Huh?
What?
Is he talking to me?
It took a couple of seconds to realize the driver was talking to her, and a couple more before she did a double-take and recognized the man behind the wheel.
What is he doing here?
Thank God he is!
“Rose?” he called again. “Can I give you a ride?”
“Ca—” She glanced nervously over her shoulder at the man she was sure had been following her, reluctant to give Caleb’s name when she just wasn’t sure if she was in trouble or not. “Why?” she asked instead.
“Because I’ve called it a night and decided to go home,” he answered. “I’ve only had two beers, the champagne I shared with you, and I took a sobriety test before I got in the truck.”
It was almost as if he was trying to persuade her that he was safe to drive. As the man in the hoodie growled something under his breath, she was grateful Caleb had shown up when he did and even more relieved he’d given her that information as it made her decision easier to make.
“Rose—”
Hoodie dude stepped closer to her, still muttering. His move made her decision for her. She barely knew who Caleb was, but there was no way he could be as bad as the alternative… she hoped. If she was jumping from the frying pan into the freaking dumpster fire which was her past, then she was going to be so pissed with herself. The bus stopping behind Caleb’s truck and hooting at him to move was the final deciding factor. “Thank you.” She stepped off the sidewalk and caught the door as he pushed it open. He tossed his jacket into the back, and she stepped up onto the truck step and slid into the passenger seat next to him. “I appreciate you stopping.”
He waited for her to shut the door and put on her seatbelt before he smoothly pulled away from the bus stop. “You’re welcome. Where am I going?”
She placed her camera bag onto the floor at her feet. “Oak Tree Apartments, if that’s okay.” She immediately gave herself a mental kick for being an idiot and telling him where she lived. No wonder her asshole ex kept finding her. She made it freaking easy by telling almost complete strangers where she lived.
“You got it.”
She glanced at him and caught him watching her out of the corner of his eye as if he were trying to decipher the most important code on the planet. She immediately turned away.
Crap.
Heat built up in her face. She refused to acknowledge it, shifting her camera bag with her toe and fiddling with the strap she still held in her hands. The next time she looked at him, his focus was on the rearview mirror. But it was the frown on his face that made the breath catch in her throat. “Is something wrong?” Damn it, there went her hope that she’d been overreacting. She regretted taking the ride from Caleb. Dragging him into her mess had never been her intention.
“It’s probably nothing.” He shifted gears and eased into the other lane, then checked the rearview again and narrowed his eyes.
She looked over her shoulder, but all she could see was what looked like normal downtown traffic at night. “But you think it is something, don’t you?”
He did the lane change thing again and growled low in his chest before admitting, “Maybe…”
You should tell him.
God, no. He’ll think I’m crazy.
Maybe he wouldn’t, but she wasn’t sure what to do. But telling him was admitting it out loud for the first time since she’d bolted in the middle of the night and gone off-grid using witness protection rules she’d found on Google in an attempt to escape.
“Um, what do we do?” That sounded like a reasonable question, right? At least, she thought it was.
“You don’t seem surprised that there may be a problem,” he said softly. “Why?”
Shit.
“Too many action movies?” The quip was out of her mouth before she could stop it. But as far as she was concerned, it was something a logical person would say. Although calling herself logical was a stretch of the imagination, even for her, but hopefully Caleb would believe it—hopefully.
“Hmm.”
His non-committal response told her he didn’t believe her in the slightest.
