By the end of day six, I’d started volunteering for grocery runs just to stand alone in the snack aisle and remember what quiet sounded like, the irony of which wasn’t lost on me.
I’d spent the first sixteen years of my life in total silence before getting my cochlear implants. Those early years were like a different world, one where sound didn’t exist, only vibrationand shape and movement. Back then, quiet wasn’t something I’d escaped to; it had been everything. And yet somehow, even though I’d gotten older and the world had become louder—voices, machines, and even those pesky inner thoughts—I still craved stillness.
Not the kind that came from turning things off, though Ididturn my speech processors off every now and then, but rather the kind that lived in the spaces between noise.
Needless to say, coming back to Oregon felt like breathing again. Now it was just me, the empty road, and the low hum of my truck’s heater.
Diaz, my teammate turned roommate turned best friend, wouldn’t be back from visiting his family for another couple of days, which meant the house would be dark and quiet when I got home.
Just the way I liked it.
The city lights came into view as I headed west toward our house in North Portland, the rain coming down gently, tapping a rhythm against the windshield. I rolled my shoulders, the leftover tension from travel still stuck between them, and turned the radio down to nothing.
The next few weeks would be crucial, time to reset and get my head straight before spring training swallowed me whole again. That meant early workouts with the guys who had stuck around during the holidays, getting back to my regular sleep pattern, and eating food that wasn’t covered in frosting and sprinkles. Getting my meals back on track would be easy enough; it was the sleep that would be the real battle. I’d never been good at that part.
The soft percussion of rain was almost enough to settle me.Almost.That was until a pair of hazard lights flickered up ahead, cutting through the mist like a distress call.
That was when I saw her—Arabella Pink—bent over the hood of her electric-blue hatchback on the shoulder of the two-lane highway.
Her auburn curls were tucked up into a messy bun that reminded me of my favorite kind of pastry.Maybe I should rethink cutting back on sugar.The curve of her hips was outlined by a red dress much too short for car trouble in forty-degree rain. And that ass . . .
Hell, I’d know that ass anywhere. I’d spent two weeks trying—and failing—not to think about that mouthwatering mound of flesh.
Break me off a piece of that . . . Bella Pink.
Fate had one hell of a sick sense of humor, and fuck if I didn’t love it.
Before I could second-guess myself, I flipped the truck around and pulled off on the shoulder a few yards behind her car.
She didn’t notice me—not right away, at least. She didn’t even look up from beneath the hood until I was halfway around her car, and damn if that didn’t make me tense for an entirely different reason.
Bella was a vibrant, young woman, alone after dark on the side of a highway. It didn’t take much imagination to picture just how sideways that situation could go, especially when coupled with the fact that most men were absolute dog shit.
It wasn’t fair that Bella, or any woman for that matter, had to worry about their safety at every waking moment, about entitled losers and what they might do if a woman dared so much as smiled in their direction, but it was also a disturbing reality of the world we lived in.
And so long as that was the case, I would find any fucker who so much as breathed in Bella Pink’s direction without her say so, bury him beneath home plate, and squat on his grave.
Her attention bounced between me and the steam curling upward from beneath the hood. I resisted the urge to wipe away the grease streaked across her freckled cheek.
“Need a hand?” I asked.
She straightened and gave me a half-smile. “Thanks, but I can handle it. Just . . . being stubborn.”
“You or the car?”
Bella blinked before diving back under the hood.
“Seriously, Bennett, I took a car maintenance class last spring. At the very least, I can identify a problem without panicking.”
The sound of her saying my name, that small, almost imperceptible dip in her tone, was enough to make me swallow hard.
Emphasis on hard.
She glanced up again, suddenly curious. “Where are you coming from?”
I stepped closer, close enough to catch the scent of motor oil and green apple wafting off her skin.
“Just flew back in,” I told her. “Spent the holidays with my family.”
