And neither did she.
"It's okay to ask for help," she whispered, her breath hot on his neck.
He shook his head, the movement brushing his jaw against the softness of her hair. Grandma Mackie had drilled into him from the very beginning that asking for help meant you were weak.
And he was tired of being weak.
"I'm here," she whispered. "And I'm not walking away."
Because she needed a place to stay. Not because she had any tender feelings toward him. He didn't want her to.
He didn't need any more complications. Didn't need to be responsible for anyone else.
But he was still holding onto her.
What was he doing?
He forced his arm away from her softness. Forced his aching body to straighten, to hold his weight. "Could you get me some more Tylenol?"
She looked at him, her eyes tracking down his face. From this close, there was no escaping.
He didn't want to know what she saw.
Was the want aching in his gut showing through? Leaking out, though he was doing his best to squash it?
He ducked into the bathroom, too chicken to stay and find out.
Molly satin Cord's truck in the grocery store parking lot and stared at the storefront. She knew what she'd find in the mom 'n pop country store. Narrow aisles, linoleum floors, carts with rickety wheels. A limited selection of brands. A long-time cashier who knew everyone in town by name.
She just had to get herself in there.
Her hands clenched on the steering wheel.
Cord was depending on her. Even if he didn't know it, even if he was still out of it from the fever burning through him.
She'd used up every fresh scrap of food in his refrigerator. And almost all the canned goods in his pantry. The Tylenol bottle was empty. And she was hoping they'd let her post the handwritten flyer she'd made.Free kittens.
It was midmorning in a sleepy country town. There were only two other cars in the lot. She'd driven Cord's truck, not hers. She had a ball cap pulled low over her eyes, her hair poking out of the back in a ponytail. She was wearing a nondescript black hooded sweatshirt over her jeans.
No one was watching her. No one was going to come after her here.
She was safe.
She had her burner phone stashed in her pocket. Dialing 911 would only take a few seconds.
Every locked-up muscle in her body begged her to run back to the ranch.
As she stared at the store, an older model minivan pulled in to a nearby spot. A woman got out, glancing curiously at Molly. The woman rounded her vehicle and opened a back door, where she took several minutes to get a toddler and an infant untangled from their car seats.
While Molly waited in the truck.
The mother kept glancing over the top of her vehicle at Molly.
She was acting the fool. She wasn't getting out of the truck to walk inside the store. She wasn't putting the car in reverse to back out of the lot. She wasn't even scrolling a social media site on a cell phone.
She must have looked like a crazy person.
Maybe she was a crazy person. Imagining shadows behind every corner.
