Chapter 12
Twelve
The leather was warm beneath my thighs as I buckled into the passenger seat of Dean’s Jeep.
George launched himself into the back like it was his second home, his tail thudding steadily against the seat like a metronome—thump, thump, thump—slow and steady, like the tick of a clock in a too-quiet room.
Dean slid into the driver’s seat beside me, closed the door, started the engine, then slipped the Jeep into reverse. One hand on the wheel, the other… reaching behind me to grip the top of my headrest.
It was a habit, I was sure—but his eyes met mine for a second before we started to move.
He felt it too.
The closeness.
The way his body angled toward mine as if an invisible line had been crossed.
I held my breath as we backed out of the driveway, and he turned back to the road a little too quickly.
His hand had been there for only a second, but I could still feel it. The shift in the air. The subtle trace of warmth that hadn’t fully faded.
“It should only take us about five hours,” he said, voice low and full of grit.
I nodded, eyes on the windshield, pretending my pulse hadn’t just tripped.
We pulled away from the house and headed east, and for a while, neither of us spoke. The silence wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it wasn’t strained, either. Just… full. As though something was unfolding between us, something neither of us was ready for.
I turned to the window, watching palm trees give way to desert brush, then after a while… clusters of pines. That was the thing about California—the landscape never stayed the same for long.
And then reality hit.
I was in this. For a week.
Playing pretend with a man I barely knew, riding in a car I didn’t own, with no way to leave if things went south.
Panic started to rise in my chest, wrapping around my ribs like a boa-constrictor. I focused on the horizon, trying not to let it show.
Then George began to circle in the back seat, over and over again, before his giant head landed on my shoulder with a thud.
I blinked, startled, when he let out a large huff.
“George!” Dean scolded, pulling at his collar to lead him toward the back seat again, but George easily lifted his giant head out of Dean’s grasp and only moved closer to me.
I laughed. “Sorry, boy, is the back seat not big enough for you?” I scratched his ear, leaning my head against his, somehow comforted by his slow steady breath. He was so calm, so happy, that just being close to him made my entire nervous system settle.
“He has no manners,” Dean said with a gruff, watching George from the corner of his eye. “It’s my fault. He’s used to having the whole Jeep to himself.”
I nodded, then glanced out the window again, but something twisted strangely in my chest.
The whole car to himself?
Not just the backseat?
The whole thing?
I shifted, just slightly, my fingers still resting in George’s fur.
How often had it just been the two of them?
How long since anyone else had ridden beside him?
“Can I ask you something?” I asked before I could talk myself out of it.
Dean flicked his eyes in my direction. “Sure. Anything.”
I adjusted in my seat, turning to face him. “Why did you hire me?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… Why not bring a real girlfriend? I’m sure there’s a line of women who’d love to go with you. You’re tall, handsome, you have a dog…” My voice trailed off when I saw the grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“Go on,” he said.
I could feel heat climbing up my chest. “You know what I mean,” I muttered, then turned toward the window again. “If you don’t want to answer—”
“You think people like me don’t have trouble finding a date?”
His tone surprised me. Not angry, just... more honest than I expected.
I lifted my chin upward. “People like you usually don’t hire people like me.”
There, I said it. It was ugly, but it was true.
“People like you?”
The softness in his voice almost gutted me.
“You know what I mean,” I said, more defensively than I intended, but I couldn’t help it.
Men like Dean only came to women like me for two reasons—when they were looking for a distraction or had something to prove.
Men like Dean dated lawyers. Consultants. Women with clean resumes and perfect teeth.
Women who’d never had to smile through something they should’ve run from.
The words hung there, weighty and uninvited.
Dean didn’t respond right away.
His fingers tightened around the steering wheel as we curved around a bend, a subtle shift, like he needed something to hold onto.
The silence stretched, thick with things neither of us said.
Then, finally—
“It started with a picture.”
I glanced over.
His eyes were on the road, jaw set as if he were bracing for something heavy. Not angry. Not defensive. Just... distant.
The kind of distance that made me watch him a little closer.
“A client gave me a photo frame as a thank-you gift. I didn’t think anything of it and set it on my desk before a business trip.”
He paused, eyes focused straight ahead.
“When I got back, people had started asking questions. Apparently, the man in the photo—some random stock image—happened to look like me. Standing in front of a fountain in Florence with a beautiful woman with short brown hair…”
“They wanted to know who she was. If she was my girlfriend. If we were serious. I tried to explain at first, but no one wanted to hear the truth. They’d already started to believe the rumors they’d made up while I was gone. So eventually… I just said yes.
“Yes, that’s my girlfriend.
“Yes, we’re in love.
“Yes, I was with her last weekend—and not camping alone with my dog.”
He smiled faintly, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“But the thing was… things got easier after that. No more questions. No more setups. No more people asking what was wrong with me for not settling down like they thought I should. The pressure was… gone.”
My throat tightened, and I watched him closely. I had to admit, those same flash judgments had entered my mind when we first met.
Shameful really, because I could almost relate to him now.
Those kinds of questions—however harmless—had a way of crawling under your skin.
They stayed with you long after the conversation moved on.
They weren’t meant to hurt, but they did.
Over time, they wore you down.
Made you wonder what you were doing wrong.
So no—what he had done didn’t sound strange to me.
Not at all.
“I get it,” I said softly.
He glanced over, as though my answer surprised him as much as it did me. For a second, he held my gaze, and the air shifted—like a breath passed between us, shared without words.
Like for the first time, we were both recognizing something in the other that didn’t need to be said out loud.
He looked back to the road, one hand on the wheel, the other resting loose against his knee.
Then, without looking at me, he asked, “Can I ask you something, now?”
I tilted my head to the side, trying to pretend as if being on this end of the questions didn’t feel different. “Depends.” I said cautiously.
“How do you know Jake?”
“I met him through John.”
“And John is?”
“My brother.” Not by blood. Not on paper. But in all the ways that mattered, he was.
Dean let that sit for a second. “Why haven’t you told them?”
There was something in his tone—curiosity, but it hit a little too sharp.
“You said one question,” I replied, trying to brush it off.
He didn’t laugh.
Trees blurred past the window, as I tried to find the right words.
How could I explain it? That when you had no safety net, your life could fall apart over something as small as a blown tire. That sometimes, telling the truth came with a cost you couldn’t afford.
Not wanting to reveal too much, I went with, “Because I don’t want them to feel like they have to worry about me. They have their own lives. Their own families. They’ve done enough.”
Dean was quiet for a beat, and the space between his eyebrows creased as if my words had landed somewhere deep.
Then, softly, he said, “Maybe. But worrying about someone isn’t a burden when you love them. It’s how people stay connected. How they show up when they don’t know what else to do.”
I looked over at him, finding his eyes still on the road, his face serious, his jaw a little too tense.
Suddenly, I wondered about his life.
Who he worried about.
Who he was trying to protect.
The trees began to thin then, and I looked back out the windshield.
Up ahead, the forest gave way to a wide clearing, and we passed a sign that read Pine Ridge Resort, Est. 1982. I took a deep breath, then glanced at the clock. Five hours exactly.
A gravel path split off from the main road, bringing us past stretches of green grass and patches of tall ferns that looked like they’d been growing there forever.
Everything was quiet. Tucked away…
Already panicking, I checked my cell phone, and just like I suspected—no bars.
“We’re here,” he said, his voice carrying that quiet awe of someone stepping into a storybook.
Everything outside the window was lush and untamed—green spilling over itself, sunlight cutting through the trees in soft, uneven patterns.
“It’s… beautiful,” I admitted, almost despite myself.
He smiled faintly. “Wait until you see it up close.”
The lodge appeared through the trees a moment later, massive and majestic, built of dark timber and stone.
Thick beams stretched toward the sky, floor-to-ceiling windows gleaming with soft afternoon light.
Even from a distance, it looked timeless.
The kind of place that had seen weddings, family gatherings, and a hundred quiet goodbyes.
“I’ll go grab our keys,” Dean said, pulling into a spot near the entrance.
Before I could respond, he was already out of the Jeep, taking the steps two at a time.
I watched him go, then reached over and scratched under George’s chin where it sat propped on the back of my seat. “I guess we’re really doing this,” I said quietly.
He gave a soft huff, his ears twitching, as if he agreed but wasn’t entirely sure it was a good idea.
“Yeah,” I sighed, leaning back in my seat. “That makes two of us, buddy.”