I sigh. “As much as I’d like to meet her, I agree that today isn’t the day. I’m a little peopled out.”
The diner is at the end of town I never really saw. It’s cute. There’s a hardware store opposite and some small boutiques.
Condensation rolls down the diner windows, but even through the drips of water I can see it’s bustling inside.
River kisses my forehead. “I’ll be right back. I’ll leave the truck running so you’re warm.”
I watch the way he walks inside. Shoulders back. Confident. A beanie pulled low on his head, but it can’t contain the curls at the bottom. He goes straight to the counter, where he’s met by the stereotype of any woman who runs a diner in middle America.
Too much personality. Heavy on top. Hair color out of a dye bottle.
She hugs River across the counter, before they both look out the window to the truck, and Margie waves.
I feel a tiny ripple of guilt as I wave in response but am grateful I’m out here and not in there. The stifling heat, the condensation, the noises, and the people.
The truck idles with a low and steady hum, warm air pooling around my knees. And I’m too busy counting my lucky stars that I’m out here, that I don’t notice the diner guest leaving, while River’s back is turned, before it’s too late.
Until there’s a gun pointing at me, and River’s door is yanked open, and Dorian Chase slides into the driver’s seat. I glance down at my phone in my hand, but there isn’t time to do anything with it.
“Evening, sweetheart,” he says, not raising his voice as I run through a million different scenarios, none of which leave me anything other than dead.
Chase is close enough for me to smell the stifling scent of the diner on his coat, close enough for me to see the small scar at the side of his mouth that didn’t show up in his official photograph.
His gun is level; his breathing is steady.
He’s not afraid.
“Wren,” he says softly. “I will kill him if he walks through that door, so don’t give me any reason to. It’s better if it’s just the two of us.”
Everything inside me fractures into a thousand sharp pieces. I try to make myself small and uninteresting. There’s so much I want to say that I say nothing at all. This is learned performance, old models, feigned compliance. I’m falling back on defaults and can’t seem to shake it.
My brain tries to take an inventory but comes up with nothing.
I should run; I could scream. But it’s the fastest way to have River run out of the diner and get shot, or worse, killed.
“Get out of the truck,” I say, weakly. My brain gallops into the future, into a dozen different outcomes, each one worse than the other.
He releases the handbrake of the truck and puts it in drive. “I’ve been patient and good. You’ve made me be very good for so long, Wren. Let me do what I’m supposed to do.”
With a glance over his shoulder, gun still pointing at me, he pulls away from the curb.
“What’s that?”
“Keep you safe.”
“You have a gun pointed at me.”
“You know how the world is.”
I look back at the diner, at the man I love. He still has his back to the window as he chats with Margie. “I can’t go with you.”
“You already did,” he says with a snap. “Years ago. You became mine the day you answered.”
I shake my head, blood suddenly flowing through my body again as the immediate panic is replaced with a strong desire to live. “I didn’t.”
“All those nights you wrote back. You told me my code was ugly and that you wanted to help me make it beautiful. You told me you wanted me to find you.”
There’s a slight quiver to his voice, but it’s not fear. It’s excitement. I glance down and see that his cock is hard. This is my nightmare, but he thinks he’s telling a love story. Something fated.
