Scorched Heart (Heart of the Mountain #9)

1. Joy

JOY

He held the dart like he didn’t want to wake it up.

I’d been inside The Soda Jerk for maybe ten seconds and hadn’t made it past the doormat.

Yet there he was at the back wall with his arm coming up slowly, three fingers pinched light around the dart, a man in a dark T-shirt and faded jeans and a posture that took up all the air in the back corner of the diner.

I did not move.

I’d come in for a burger. I spent the last four hours setting up my campsite next to Laurel Creek, and the last forty minutes I’d been telling myself I was hungry enough to drive into town instead of cooking on my camp stove.

The neon OPEN sign out front had flickered twice while I sat in my car deciding.

The exterior looked like a roadside dive bar that hadn’t been painted since the seventies.

The interior looked like someone had built a 1950s diner inside a barn.

Black and white checkered floor. Red vinyl booths along one wall.

A long counter with hot pink barstools, the counter itself rising on a silver corrugated base.

A row of dart boards mounted on the back wall, and a knot of people standing in front of them, drinks in hand, watching.

Watching him.

I watched him too.

He brought the dart up to eye level. He paused. He released. He didn’t watch it land. He just lowered his arm and stepped back from the line, and someone behind him whooped, and someone else clapped one time.

The man in the dark T-shirt didn’t react. He plucked another dart from his other hand and flipped it once.

I had no idea what I was looking at. I didn’t know if he’d hit well or badly.

I didn’t know what the round was, what the score was, what the rules were.

I’d never thrown a dart in my life. I just knew that the entire back wall of the diner was paying attention to him, and he was paying attention to a piece of cork twelve feet away.

Nothing else in the room existed for him.

My phone was in my hand.

I was holding it like I’d been about to lift it. I hadn’t lifted it. I’d been standing just inside the door of a diner I’d never set foot in, looking at a man I had never seen, and my hand had stayed at my side.

I looked down at the phone. I turned it face-down against my thigh and walked to the counter.

A man in a clean white apron looked up and said, “Evening. Sit anywhere.”

I picked the stool nearest the wall and the farthest from the dart boards. Facing away. I set my phone face-down, picked up the laminated menu propped against the napkin holder, and didn’t read a single word on it because I could still hear the soft thud of darts hitting cork behind me.

“Can I get you something?”

The man behind the counter was watching me with patient eyes. Late thirties, short hair cut military-tight. The name stitched above the apron pocket read West.

“Pepper jack cheeseburger,” I said. “And whatever flavored seltzer you have.”

“Got grapefruit and got blackberry.”

“Blackberry.”

“Coming up.”

He turned to the kitchen window, called the order back, and pulled a can out of the cooler under the counter. He popped the tab and set it in front of me on a paper napkin. Quick, easy, no fuss. I liked him already.

I sat holding the can. I didn’t turn around.

I could feel the dart corner behind me. Voices low, mostly men, the occasional laugh. The thud, thud, thud. Three darts, a pause, the soft sound of someone walking up to the board and pulling them out, footsteps back to the line.

Another thud.

I made it about ninety seconds before I looked.

I told myself I was checking on my burger. I told myself I was reading the room. I told myself a lot of things in a very short period of time.

What I actually did was turn my head and look over my left shoulder at the back wall. The man in the dark T-shirt was staring at me.

Not throwing. Not reaching for a dart. Standing at the line with his arm at his side, three darts still in his other hand, looking straight at me.

I should have turned around fast. I should have smiled politely and faced the counter and pretended I hadn’t been caught looking. That’s what I did at trailheads and gear booths and brand events and airports. I had a whole repertoire of small graceful retreats.

I did not retreat.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

He had dark hair, not too long, pushed back off his forehead from running a hand through it.

A jaw that had not been shaved in a day or two.

Eyes I couldn’t see well across the room, but I would have bet they weren’t pale.

He was tall, even at twenty feet of distance, and he was built like a man who used his body for work and not for a gym.

Someone next to him said, “Kirk. You’re up.”

He did not turn his head.

He said something low to the guy beside him without looking away from me, and the guy laughed and said something back, and Kirk—the man in the dark T-shirt, the man at the line, the man who was apparently named Kirk—handed his darts off and walked away from the board.

He walked toward the counter.

He walked toward me. Long, unhurried steps. He did not adjust his shirt. He did not run a hand through his hair. He came across the diner like a man who knew exactly where he was going and was not in any particular rush about it.

He stopped at the stool next to mine and looked down at me. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“I haven’t seen you in here before.”

“I just got into town.”

He pulled out the stool. He didn’t ask. He just dragged it back and sat down on it and turned toward me, one elbow on the counter, the other hand on his thigh. Up close, his eyes were a dark green, and there was a small scar through his right eyebrow that looked old.

“How long are you here for?” he said.

“Until Saturday.”

He looked at me a beat. “That’s not enough time.”

I didn’t know what to do with that.

West reappeared with my burger and a basket of fries, set them down in front of me, and said, “Spencer. Beer?”

“Yeah. Whatever’s on.”

West nodded and walked off. Spencer. His first name was Spencer. Or maybe it was his last name. All I knew was that his name was some configuration of Spencer and Kirk.

“I’m Joy,” I said.

“Joy what?”

“Hayward.”

“Joy Hayward.” He said it once, like he was checking the shape of it. He nodded a little. “Spencer Kirk.”

“I guess your friend was calling you by your last name.”

He almost smiled. It didn’t quite get there, but I saw it try.

West came back with a bottle of beer and set it in front of him without a coaster and walked off again. Spencer gripped the bottle but didn’t lift it.

“What are you doing in Wildwood Valley, Joy Hayward?”

I picked up a fry. I didn’t pick up my phone. It had been face-down on the counter for ten minutes now and I hadn’t once looked at it. I was extremely aware of that.

“I’m an outdoor influencer,” I said. “I’m here doing content for a technical apparel brand.”

“Okay.”

That was all he said. Okay. He didn’t ask how many followers I had. He didn’t ask which brand. He didn’t ask if he might have seen me online. He didn’t say cool in the tone men use when they mean what does that actually mean.

He said okay and waited.

“I’m camping at Laurel Creek,” I said. “I just got set up this afternoon.”

“You set up by yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Figured.”

He didn’t make it a compliment. It was an observation. Figured. He’d looked at me and already known I had set up the tent by myself. My chest went warm anyway.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

I dropped my gaze to it. The screen was face-down. I did not flip it over. I let it buzz against the laminate while I picked up my burger and took a bite. Spencer watched me not flip it over with a look on his face that I couldn’t entirely read.

I chewed. I swallowed. I took a sip of my seltzer.

“You’re not going to answer it?” he said.

“No.”

“Okay.”

He drank from his beer. He set it down. The dart corner behind him had moved on without him. Someone else was up. The thud, thud, thud behind him meant someone else was throwing. He didn’t look back.

“You eating here tomorrow night too?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

“I’ll be here.”

He stood up. He did not push the stool back in. He left it where it was, half-turned toward mine, like he was planning to come back to it. He looked down at me one more time.

“Welcome to Wildwood Valley, Joy Hayward.”

Then he walked back to the boards.