“Like hell there isn’t.”
I reach out and grab the key from where it’s still clutched in her hand.
Her eyes flare wide. “Hey!”
There isn’t any time to worry about her incredulity over my actions. I simply unlock the door and throw it open, then motion for her to head inside.
She glares at me, and I don’t miss the way she has inched toward the steps in the time it took me to get the door open. Gizmo watches me, too, his ears perked up as if he can sense the tension permeating the air between us—which he probably can.
“Please, Lucky…”
I don’t have it in me to fight with this woman.
It feels like I’ve been fighting with myself, the rest of the McBrides, and the entire town endlessly for months.
All I want is a conversation with her—to plead my case.
Lucky considers me for a minute, glancing down the street toward downtown, then back at me.
Without her even saying it, I inherently know what she’s searching that pavement for. “The sheriff isn’t looking for you.”
She does a really shitty job of hiding her surprise, her lips falling open and eyes widening slightly. “What do you mean?”
Instead of answering and potentially getting into this while standing out here on the porch, I close the distance between us, slide my hand on her lower back beneath the backpack, and usher her into the small apartment.
She doesn’t fight me, but her entire body vibrates with tension.
Anger?
Fear?
Both?
Lucky sets Gizmo on the floor, and he excitedly jumps at my legs until I pet him as I toe the door closed behind us.
When I turn to face her, she hasn’t relaxed at all. “Take off your backpack and set it down.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to have a conversation without being worried that you’re going to run out that door with everything you own on your back.”
She stiffens before she slowly lets it slide off her shoulders and onto the floor. But just because she gave me that doesn’t mean Lucky intends to make this easy on me.
Her glacial gaze locks on me, and she crosses her arms over her chest, wrapping them tightly around herself as if she needs that protective layer for what’s about to come.
Maybe she does.
A lot of things I’ve let go since meeting her aren’t so easily brushed aside now that I’ve seen her fear when the sheriff appeared. This doesn’t seem like a woman who just wanted to get away from a stale or boring existence. She isn’t here because she wanted to try out small town life. She was actually afraid.
“I saw the way you reacted to Sheriff Briggs coming into the shop. You know…”—I rub at the back of my neck, trying to release some of the tension building there along with my frustration—“when you first showed up, I suspected you might be running, that something brought you here to McBride Mountain that wasn’t just the Memorial Day Festival or your desire to experience the Blue Ridge Mountains in all their majesty. And you’ve said a few things that had me wondering if you were running from something in your past, if you had something you wanted to put behind you, which, shit, I, of all people, can understand, but what just happened with the sheriff is more than that. You’re terrified.”
She flinches at my choice of words, confirming precisely what I feared.
Lucky has been hurt. Badly. By someone. By something. Enough that she’s living in actual terror every day.
“This isn’t just you wanting to leave something in the past. This is you actively being afraid of it. What are you running from, Lucky?”
Please trust me.
