Page 45 of North

Back when she’d practically—okay, yes—followed him back to Mariposa.

She pulled up her mother’s number. The cord was so short she had to duck under the cupboard to press her ear to the phone.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Put it on speaker. We don’t care, right, James?” Josephine handed James a cookie.

He shrugged.

Selah flipped the phone to speaker as her mother answered.

“Selah Grace Silver. Where have you been?”

James took his cookies and left the kitchen.

“Mom.” In the background, she heard her father asking who it was. “I’m okay. I’m safe.”

“The news is crazy out there. They’re still finding people. Where are you?”

“I’m at a B&B. Eating cookies.” This she added as Josephine brought over a hot gingersnap.

“Oh good. Are you coming home?”

“As soon as I can figure out how, yes.” The answer came too fast, however. What about the camp? Oops. Clearly, her heart wasn’t in it, because frankly, she hadn’t given the camp a second’s thought since the crash.

“You sound tired, sweetheart.”

“I am. But I’ll be fine.”

“Good. Now call Jake and tell him that. He’s been driving me crazy with texts.”

Indeed, she spotted a number of texts coming in from her older brother. “I will.” Exhaustion pressed against her bones. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too. Be careful.”

Jake answered on the fourth ring. Country music played in the background, and she heard his wife, Aria, laughing at something. Oh, Selah had missed him since he’d moved to Houston.

“Selah. Sheesh. You okay?”

“Yeah. Mom told me to call you.”

“Listen, my old boss Hamilton Jones has been trying to reach you.”

She knew Ham, thank you. North’s boss. The guy that kept sending him on all those crazy out-of-country missions.

Still, she liked Ham. The kind of guy who wouldn’t ask his team to do anything he wouldn’t do.

“What does he want?”

“For one, North’s trying to find you.”

Those words. They just swept through her with heat and spark and light.

North. Trying to find her.

She blinked against the heat in her eyes, the thickening of her throat. But hadn’t she known it in the core of her cells?

Don’t expect me to show up next time you⁠—

Right. She knew him better than that. Knew him maybe better than he wanted her to…