My phone buzzes again.
There's a good coffee place on Main Street if that works? 10am?
I type back.Sounds perfect.
Send.
Set the phone face-down on the floor next to me and stare at the ceiling. Wonder why doing the right thing feels so much like giving up.
Chapter 14
My hands won't stop shaking.
The pen trembles between my fingers like I'm coming down from something. Maybe I am. When did I last eat? Tuesday? Wednesday? Everything's blurred together—heat and silence and Holt not looking at me, not speaking, just existing in the same space like I'm not even here.
Grant's text glows on my phone.
Still on for tomorrow? There's a great coffee place in town.
Two hours old. I should answer. Should feel something about it. But there's just this hollow space where feelings are supposed to be, like someone reached in and scooped everything out.
The door crashes open. Fan rattles in its cage.
"Okay." Maeve's standing there in a sundress that's too bright for this dusty shop, sunglasses pushed up into her hair. "Nope. Get your bag."
"I'm working—"
"You look like death warmed over and left in the sun." She's crossing to my desk already, not asking, just moving. "Get. Your. Bag."
"Maeve, I can't just—"
"Yes you can." She plucks my phone off the desk, drops it in my lap. "Finn!"
He appears from the bay, grease-stained rag in hand, and god, the relief on his face. "Thank god. Take her. Please. She's been sitting there for an hour staring at that pen like it personally offended her."
"I have been not—"
"Scout." He crouches next to my chair and all that usual Finn brightness goes serious. Heavy. "Go. We're fine here."
Metal scrapes. The creeper rolls and Holt slides out from under the Chevelle just enough—I see his face, grease-smeared, those blue eyes finding mine for half a second before he looks away. Doesn't say anything. Hasn't said anything to me all week.
My chest tightens. Of course he's not going to stop this.
"See?" Maeve's got my bag from under the desk. "Even the stoic mechanic agrees. Come on."
Somehow I'm standing. Walking. The shop floor under my feet, the doorway, the blast of heat outside. Then I'm in her passenger seat and she's peeling out, gravel spitting, windows already down.
"Where are we going?"
She cranks the volume. Music hits, bass vibrating through the seat into my bones. "Away. Far enough that nobody knows us and nobody cares."
The wind tears into my hair, hot and relentless, and—oh. Oh god. I can breathe. When's the last time I took a full breath? The shop's falling away behind us, getting smaller, and the tightness in my chest is cracking open. Not breaking. Opening.
"Thank you," I say, but it's lost in the wind and music.
She glances over, grins wide. "What?"
"I said thank you!"
