“Come on,” Pete called as they headed back to the car. “Just tell me one thing…is he gonna get put in the slammer?”
Luke shook his head once he was in the passenger seat. “That kid’s actually kind of funny. Shame he’s such a shit driver.”
Jesse didn’t respond. His mind was somewhere else. On the pit in his gut. The tightness of his chest.
“You okay, boss?”
His frown deepened. “It could be Dylan. If her mother told him where Aspen’s living, he could be here. It’s possible he was watching the house and Pete temporarily scared him. Then he came back. Watched her through her bedroom window.”
The idea made him want to be sick.
Luke frowned. “That’s pretty extreme behavior. You really think he’d do that to an ex?”
Jesse’s mind went back to the way Dylan had looked at Aspen in Misty Peak. Like she was a possession. Like heownedher. Then he recalled what Claudia had shared about Dylan’s ex-fiancée.
“Yes, Idothink he’d do that.” He pulled out his phone. He needed to call her. Hear her voice. Anything to reassure him that she was okay.
It rang. Then it rang some more. It was on the fourth ring that he realized she wasn’t going to answer.
He hung up and pulled the car out of the parking lot.
“Uh, this isn’t the way back to the station,” Luke said after a few turns.
“I need to check on her.” He needed eyes on her right the hell now.
Aspen sawJesse’s name flash over the screen of her phone. She didn’t answer it.
She was overreacting. Sheknewshe was overreacting, but she couldn’t seem to stop.
She’d fallen to pieces in his arms. A million pieces, and he’d watched. Held her as she’d shattered.
But when she’d tried to touchhim, he’d pushed her away.
She cringed and shoved her phone into her back pocket before moving down the aisle of the grocery store. Jesse had told her not to leave the house after the face-in-the-window incident last night. And she hadn’t…all day. But every hour that passed made the silence feel more…eerie. And every time she passed Jesse’s room, that hot embarrassment washed over her again like a blaze of fire until she had to get out.
Being a late Saturday afternoon, the store was busier than she would have thought. She dropped a couple of bags of noodles into her basket. She’d been living off the stuff lately. Next, she detoured for a loaf of bread, then found some tuna.
She was halfway down another aisle when a glimpse of a man at the end made her gasp and stumble back. She bumped into a cart behind her, and the cans of tuna fell from her hand.
She quickly picked them up and mumbled an apology to the person behind her, but when she looked back to the end of the aisle, the man was gone.
Dylan.
Had she really seen him? It was just a quick side view, but his profile and the way he moved were so familiar. And thatsweater…gray with a picture of an eagle in the middle…he’d had one exactly the same.
She shook her head. It couldn’t have been him. She wasn’t in Misty Peak anymore. She was on the other side of the country. She was safe.
So why were her hands shaking? Because her mother had her address and could have passed it on to Dylan?
She shot forward, weaving through the crowd, sidestepping carts and slipping between baskets. She had to know if it was him. She needed confirmation that hewasn’there.
When she reached the end of the aisle, she checked left and right. Where had he gone? She glanced down the first aisle. Several people took up space, none of them wearing a gray sweater. She shifted to the next. This one was almost empty, and again, he wasn’t there.
The third aisle was the busiest, with people and carts blocking every inch of space.
And that’s where she saw the back of the gray sweater.
Her pulse raced, her skin cool and sensitive. She shot forward, shuffling through people. She nudged a woman’s shoulder and muttered an apology, her gaze never leaving the man.
