2. Ryan
RYAN
I’ve got you. I don't know why I said it.
What a weird ass thing to say to a stranger. But it came out before I could file it. Anyway the way her breath caught and then went out slowly tells me it was the right thing to say, even if I'm going to think about why I said it for the rest of the night.
I glance at her in the rearview mirror. She is something special. She’s sweet in a way she tries to hide, but there’s a strength there too. Not to mention the way her curves filled out the round of her jeans in all the right places.
Her sedan is packed to the brim and that sweet little baby is clipped into the backseat. Cece has dark circles etched under her eyes and she’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Just like that, I know.
I want to be careful about that sentence because I am not a man who knows things based on twelve minutes in a general store. I am a man who watches, files, waits for the second and third data points before I commit to a pattern. In my line of work, knowing too fast gets people hurt.
But I know.
I pull out onto the road and slow until she follows. There’s no way I want her taking these roads alone.
I have wanted a family since I was eight years old. I'm the youngest of four and my siblings were all old enough when I came along that I basically grew up in an empty house.
By the time I was in high school my brothers and sister were scattered across three states with their own kids and their own lives. My parents were tired in the way parents get tired at the end of a long run and I can’t blame them for it. They did their best.
But I ate a lot of dinners alone. I watched a lot of sitcoms about loud families and wondered what that was like. Then Mom got sick my junior year of college and Dad followed her two years later. I learned what alone actually was, which turned out to be different from what I'd been practicing.
I've been practicing alone my whole life and I'm done with it. I've been done with it for a while. I was already looking when I came to Iron Peak because this is the kind of town where a man puts roots down on purpose.
The quiet work, the good people and the long morning patrols add up to a life that could be worth something if you had someone to come home to. But I didn't have someone to come home to.
Until twelve minutes ago.