"Nothing he couldn't have figured out himself. That you two grew up together, used to be close." She paused. "I may have mentioned that anyone looking to cause trouble for that girl would have to go through me first."
Despite everything, I almost smiled. Marla was five-foot-nothing and looked like someone's sweet grandmother, but she had a protective streak a mile wide and the connections to some locals with questionable histories to back it up.
"Thanks," I said.
"Don't thank me yet. That man's still sniffing around, and he's got the look of someone who thinks he's onto something big." She pinned me with a stare that used to make my big brother cave, and he wasn’t scared of anything. "You might want to have a conversation with Sabrina before he does."
“Will do.”
The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of catering to the whims of the demanding photographer and my growing anxiety. By the time I finished at the Inn, I'd made up my mind to drive straight to Morning Wood and have it out with Sabrina. Whatever she was hiding, whatever had her so spooked, we were going to deal with it together.
But when I got there, the shop was already closed. Sabrina's truck wasn’t in its usual spot, either.
I tried calling her. No answer.
I drove by her house… a small rental on the outskirts of town that she'd moved into when she opened the coffee shop. The windows were dark and her truck wasn’t in the drive.
Finally, I headed home, telling myself not to panic. Maybe she'd gone to dinner with one of her girlfriends or was helping Nellie with something at the diner. Maybe she just needed space to think. But as the hours passed without hearing from her, my nerves stretched to the breaking point.
It was almost ten when I heard tires on gravel. I was on the porch before her truck door even opened, relief flooding through me at the sight of her.
"Hey," she said, climbing the steps slowly. "Sorry I'm late. I had to—" She stopped, taking in my expression. "What's wrong?"
"You didn't answer your phone."
"It died. I was out at the lake and needed to think." She reached for my hand, her fingers cold. "I'm okay."
But she wasn't. I could see it in the set of her shoulders, the careful way she wasn't quite meeting my eyes.
"Marla said the podcaster's been asking questions about you."
She flinched. "It's nothing I can't handle," she said.
"That's not an answer."
"Trace." She stepped closer, her free hand coming up to rest on my chest. "Can we not do this tonight? Please? I just want to forget about everything else for a while."
The plea in her voice nearly undid me. Whatever was wrong, she was hurting, and all I wanted was to make it stop. But I also knew that ignoring problems didn't make them go away, it just made them bigger.
"Okay," I said finally. "But we need to talk soon. Really talk."
Something in her expression shifted. "I know. Soon, I promise."
We went inside, and she let me hold her while we watched a movie neither of us paid attention to. But even as she curled against me, soft and warm and right where she was always meant to be, I could feel the distance between us growing.
Later, as we snuggled close together in my bed, she traced her fingers over my chest in the darkness.
"Trace?" Her voice was so quiet I almost missed it. "Whatever happens... I need you to know that this—us—it's the best thing I've ever had."
The words should have made me happy. Instead, they sounded like an end.
"Whatever happens with what?" I asked.
She was already asleep or pretending to be. So I stared up at the ceiling, wondering what storm was coming and whether we'd survive it this time. Because one thing was becoming crystal clear. Sabrina wasn't just hiding something. She was hiding something big enough to destroy us.
And tomorrow, I was going to find out what it was.
CHAPTER 8
