I grit my teeth, shoving my hands into my jacket pockets.
The anger doesn’t help, but it’s better than the ache of shame and regret sitting behind it.
“Thanks for the info, Miss,” Callum says, snapping me back to the present. He offers her a polite nod.
“You tell Noelle I said hi and that she did the right thing, keeping him out. Men like that? They don’t change,” she adds the last part almost gently.
“That they don’t,” I murmur.
She gives us a knowing look, then she goes back to her tray of cookies, humming under her breath as the door jingles behind us with a new customer walking in.
We thank the woman, promise we’ll pass along her message, and step back out into the cold morning air.
The door swings shut behind us, rattling softly from the bell hitting against the inside glass.
After retrieving the shovels, we head back down the street.
My car sits half-buried back at the hotel’s parking lot.
When we get to it, Callum wipes at his face with the back of his glove, muttering something under his breath that I don’t catch, and helps me unbury it before climbing into the passenger side.
The engine groans before turning over, the heater whirring to life. I rest my hands on the steering wheel, staring out at the line of brick storefronts dusted in white.
We’ve got a name.
A street.
A place of work, maybe.
If Jared thinks he can keep circling Noelle like a damn shark smelling blood in the water, he’s got another thing coming.
“Downtown?” Callum asks, glancing my way.
“Yeah,” I say, throwing the car into gear. “Let’s see what kind of trouble Milton’s Hardware attracts.”
The drive isn’t long, maybe ten minutes up the road, but it might as well have been an hour with how heavy the silence feels.
The heater hums low, blowing out a weak warmth that struggles to cut through the chill clinging to me.
Snow drifts lazily past the windshield, the flakes fat and slow now, no longer raging like yesterday’s blizzard but still falling steady enough to blur the road ahead.
The wipers squeak with every pass, clearing a narrow strip of visibility that only gives me more time to think.
Callum’s sitting in the passenger seat, one elbow propped on the window, his jaw set tight in thought.
His reflection flickers in the glass.
Sharp features wrinkling in thought and grey eyes scanning the white-coated town as if the answer to everything might appear between the snowbanks.
I don’t blame him for being worried.
Hell, I am too.
The tension isn’t bad exactly, just thick and heavy with everything neither of us wants to admit out loud.
I’m sure he’s thinking the same thing I am: that Noelle’s descent into getting together with Jared has something to do with us.
It pains me to think that—and even more to believe it.
