“I know, honey. I’ll be there soon. Tomorrow morning, if the weather holds. I keep thinking it’s just hours on the road, but there’s so much damn traffic. I should have come earlier.”
“You should’ve,” Eve agreed in a thick voice, and I knew she was crying. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too, honey. It’s been so long that you’ll have to show me around again.” The joke meant to soothe her fell flat. Her end of the line stayed silent. “Eve?”
She coughed, or maybe choked. “Some things are different around the ranch, Archer. It’s not quite the same as before. Red Hart’s changed. I’ve changed.”
My stomach plummeted.Fucking hell.I should have trusted my gut. Iknewshe wasn’t okay when she left my place the last time, and the weeks we promised each other turned into months as I recruited the three remaining officers left to complete the Ranger team in my wake. An attempt to set up Andy for success, I’d promised myself. Now I wasn’t sure it had been a last ditch effort at control, or worse yet, ego.
“Are you okay, Eve?” My voice strained through a shitty line that seemed intent on hampering my voice in a wave of static or dropping out all together. “I’ll push through, maybe get there around two, a bit after midday.”
Dammit all. I should've walked away earlier and hauled ass to my girl like I promised.
If she stillwasmy girl.
“Don’t be silly.” The smile in Eve’s voice was contagious. Whether it was fake or not I’d find out when I arrived. Then there’d be hell to pay in one direction or the other. “Get here when you can. Don’t be an accident we hear about instead.”
I swallowed every misgiving and forced my own happiness through a sieve of holiday bullshit.The games we play.“Alright, honey. Do you need me to get anything in town on the way through?”
“If you’re coming through White Cap, can you stop at Beanies? The coffee shop. I’m not sure if you remember it,” she said hesitantly.
It was where I had met her. Nothing in this world could make me forget that. “I remember.”
“Oh, good. I’ll put an order in with Suzy, if you’ll pick it up for me? There might be mail. I—” She cleared her throat. “I haven’t been in for a while.”
I frowned, my mouth opening to askwhy don’t you send one of the boys,but that was a tomorrow problem I’d face when I arrived. “Will do. I’ll stop and collect it for you tomorrow, Eve.”
I’ll get to you tomorrow.
“Okay.” She paused. “Archer, I’m— Just, be safe. Please?”
My heart lodged in my throat, I stared through the windscreen at the taillights of the car wavering in front of me. “Take care, Eve, until I'm there with you.”
“Bye, Archer.”
I blinked at the road, zoned out long after she hung up. There was so much that she hadn’t said. My mind flew through different options.
Losing Len, her dad, that been hard, and that was at Christmas, too. Then she’d lost her mom, soon after. Eve went through plenty of change. Then a few months ago, when she came to me… I gritted my teeth. She’d held out at first, keepingthe secrets we promised each other that we never would when I left Red Hart the first time, not ever again. When she stayed at my house she’d both opened up and crumbled all at once. Grief hit us as she told me about the baby she’d lost—our baby, and the grief she’d kept from me, and almost everyone else, maintaining a happy face.
Because that was what Eve was best at.
She made everyone around her happy at the cost of her own happiness. Something I suspected she’d done her entire life. And I’d let her do that not once, but twice.
My palm slapped the steering wheel as I cursed. I wanted to believe that she would have told me if she had been struggling with the ranch, but no. With Eve Beaumont, the chances of her fessing up to another secret, anotherfailureas she would see it, were less than zero. I held back a laugh; Eve hadn’t accepted help, not even when she’d needed it.
And now, I wasn’t there when she did.
Cursing myself as an idiot, my mind ran through the remaining options, and halted.
Hell, had she been pregnant again, and not told me? Surely her twin brother Travis would have called me.
Fixing my focus on the road in front of me, I pressed my foot down, overtaking the car in front as soon as I had space.
And the next.
The lines between the lanes blurred as the moon rose overhead, a ghost behind a blanket of snow laden clouds. The drive north had been a dry run so far, but the weather had only held out in my favor until I hit the bottom of the mountain range.
I switched the heat up, and swore ice was formed at the corners of my windshield, though that could have been my eyes. Shaking my head, I stared at the lights that announced a small town—little more than a truck stop with a hotel at the back of it. A row of rooms for rent lined the back. As much as it would probably be a shitty night’s rest in a dingy room, it was still better than sleeping in my truck in potential snow conditions.
