Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
NAOMI
The bus smells like diesel and someone's leftover tuna sandwich. Twelve hours of that combination has me ready to kiss the ground when we finally pull into Crimson Hollow, British Columbia, population whatever-it-is, at nine thirteen in the morning.
Two minutes early. First time anything in my life has arrived ahead of schedule.
My suitcase is in the overhead compartment.
One suitcase. Everything I own that matters fits in a single navy blue roller bag with a broken zipper on the front pocket.
Clothes. Toiletries. My grandmother's Bible with the cracked leather cover.
A manila folder full of letters from a dead woman named Edith Cross who wrote to me about mountains, cattle, fresh starts, and her grandson Sullivan.
The folder is thick. Edith was thorough.
Over three months of correspondence, she told me about the cabin she shared with her late husband, the property Sullivan runs alone, the town where everybody knows your name whether you want them to or not.
She told me about the quality of the light in the mornings.
The way the creek sounds from the kitchen window.
How her grandson makes terrible coffee but excellent stew.
She never told me she was dying. Found that out from Rebecca at Sanctuary Match two days ago, right before boarding.
The bus hisses to a stop. Through the window, Crimson Hollow looks exactly like Edith described: small, green, tucked into a valley between mountains that are still wearing snow on their peaks even in the warmth of late spring.
Main street runs straight through town, brick storefronts on both sides, a café on the corner with a chalkboard menu out front.
A mechanic's garage with the bay doors open.
A bookshop in what looks like a converted log cabin.
Beautiful.
That last thought stings a little, but it's also the reason I'm here.
Standing, I pull my suitcase down, check that the folder is secure in my bag, then smooth the front of my blouse.
Wrinkled from the bus seat. Nothing to be done about that now.
My hair is twisted up under a scarf because twelve hours on a Greyhound does no favors for natural curls, but it's neat.
Presentable. The woman looking back at me from the darkened window is tired, thinner than she used to be, wearing confidence like a coat she's not sure fits anymore.
Three years ago, Naomi Jacobs was a restaurant manager in Calgary with a condo, a car, and a husband who convinced her that love was supposed to feel like walking on glass.
Two years ago, she left with a split lip, a suitcase, and her grandmother's Bible.
Eighteen months of shelters, temp work, moving every time the phone rang from an unknown number.
Running until the running became the only thing she knew how to do.
Then Edith's letter arrived at the Sanctuary Match office, addressed to whatever woman might need what she was offering. A home. A chance. Someone on the other end who wouldn't let her fall.
Edith is gone now. But the offer still stands, apparently, because nobody told Sullivan Cross to cancel it before the sixty-day window closed. Or he tried and couldn't. Either way, here I am. End of the line.
The driver opens the door. Morning air rushes in, cool, pine-sharp. My lungs expand like they've been waiting months for a real breath.
Stepping off the bus, my boots hit gravel, and the sun is so bright after the tinted windows that everything goes gold for a second.
The transit station is barely a station.
A wooden shelter with a bench, a schedule posted under plexiglass, a trash can.
Behind it, the mountains rise so high they make my neck ache from looking up.
A truck is parked across the lot. Dark green, mud on the wheel wells, dent in the passenger door. Leaning against the driver's side with his arms crossed is the broadest man I have ever seen in my life.
My breath catches. Edith sent photographs, but photographs are liars.
They don't capture how a man takes up space.
How his shoulders strain the seams of a flannel shirt that has clearly been washed a hundred times.
How his forearms, rolled to the elbow, are roped with muscle and dusted with dark hair.
Silver threading through brown hair at the temples.
Jaw set hard. Gray eyes that land on me with an expression I can only describe as resigned.
He looks like a man who has been ordered to the dentist.
Sullivan Cross. My match. The grandson of a woman who promised me safety, written in looping cursive on cream-colored paper.
My stomach does something complicated. Part nerves. Part something else I'm too road-weary to name. Because even with that scowl, even radiating annoyance from ten yards away, this man is devastating. Rugged and solid in a way that makes the ground feel steadier just because he's standing on it.
Get it together, Naomi.
Straightening my spine, I pull my suitcase across the gravel toward him. The wheels catch on every loose stone. Graceful, this is not.
"Sullivan Cross?"
"Sully." His voice is low. Rough. "Nobody calls me Sullivan except the tax office."
"Naomi Jacobs." My hand comes out automatically. Professional. Steady. My mother raised me to shake hands like I meant it, and some things survive even when everything else falls apart.
He looks at my hand for a beat. Then takes it. His palm is calloused, warm, so large my fingers disappear inside his grip. Something sparks at the contact. Quick and involuntary. His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly, and he lets go.
"Listen," he says, dropping his arms to his sides. "I need to be straight with you about something."
Here it comes. The rejection. The explanation. The bus back to wherever. My fingers tighten on the suitcase handle.
"My grandmother did this without telling me. She signed me up, matched us, wrote the letters. All of it. I found out yesterday."
Oh.
"She died three weeks ago."
"I know," I say quietly. "Rebecca told me when I called for my travel confirmation."
His eyebrows lift slightly. "You got on the bus anyway."
"I didn't have anywhere else to go."
The honesty of it surprises me as much as it surprises him.
That wasn't the plan. The plan was to be composed, agreeable, whatever this man needed me to be until I figured out my next move.
But the twelve hours on a bus and the mountain air and the raw look on this man's face pulled the truth out before my defenses could catch it.
Sully's jaw works. He's studying me with those gray eyes, really looking. Reading my face like he's searching for something specific. My grip on the suitcase handle doesn't waver. My smile holds. It's a good smile. Practiced. The one that says everything is fine, I'm fine, the world is fine.
Behind it, my heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat.
"Come on," he says finally, reaching past me for the suitcase. His arm brushes my shoulder, brief, accidental, electric. "Cabin's forty minutes up the mountain. You can have the spare room while we figure this out."
He says it like a man offering a stray dog shelter from rain. Grudging. Practical. But he says it, which means he looked at me, saw whatever he saw, and decided not to put me on the next bus.
Following him to the truck, I watch his back. Wide, solid, moving with the unhurried pace of someone who has nowhere to be except exactly where he is. He swings my suitcase into the truck bed with one hand. One hand. My entire life in a bag, and he lifts it like air.
The passenger door sticks when I try it. He reaches across me, one arm above my head, the other bracing on the truck frame, his chest close enough that the warmth of him registers through my blouse. The door pops open with a metallic groan.
"Gotta lift and pull at the same time," he says, stepping back. "Door's been like that for years."
"Noted." My voice comes out steadier than expected, which is a miracle considering every nerve in my body just fired at once from having him that close.
Climbing in, I buckle the seatbelt. The truck smells like leather, coffee, and hay. Through the windshield, the mountains wait.
Sully gets in on the driver's side. Starts the engine. Pulls out of the lot without another word.
Forty minutes of silence ahead. A cabin belonging to a dead woman's grandson who didn't ask for me. A suitcase with a broken zipper. A Bible with a cracked cover. A body still humming from the brief pressure of a stranger's hand around mine.
It occurs to me, somewhere between town and the first switchback up the mountain, that Edith Cross might have known exactly what she was doing.