His jaw tightened. “That usually means trouble.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
I rested my hands on the porch railing. “I can’t stay frozen here. I’m grateful for what you’ve done, and I know the danger isn’t gone yet, but I can’t put my life on pause forever.”
“You’re not on pause,” he said. “You’re staying alive.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
He studied me for a long moment. “What are you saying, Marisol?”
“I’m saying I need to start rebuilding. If we’re even thinking about staying here, I need a job. Lucas needs to go to school. I need to see what a real life would look like here.”
He nodded. “All right.”
I blinked. “That’s it?”
“For now. You want to take a look at town, we can do that.”
I hesitated. “I can walk.”
“I know.”
“But you’re coming anyway.”
“Yeah.”
I sighed. “Of course you are.”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “Don’t look at me like that. You knew what you were getting into.”
Later that morning, Mama Mae pulled me into the main house under the excuse of feeding me breakfast. She didn’t say much at first. Just slid a plate in front of me and poured a glass of orange juice.
“You look like a woman with a storm in her head,” she said.
I exhaled. “I don’t like needing help.”
She snorted. “Nobody likes needing help. That’s not the point.”
“What is the point, then?”
“The point is whether you’re running because you’re ready or because you’re scared of staying.”
The words hit too close to home. “I’ve always taken care of my brother. I didn’t have a choice.”
“And now you do,” she said, her voice soft. “You can keep carrying everything alone, or you can let a man who knows how to protect what he loves stand beside you.”
I swallowed. “He’s older. He’s… steadier. It feels like I’m stepping into a world I don’t understand.”
Mama Mae smiled. “Men like Caleb don’t love halfway. You don’t get to stand beside him without being changed.”
That should have comforted me, but instead, it terrified me. He wasn’t asking me to stand next to him at all. He was asking me to trust him with the pieces of myself I’d spent my whole lifeholding together with my bare hands. And I didn’t know if I was brave enough to let go.
By early afternoon, Caleb had the truck ready. We drove with the windows down, the wind carrying the smell of dust and grass. Broken Bend appeared around a bend in the road, small and sunbaked, with a single main street and buildings that looked like they’d been standing longer than either of us had been alive.
He parked near the café.
