We untangle carefully, laughing again at the cramped setup, and she fixes her dress while I deal with the condom and button my jeans.
She pulls down the visor mirror to check her hair and catches me watching her in the reflection.
Our eyes meet in the tiny rectangle of glass, and she smiles, and I think:You could tell her. Right now. Your real name, the job, all of it.Look at her—she'd understand.
But I don't. Because what if she doesn't? What if she tells someone? What if by Monday morning, the whole town knows the Timber Run camp hired a man who did eighteen months forassault, and the fragile new beginning I'm clinging to collapses before it starts?
I'm not willing to risk it. Not even for her. Not even for this.
Neither of us is driving anywhere tonight, so I pull up a rideshare for her on my phone while she flips the visor mirror shut. She gives me her address and I type it in, and the app says seven minutes, and I hate that I'm already counting them.
She gives me her number.
“I’ll call you,” I lie.
“You better,” she says, kissing my cheek and I want to crawl under a damn rock.
We sit in the cab and wait, her tucked against my side. The silence isn't awkward, it makes me want to say things I have no right to say.
Soon, headlights sweep across the parking lot.
I walk her to the car. She turns to face me, and in the light spilling from the bar's neon sign, she looks up at me and I capture the image in my head—the pale gold hair, the dimple, and the warm brown eyes.
She rises on her toes and kisses me one more time…softly and sweetly…a goodnight kiss that's so different from the frantic heat earlier in the truck.
“Call me, Tom,” she says again.
“I will.”
She smiles as if she believes me and gets in the car. I watch the taillights until they disappear around the bend, and then I stand there in the gravel lot for a while longer, since my legs don't seem interested in moving.
Eventually, I walk back to my truck and climb into the front seat. It still smells like her in here…that sweet, tropical shampoo. I crack the window to let the mountain air in and lean my head against the seat and close my eyes.
Once the beers work their way through my system and the road stops feeling like a bad idea, I’ll drive back to the motel.
For now I sit in the dark and listen to the bar empty out around me—doors slamming, engines starting, someone laughing too loud. The quiet settles after that. Just crickets and the occasional car on the highway and the sound of my own breathing.
I fall asleep, then wake up around three with a stiff neck and a dry mouth and the weird clarity that only hits in the dead hours. I drive back to the motel, and sit on the edge of the bed, staring at my phone.
I want to call. I want to hear her voice and tell her I wasn't pretending. That everything was real—the way we laughed, the way I held her, the way I said her name as if she was the only good thing in my entire bullshit life.
But if I call, I'll want to see her again. And if I see her again, I'll want to keep seeing her. And I can't offer her anything…not with a felony on my record, not when I'm one bad day away from being exactly who the state of Montana says I am.
She deserves better. She deserves a man who can be honest with her.
I close the phone and set it on the nightstand. Then I roll over in the motel bed and stare at the crack in the wall until it blurs.
CHAPTER 2
KAYLEE
Sunday morning, I check my phone before my eyes are fully open.
No missed calls. No texts.
That's fine. It's early. Tom's probably still asleep. Probably hungover. Probably composing the perfect first text in his head.
Last night, I floated home.