believer that the world could be nudged into more harmony if people just had the right vibrations.
She liked to think she put out a light, peaceful energy—or she tried to, at least.
Sheriff Callahan’s energy was grounded and intense, like the steady hum of a storm about to break.
It wasn’t loud or flashy, but it was impossible to ignore.
It was calm, and controlled, and it carried a weight of authority that made people straighten up and listen.
He was the kind of man who solved problems and didn’t think twice about it.
The complete opposite of her.
For one sharp, breathless moment, she remembered her very first instinct—pretend she hadn’t seen the photo, ignoring it the way she’d ignored so many red flags before.
The late nights. The unexplained trips. The way he’d pulled further and further away while she’d clung harder, desperate to keep the picture-perfect life she’d always imagined.
For once in her life, she hadn’t done the right thing—she’d done the real thing. It didn’t erase the hurt, but it lit something new inside her, a fragile spark of freedom she wanted more of.
Her laugh broke into a sigh, and she slumped back. “I can’t believe I just did that.”
Rush frowned, looking every inch the law enforcement officer as he assessed her mental health, probably. “Do you want me to take you back?”
“No,” she said quickly. The rage had burned out as quickly as it had come, leaving a wild exhilaration in its place. “I don’t want to go back.”
She twisted her fingers in the layers of tulle bunched around her. She didn’t have anything with her. Not her keys or a change of clothes or even her purse with any money. But she had her inhaler and a bone-deep certainty that she’d just shed over two hundred pounds of deadweight in her life.
She didn’t want to go back. Not to Tucker, not to their apartment, not to her family’s inevitable questions, and definitely not to Northfield, where whispers would follow her everywhere.
And Angela. Oh my God. Angela would be furious that Lily had ruined the day and humiliated her in front of her friends.
She would never understand why Lily had caused such a scene, never mind that her son was a dirty cheater.
A tiny voice reminded her that she had thought for one brief moment of ignoring that fact too.
No, she couldn’t go back.
“Look,” Sheriff Callahan said, not unkindly.
“We’re running out of time. There’s a storm on the way.
” She looked around her. For the first time, she noticed the snow swirling so thickly on the expressway that the road seemed to vanish into a white blur.
Bare trees coated in ice lined the empty highway.
Perfect. A freak blizzard on her wedding day seemed fitting.
“Where do you want me to drop you off?” Sheriff Callahan asked, breaking the silence after a solid stretch of driving. “I can take you back to Northfield, to your family, or to a motel. Your call.”
“No!” The word tore out of her, sharp and panicked. “I can’t go back. They’ll—Tucker—he’ll…” He’ll talk me into forgiving him. His mom will guilt me into smoothing things over, and I’ll cave, like I always do.
She faltered, swallowing hard, embarrassed again at what she was about to say and what that said about her. “I don’t want to go back,” she said again.
Sheriff Callahan’s face went stony. “Ma’am, are you in any danger?”
Lily’s eyes flew open. Oh Lord. “No. No, nothing like that.”
For all her anger with Tucker, she had never been afraid of him.
If anything, he’d dismissed her in that casual way of a couple together for so long that he didn’t truly see her anymore.
Tucker never argued with her. He just made the decisions and assumed she’d follow.
And she had, like a trusting little puppy.
God, it made her sick to think about now, but she wasn’t in any physical danger.
“Good.” His shoulders relaxed a bit.
“I just couldn’t do it,” she whispered, staring out at the snow swirling across the highway. “I just need to get away for a few days before I have to go back and face… all that.”
“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked in his calm sheriff’s voice. She could imagine him using that tone to calm people down while still letting them know he wasn’t messing around.
She shook her head. “Not yet. Please,” she added quietly. “I just… need a few days before I have to face it.”
“Fair enough. Where should I take you?”
Relief loosened her tense body. She shivered as her mostly bare shoulders touched the frigid leather seat while she thought.
Old Lily would’ve given him Evie’s address, let her family sweep her up and patch her together.
But, for once in her life, she didn’t want to be patched. She wanted something different.
“Can you drop me at a hotel?” she asked softly.
Sheriff Callahan’s eyebrows slammed down. “Do you have a plan? Any money?”
That scowl. She knew it too well. Tucker had looked at her the same way more times than she could count—as if she didn’t have a lick of sense in her head when really it was that her brain worked differently than theirs.
And now, the sheriff was looking at her in the same way.
It shouldn’t matter, not after the day she’d had, but disappointment crept in anyway.
She was tired of men underestimating her.
Some people saw the world through colors and emotions and instinct. Others dealt in rules, logic, and the weight of reality. She happened to be in the first category. Rush Callahan, with his sharp eyes and hard edges, clearly was not.
“I don’t have any money on me, but I can pay you back. I own Pure Bliss Wellness Studio on Main Street.”
The sheriff grunted, his expression unreadable. “I know who you are.”
Lily snuck a glance at him again, her curiosity piqued—he knew her?—but then ruined it when her teeth began to chatter. She bit down, trying to stop the shaking, but the cold had seeped into her bones.