Her inhale was sharp. “West…like west-west.”
He knew what she meant. He could hear the map unrolling in her head—the farm roads, the long stretches with nothing but cattle and dark sky.
He rubbed the heel of his hand under his jaw. The scruff rasped his palm. “Yeah.”
“Gabe.” His name was a whole sentence.
“I’m just driving. I needed wind. Needed the hum of the road to drown out the…the noise.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me.” Somehow, he still heard a command in her voice.
Tell me anyway.Because she wanted to help him.
“You want me to stay on the phone?” she asked.
He did and he didn’t. He could hear her puttering around the kitchen, water running, a cabinet shutting. She was fixing tea she wouldn’t finish before it went cold. He wanted to spare her the worry. He also wanted to borrow her steadiness for the next few miles until he figured out what the hell he was really doing. If he ever could.
“Stay.”
So she did, without filling the air with chatter. He told her about the carburetor that had been gummed up and the eight-year-old kid who’d watched him work like he was a magician, then about the older man who’d told him about a grandson graduating from basic training.
She told him about the lady next door whose cat got stuck in a dryer vent and how they’d bribed it out with tuna. Small things, the kind of things he never realized he’d miss until he was choking on sand in that desert battlefield.
Eventually, she circled back, soft as an arm around his shoulders. “You know you don’t have to make this town work if it doesn’t fit, right? I won’t take it personal. Jeremy and the kids won’t mind. I just want you…somewhere you can breathe.”
He stared into the haze of light, at the miles ahead that felt like a string pulled taut but could never be loosened. “I want that too.”
“Home isn’t always the first place that offers you a couch, you know? Sometimes it’s the place that was there when you didn’t have anything to give back.”
An ache bloomed under his breastbone, deep and familiar. Home. What was that?
Dust and cattle and the sound of boots on porch planks. Laughter that didn’t expect him to join in and people who didn’t hide when it got ugly.
He swallowed and looked at his dashboard clock. He’d been driving longer than he meant to—long enough that the map in his bones pointed the way.
“Lu.” He took a breath that filled him all the way. “I think I’m gonna keep going for a bit.”
“I figured.” No guilt trip, just love, comforting as a warm blanket. “Call me when you land?”
“Yeah.”
“And Gabe?”
“Hm?”
“I’m proud of you.” She said it so simply, it punched his lungs. “Not for pretending you’re okay. For knowing when you’re not.”
His laugh came out raw. “You and your teatime wisdom.”
“Shut up.” He heard the smile in her tone. “Go.”
“Go,” he echoed, and ended the call before he could choke on all the things he didn’t have words for.
The truck ate the miles. Towns ghosted past, their main streets dark save for a flickering gas station sign here and there. The land opened up and the sky did too. He cracked the window and let the cold air slap his face until his eyes stung.
He could’ve turned around at any exit, but he didn’t. The compass inside him kept aiming toward a place that had locked in the coordinates.
The first time he’d ever driven up there, he’d been bone-tired and half feral, the world too loud and bright. He’d been ready to leave five minutes after he arrived, already planning his escape route if the therapy program tried to make him sing kumbaya in a circle.
