4. Chapter 4
Chapter four
Wyatt
Dad's the one who tells me, over breakfast, like it's no bigger news than the weather.
“Savannah's staying out at Texie's.”
I've got a fork halfway to my mouth. I set it back down. “How do you know that?”
“Ellie's teacher's sister does the boys' carpool. Saw a car with New York plates in the driveway yesterday evening.”
He says it like this is a perfectly normal way for information to travel, which in this town, it is. “Figured you'd want to know before you heard it from Ortiz.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Do you?” He's watching me over his coffee mug, not unkindly, just watching.
“You're doing the thing with your jaw.”
“I'm not doing a thing with my jaw.”
“You've done it since you were nine years old. Right before a fight you were about to lose on purpose because you thought it was the honorable thing to do.”
He sets the mug down. “This isn't a fight, son.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
He says it again, same words, different weight this time, and gets up to rinse his plate before I can answer, which is its own kind of answer.
Ellie shuffles in halfway through, hair still flat on one side from sleep, and drops into the chair across from me without a word, the way she does most mornings before her brain's fully caught up to her body. She eats half a piece of toast before she seems to notice the quiet.
“What's with that face?” she says.
“What face?”
“Like when Moose eats something he's not supposed to and you're deciding how mad to be about it.”
Dad laughs into his coffee. I don't dignify either of them with an answer, just finish my eggs and grab my hat off the hook by the door, and I can still hear Ellie asking Dad what's going on as the screen door swings shut behind me.
I sit with it the whole drive into town.
Millie's, the town diner and pretty much the epicenter of everything in Stonebridge, is doing its usual morning business when I stop in for coffee before my shift.
A few regulars are at the counter, and somebody's kid is coloring on a paper placemat in the corner booth. The ceiling fan is doing the same slow, off-balance wobble it's had since before I wore a badge.
I've got my travel mug in one hand and I’m waiting to pay at the register when Millie's voice cracks across the whole diner, loud enough that the guy at the counter jumps and spills his coffee.
“SAVANNAH BLAKE.”
I watch Millie come around the counter at a dead sprint, apron strings flying, and grab Savannah in a hug that lifts her half off the floor.
Savannah makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a wheeze, arms pinned to her sides, patting Millie's back like she's trying to get free but not really trying.
“You are in my diner,” Millie says, finally setting her down, holding her by both shoulders at arm's length like she needs visual confirmation.
“You are standing in my actual diner. I have thought about you every single day since that magazine put your face on the cover, and now here you are, and I'm guessing you haven't eaten a real meal in a week, so sit down, I'm bringing you biscuits whether you want them or not.”
“Millie, I—”
“Sit.”
“I really don't need—”
“Did I stutter?”
Millie's already turned toward the kitchen, hollering the order before Savannah can get another word out, and the whole counter of regulars is watching now.
A couple of them are grinning like they know exactly how this ends.
Savannah sits at the counter, mostly because there doesn't seem to be another option, laughing for real now, some of the strain finally cracking loose from around her eyes. Texie finds a seat next to her grinning like she orchestrated the whole thing, which, knowing Texie, she might have.
I've still got my card in my hand, halfway to paying, and I haven't moved from the register.
She's three feet away, wiping under one eye where the hug knocked something loose, wearing a jacket better suited for a mountain trail than a Tennessee diner.
She hasn't seen me yet.
For fifteen years, Savannah Blake has existed in pieces.
An old photograph Dad never threw away.
A name that shows up online whether I search for it or not.
A girl I used to know better than anybody.
None of that prepared me for three feet away.
She's older. So am I. But there's something about her that's still so unmistakably Savannah that my chest goes tight before I can do a single thing about it.
I've got maybe two seconds to figure out what I'm going to do.
I don't use them well.
I'm too stunned to move. I can't think of a single thing to say. I just stand there.
Then she sees me and stops mid-laugh.
The whole diner might as well not exist for either of us.
“Wyatt.”
“Savannah.”
Nobody moves.
Millie is halfway back to the kitchen when she notices us staring at each other. She stops in the doorway, biscuit order forgotten.
Her eyes move from Savannah to me. And from me to Savannah.
Then she gets it.
“Uh.” I clear my throat. Start over.
“Hello, Savannah.”
As if that's better.
She blinks, then seems to pull herself together.
“Hello, Wyatt.”
“How are you?”
Not what I meant to say. Not even close to what I meant to say. There's a whole list of better lines I could've reached for, and I landed on the one that sounds like I'm asking about the weather.
Savannah's eyebrow goes up.
“That's your question? Fifteen years, and you lead with 'how are you'?”
“Give me a minute, I'm working up to something better.”
“You were always better at working up to things than actually saying them.”
“That's fair.” I almost smile.
“You want to hear the good version, or are you gonna keep interrupting me before I get there?”
She laughs—short, surprised—and something in her face loosens at the sound of it, like she recognizes the joke before she even finishes reacting to it.
“You used to say that to me constantly.”
“You talked constantly,” I remind her.
“I did not talk constantly.”
“Savannah, you once told an entire church picnic the complete plot of a movie nobody else had seen yet, unprompted, over potato salad. I finally had to put a hand over your mouth before you gave away the ending.”
“That was one time.”
“It was several times. I started accusing you of interrupting me just to get a word in edgewise before you'd already moved on to the next three topics.” I shrug.
“Old habit, guess it still fits.”
“How long are you staying?” I ask, because it's the only question I trust myself with right now.
“I don't know yet.”
She wraps both hands around the coffee Millie's already slid in front of her, not waiting to be asked.
“A couple of weeks, maybe two.”
“Texie's letting me hide out in her sons' bedroom, which is exactly as dignified as it sounds.”
“Luke's bunk or Ben's?”
“How did you know there were bunks?”
“I built them.” I shrug when her eyebrows go up.
“Few summers back. Texie asked and I had the wood. Seemed easier than saying no.”
“You built them.” She almost smiles at that, real this time, not the thin nervous version from before.
“Is there anything in this town you haven't built, fixed, or personally rescued?”
“Working on it.”
That gets a proper laugh out of her, short but genuine, and for a second the tightness around her eyes eases.
There she is.
Not the girl I remember from fifteen years ago.
Savannah.
Right here.
Right now.
Laughing at me like we haven't missed a decade and a half in between.
Then it fades, quick, like she caught herself doing it and wasn't sure she was allowed.
“I should let you get to work,” she says, glancing toward my uniform like she's only just registered it.
“You've probably got actual sheriff things to do.”
“Parking violations mostly. Real cutthroat stuff.”
“Right.” She shifts her weight, clearly working through whether to say something else.
“Wyatt—”
“You don't have to explain anything to me,” I say, before she can finish whatever's about to come out sideways and half-formed. "Not today. Not unless you want to.”
She studies me for a long second, like she's checking whether I mean it.
“Okay,” she says, finally.
Small. Grateful.
And something about that bothers me more than it should. Savannah used to explain everything.
Every thought, every plan, every reason she had for wanting something.
Half the time I couldn't get her to stop.
Now she’s relieved because somebody told her she doesn't have to.
“Okay,” I say.
I pay for my coffee.
Somewhere during our conversation, Texie has moved from the counter to a booth by the window, giving us space without making it obvious that's what she's doing.
Millie's already delivering a plate of biscuits with the kind of ceremony usually reserved for state dinners.
Savannah heads over to join her.
We don't hug, don't shake hands, don't do any of the things two old friends might do after fifteen years—just a nod, both of us, like we've agreed without saying so that anything more would be too much for a Wednesday morning in a diner with half the town watching.
I make it to the door before Millie finally catches up to me, coffee pot in hand, grinning like she's been saving something up.
“Sheriff. You planning to go to work today, or you gonna stand there staring a while longer?”
“I'm leaving, Millie.”
“Sure you are.”
I pick up my coffee and head for the door.
It takes more effort than it should to keep going.
The radio crackles halfway to the cruiser. Ortiz, sounding entirely too pleased with himself. “You get your coffee, Sheriff?”
“Got it.”
“That's all? No other news to report from Main Street this morning?” he asks.
“Nothing worth reporting,” I tell him.
“Uh-huh.”
I can hear him grinning through the static.
“Millie already texted my wife. Whole town's gonna know by lunch.”
“Wouldn't be Stonebridge if they didn't.”
I sign off before he can dig any further and sit in the cruiser a minute longer than I need to, keys in my hand, not starting the engine yet.
Through the diner window I can just make out Savannah's booth — Texie leaning across the table, gesturing with a biscuit like she's mid-story.
Savannah is laughing at something with her whole face for the first time since I walked in.
She's here.
Two weeks.
In Luke's old bunk bed, wearing a jacket built for the Alps, laughing at a joke I haven't used on her in fifteen years like no time passed at all in between.
I told myself keeping my distance was the plan. Good plan, solid plan, the kind of plan a sensible man sticks to.
Three minutes in a diner and I already know exactly how well that's going to hold.