“You’re not poor. You’re just a baby engineer starting her dream job in a very expensive city,” she corrects. “Seriously, though. Ride with him.”
I stare at my Christmas village. At the tiny skater couple perfectly posed, like love is as easy as just finding your person.
“Yeah,” I say slowly. “I don’t know. I kind of… hate long car rides.”
“No, you don’t. You’re the one who wanted to go to Maui for spring break our senior year just to drive The Road to Hana.”
“I get car sick.”
“You do not.”
“I might.”
“You literally slept the whole way to Nashville junior year, got out, ate hot chicken, and went to a concert where you drank two giant limearitas.”
“Okay, but this is different,” I insist, voice going high and weird. “This is winter. And like… what if we hit a storm? Or a deer!”
“Then you’ll literally be in the best hands because Cole hunts deer.”
“He’s going to hunt a dead deer we hit on the highway?”
“What? No, I just mean—why are you being so difficult about this? Do you not want to come home or something?” She gasps and it sounds like whatever she had in her hands drops and clatters to the floor. “Oh my God, you met someone, didn't you? And you don’t want to leave your little lovesick sex den? Hailey, you dirty girl!”
I swallow, laughing along with her joke even though she has no idea she hit the nail on the head…kind of. “I just… don’t want to be a burden.”
“You wouldn’t be a burden.” She says it like it’s the dumbest thing she’s ever heard. “He offered to help you move. He literally fixed fifty of your things. He always pretends he’s busy, but he gets weirdly happy when I tell him you’re doing good?—”
My heart stops. “He what?”
“Huh?” she says too fast.
“Yeah, he said he could tell you were super nervous about being lonely out there, and when he saw you at the market thing, you looked like you’d made some friends,” she says, as if she didn’t just accidentally open a door and then slam it shut.“Of course I had to practically rip any information out of him because he has such a wall up.”
“I…” My brain is doing cartwheels.He does think about me.
“Plus, he’s a control freak so you know he’s gonna drive the entire way. You can nap. You can watch Christmas movies. He’s leaving the twenty-second, I think? I’ll text him to make sure.”
“No!” I yelp way too loud. “I mean—no, don’t… bother him.”
“Why would it bother him?”
I force my throat to relax. “I just mean… he’s probably working. I’ll… text him.”
“And tell him you’re riding with him?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, knowing damn well I’m not going to win this fight. “Fine. I’ll ride with him.”
CHAPTER 15
Cole
It’s not even five and Denver’s still asleep.
Streetlights throw orange puddles on the snow-packed curb in front of her building, breath ghosts out of me in the cold, and my truck’s engine rumbles low like it wants to go back to bed too.
I kill the headlights, leaving the engine running, and pull out my phone to send her a text that I’m here when I see her walk out of the elevator in the lobby.
She steps out of the lobby a second later, dragging her suitcase. She’s swimming in an oversized hoodie, the hood pulled up over her head.
