“She can borrow my car,” Hunter says.
“I’ll call the sheriff and double-check there hasn’t been a new sighting,” Elias adds.
“And I’m good as long as Maisie confirms when she gets into work okay,” Knox says.
“I’ll check in right before I leave the house and when I get to the diner,” I promise.
Wyatt’s chair creaks when he sits back in his seat. He doesn’t say a word. Just looks at me. In his tawny brown gaze, I see the memory of the apartment fire Derek set. If he hadn’t gone for a drive that night, I’d have died.
I’ve won Hunter, Elias, and Knox over. Only Wyatt is the holdout, and in the time I’ve known him, I’ve learned how stubborn he can be. When he lets out a sigh, I know he’s getting ready to refuse.
I put my hands on the edge of the table and move to stand up. “I’ll call Lina back and tell her I can’t do it.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Wyatt says.
“What?”
“I worry about you. Maybe more than I need to, but Hunter is right. Life is for living, not existing in fear.” As he gets to his feet, his expression is impossible to read. “We were going to wait for the weekend to do this, but this is as good a time as any.”
I frown. “To do what?”
“Come on.” He takes my hand and leads the way out of the kitchen and toward the front of the house. On his way out, he pulls something from the drawer of the side table beside the front door.
When I glance back, Hunter, Elias, and Knox are following, their expressions equally blank. Wyatt pushes the door open, and I spot a dark gray Honda parked at the side of the house. I’ve never seen it before.
I turn to Wyatt. “Whose car is that?”
He opens his right hand, revealing a set of car keys. “Yours.”
I look from the keys he’s holding out to me and back to him. Then I look at the car again, just to make sure I’m not imagining all this.
Smiling, he takes my hand, places the keys in the center, and wraps his around mine, closing my palm around them. “The car is yours. After what happened to yours, we’ve been keeping an eye out for a car for you. It’s not new. We can’t afford brand new. But—oof!”
He grunts, rocking back when I throw myself at him with an excited squeal.
I wrap my arms and legs around him, and he hikes me higher up his chest, tightening his grip so I won’t fall when he spins me.
Wyatt laughs. “You nearly knocked me flat on my back, sweetheart.”
Laughing, I keep a tight grip on my car keys as I whirl, getting brief glimpses of Hunter, Elias, and Knox grinning as they watch me.
“You all did this for me?” I ask when Wyatt sets me down on my feet.
“Life is for living,” Knox says, hugging me back when I move to him next. “And you needed something with a big trunk to scale up the one-woman pie operation that’s going to go multinational.”
“No, it won’t,” I laugh.
But he means it. He truly has that much belief in me. They all do.
He kisses me. “It absolutely will. A delivery truck is in your future, baby. Better believe it.”
“We want you safe,” Hunter says, hugging me. “But we don’t want you to feel trapped. Not having a car makes you too reliant on us, and that isn’t fair to you. You should come and go wherever you want, whenever you want to go.”
I’m nearly crying when I hug Elias.
He grunts loudly in response.
“I didn’t squeeze that hard,” I say, laughing. “Thank you for my car, and I love you even more for it.”
