2. Jaxon
JAXON
It’s a hot one today. Mid-April usually brings a high of sixty, but today the temps are soaring.
The kicker? It’ll snow next week. I picked a hell of a day to work on this car.
It’s just a personal project, and I know it won’t be complete before we hit the high season when my spare time disappears, but I’ll make as much headway as I can today.
Even though it’s not open to the public anymore, my Uncle Stan’s mechanic garage is still my favorite place to be.
While my brothers and sister preferred to spend their days at the ranch, I lived at the shop.
When the time came, I stepped into my role at our family’s ranch pretty seamlessly, but in my free time, I’m tinkering here, or in the house behind it that my uncle still owns, but doesn’t live in anymore.
It has always been a little hideaway for me when I need some breathing room.
“Hi, um… excuse me. I was wondering if you could help me put chains on my tires?” The voice barely registers as I’m tightening my hundredth screw. No wonder Uncle Stan got carpal tunnel.
I don’t even look up because it’s my good friend’s ex. Though it’s a bit muffled under the hood, I can tell the sound of her voice. God, I despise her for many reasons.
“No one can help you. Get out of here.”
Silence. And then, a throat clears. “That’s what I’m trying to do. Can you really not help me?”
“Get off it, Cherry. Find someone else,” I snap back, agitated that she’s here in the first place, but then I process the voice… there’s an accent I didn’t initially pick up on because my head was buried so deep.
“But I’m not Cherry,” the mystery voice says, and I stand up so quickly that my head bangs on the roof of the hood.
“Oh shit, I’m…” I lose the ability to speak when I see her, and my mouth gapes open.
No, this certainly is not Cherry. Instead, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen is standing in front of me.
Something about her is off because her chestnut hair is done up in some ultra-fancy hairstyle, but she’s wearing a white button-up and yoga pants.
I can’t figure out what that’s about, but it doesn’t stop me from discreetly tracing my eyes up and down her body.
Her curves are the kind people write about.
What a fun surprise to have someone so mind-bogglingly stunning end up in my parking lot.
“I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else,” I find the words to finish my sentence.
“It’s fine,” she replies, eyeing me back with narrowed lids.
“So, what did you say you needed?” I ask, wiping my hands on a towel and throwing it over my shoulder.
“Um… so… I bought these,” she holds up a bag, “and I don’t know how to put them on. I tried to read the instructions and…” Her eyes meet mine again, and she shrugs.
I hear her accent prominently now; she’s not from around here, not even a little. Adding to that, a quick look at her tires and the chains she bought assures me this woman has no idea what’s going on.
“Where are you headed?” I ask.
She takes a breath and looks around as if someone will hear her. We are on the outskirts of tiny Amberheart Valley. I can’t believe she even found this garage, much less thinks someone will hear her.
“Driggs. It’s in Idaho.”
“Oh no, darling, not tonight, you’re not,” I chuckle. Driggs isn’t a tourist town; it’s the first town on the other side of the mountain with a population of less than a thousand. Why the hell does this bombshell want to go to Driggs?
“Excuse me?” she shoots back, not caring who hears her now.
“Look, there are a couple of things wrong with what you’ve got going on right now. First, those chains aren’t fitting your tires; they’re suited for a truck my size, but even if you had the right ones, you’re not getting through tonight.”
“Look,” she mimics my words. “I have to keep going. Can you help me or not?” She looks around again as if someone is watching her.
“I don’t think you understand what’s up there.
It’s a late-season snowstorm that will make it impassable: blizzard conditions, flash freeze, ice.
You aren’t going to outrun it in that little SUV.
Hell, my Ford 250 would struggle. There is a zero percent chance you’re making it through Teton Pass tonight. ”
She looks at me with the saddest, most defeated eyes I’ve ever seen. What the hell is happening?
“Are you okay?” I ask, looking behind her to see if someone is following or something. “Why the rush? What’s waiting for you?”
Those broken eyes bore into mine, and a silent tear escapes as she shakes her head ever so slightly.
Now that I’m looking more closely at her face, I see the telltale look of someone who has been crying.
Her eyes red-rimmed and swollen. This woman doesn’t owe me an explanation at all, but if she has something unmissable, maybe we could figure something out.
It makes the most sense to wait, but I could try to detour her through Yellowstone, I guess.
Her head just shakes at me as if she’s having a conversation with herself before she wipes another tear.
“I’m Jaxon,” I wave, realizing we haven’t exchanged names.
Her face softens the tiniest bit, and she smiles defeatedly. “I’m Elizabeth. Well, no. I’m Della. Della Tatroe.”
Who confuses their own name?
“Okay, Della Tatroe, how important is it for you to get through the pass tonight? It’s not going to be safe.”
“I just…” she looks down at the ground and shuffles her feet, “I just need to get there.”
“Let’s have a look at the car.” Pushing off the hood of the Impala, I get closer to her vehicle to humor her.
On top of not having the right chains, this car doesn’t even have snow tires on.
But that’s not what catches my eye. Rather, it’s the way that everything is strewn about the interior, including a wedding veil and fancy shoes.
Shit. Was this woman heading to her own wedding?
Her urgency would make sense… so would that hair.
“Those are some fancy shoes you have there. Is that why getting through the pass is so important?”
Her eyes bounce between mine as if she wants me to read her mind, but then she looks down and shakes her head again.
“No, that’s passed,” she responds. I glance at her left hand, but her fingers are bare.
“How long have you been married?” I push.
“I’m not,” she says.
Jesus. Trying to pry information out of her is worse than getting my three-and-a-half-year-old nephew to respond to me when I call him out for doing something he’s not supposed to, and he is selectively mute.
“Della,” I say with a little more authority. The tone brings her eyes off the dirt. “I will help you, but I am trying to figure out why you are willing to risk your life to get through that pass tonight.”
“You’re exaggerating about risking my life, right?” she ventures.
“Not in the least,” I say. “Where are you from?”
“Chicago,” she continues with short answers.
Shit, she’s a long way from home. Unless she’s got property out here, there’s no way she knows how dangerous mountain passes can be in bad weather.
“They’re calling for a historic storm through the pass. You would absolutely be risking your life in this car… or any car.”
“How long until the storm passes?” she asks.
“If I could tell you stuff like that, I’d make a lot of money,” I smile at her. “Why is it so important to get through?” I push again. Now it’s just morbid curiosity.
The air around us stills before she answers. “I need to get away.”
She whispers it so quietly, I would have missed it if I weren’t looking at her.
Any levity I would normally have evaporates when her tone confirms something happened.
“Are you okay? Are you safe? Are you in trouble?” I pepper her with questions she has no obligation to answer, and look behind her again.
Those blue eyes meet mine again, and I can see her gears turning. Maybe she’s deciding if she can trust me, or maybe she’s trying to figure out how to back away.
Taking a deep breath, she finally answers. “I’m running away from my wedding. I should have gotten married today. But as of eight in the morning, I’m officially a runaway bride.”
The record scratches, and my eyes shoot to her shoes in the back again. This was her getaway car. Holy shit.
“This is probably far enough from Chicago,” I venture. “Driggs is only an hour past here, so you can take your foot off the gas.”
“Oh, I haven’t been driving since Chicago. It was a destination wedding at the Cadillac Ranch right outside Sturgis. My best friend, Quinn, lives in Custer, but she’s from Driggs. I’m heading to her parents’ house.”
I hold my breath in hopes she’ll continue. Because I have no right to ask why this stranger is running from her wedding, but I’m curious as hell. Thankfully, she fills the silence.
“Today, after I got my hair done, I ran back to our hotel penthouse because I forgot something important. My fiancé... well, ex-fiancé was supposed to be golfing with his best man. He was with his best man, alright… but they were in the penthouse bedroom. My fiancé was… he was… sleeping with him… not sleep sleeping, you know? And his best man was… pleasuring his girlfriend at the same time. I didn’t know that happened in real life, but they seemed to know what they were doing.
When I peeked in, I heard the woman say that she’d miss this.
My ex told her that nothing was going to change, and that he’d…
” she hesitated and looked around again.
“He said some dirty things and then implied he was going to sleep with her next. After that, I put the ring on the coffee table and left. I’ve been in the car for almost eight hours, which is a long time to be in the car, thinking about how you just walked away from your wedding because your almost-husband was cheating on you and had no plan to stop.
It has been a long day. A terrible day. And I just want to be in Driggs, where Quinn’s parents will love me how I need to be loved right now. ”
Her eyes flood with tears at the admission, and before I can respond, another escapes. My heart breaks for the woman in front of me. What does someone even say to that?
Yeah, this woman is running alright.