When we finally hit the city limits sign for McKenzie River, Jo slowed down, glancing over at me with a look I couldn’t decode.
“You still with me?” he asked.
I smirked. “Not like I got anywhere else to be.”
He nodded, and for the first time since he’d picked me up, his mouth relaxed into something close to a real smile.
“Good,” he said. “Because we’re not done.”
And I believed him.
God help me, I wanted it to be true.
Chapter Four
~ Josiah ~
I took the last turn off the mountain highway with my pulse beating in my palms, the way it used to when I was seventeen and sneaking out to race up and down the county line road.
McKenzie River welcomed us like a punch in the gut—same tired strip of gas stations and antique stores, same blue haze curling off the valley from woodstoves lighting up for the night.
The sun hung low and mean, gold leaking between the black spines of the fir trees. I rolled down the window, let the cold cut the last of the road grit out of my lungs.
Bo didn’t say a word the whole last ten miles. He sat folded into the passenger seat, boots on the dash, cheek pressed to the window. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said he was asleep, but I caught him watching me through the glass every time we hit a patch of slow traffic—like he was waiting for me to flinch, to change course, to hand him back over to the next disaster.
Instead, I kept driving, steady as a metronome.
When we reached the first proper intersection, the natural thing would have been to bank right and take the long road out to the McKenzie farm, where the promise of a hot meal and a night on the couch would have gotten Bo halfway to recovery before sunrise.
I didn’t do that. I hung a hard left, cut through the side streets, and nosed the truck up the hill toward my place.
Bo lifted his head, wary. “We not doing the family reunion thing?”
“Not tonight,” I replied.
He watched me, then the town outside—nothing but dark porches and the green blink of a traffic signal at a crossroads nobody used after six. “Where we going, then?”
I didn’t answer until the truck rounded the last curve and the old shop came into view: three stories of battered brick, “MOXLEY’S GARAGE” painted in silver block letters across the broad side, half the bulbs on the sign burned out.
A pair of ancient oaks flanked the lot like bouncers. There was nobody parked out front except a battered F-150 and the rusted-out Impala I’d been “fixing” for the better part of a decade.
Bo huffed a soft laugh. “Didn’t even know you lived here. I thought you lived with your Ma.”
“That’s because you never stayed put long enough to ask,” I said, shutting off the ignition.
He didn’t argue. Just peeled himself out of the seat with a wince, left hand clamped over the spot on his ribs where the worst bruise was blossoming.
I went around to the passenger side, met him as he slid down from the cab. My hand found his elbow on instinct, not forceful, but not letting him wobble, either.
For a second, we stood there, the silence stretching.
“You can let go,” he said, and it wasn’t defiant, more like he just needed to say it.
“I’ll decide when you’re steady.” I left my grip for one more heartbeat, then dropped it.
He glared, but there wasn’t any heat behind it. Just that endless, tired hunger that never left his eyes.
I led the way around the side of the shop, to the back door that doubled as the entrance to the apartment above. The exterior stairwell creaked under our weight; every step up was a test of whether the old lumber would hold, but it always did, same as me.
