A moment later, she pulled through the gate and started down the mountain.
The road wound through trees and patches of gray sky. Normally, she loved this drive—the quiet, the solitude, the way the world seemed to slow down the farther she got from everything civilized.
Today, her shoulders wouldn’t relax.
Her eyes kept flicking to the rearview mirror. Once. Twice. Every time the road curved and the trees closed in thick enough to hide what was behind her.
But there was nothing there except empty road.
Still, she couldn’t shake the prickling awareness at the back of her neck, the fear that Travis could appear at any moment. That any curve could hide a red pickup, any blind intersection could bring the sound of an engine accelerating when it should have been braking.
The dent in her bumper wasn’t the only reminder of what he’d done.
The fear had been imprinted deeper than that—somewhere that couldn’t be buffed out or scraped away. Somewhere thatmade her pulse jump every time a vehicle came up behind her too fast.
As Naomi continued down the road, she forced herself to breathe. To ease her grip on the wheel. To stop checking the mirror every ten seconds.
You’re fine. Nothing’s happened. You’re just making a routine visit into town.
But her body didn’t believe it.
Not until Blue Ridge Hollow appeared at the bottom of the mountain—first the church steeple, then rooftops, then the main street stretching out in a neat line of storefronts and hanging baskets.
Only then did her shoulders finally drop.
Only then did she let herself believe, for just a moment, that maybe this would be an ordinary morning after all.
The town looked like a postcard no matter the season. Right now, with October beginning to strip everything bare, it had a quieter charm—smoke from chimneys, a few early Christmas lights going up in shop windows, and colder air when she stepped out of the SUV.
She was early. Her appointment wasn’t for another forty minutes.
Perfect. That gave her just enough time to grab some coffee.
Naomi locked her SUV and walked two blocks to The Grind House, a small coffee shop tucked between a bookstore and a hardware store. The place had dark wood counters and a chalkboard menu. The smell of roasted beans and cinnamon hit her as soon as she walked in.
The shop was half full. A few regulars sat at small tables by the window. Someone tapped on a laptop in the corner. The barista—a college-aged girl named Jess—waved at her from behind the counter.
“The usual?” Jess asked.
“Please.”
Naomi paid and stepped to the end of the counter to wait. She leaned against it and pulled out her phone to check the time.
That was when the hair on the back of her neck lifted.
The feeling wasn’t because of the cold air that had followed her inside. It was something else.
Someone was watching her. She was certain of it.
She didn’t look up from her phone right away. Instead, she angled the dark screen and scanned the reflections around her.
The woman at the table by the window. The man with the laptop. Jess wiping down the espresso machine.
None of them looked at her.
Naomi finally turned, slow and deliberate, to scan the shop.
Nothing inside caught her eye.
What if the feeling was coming because of someone outside?
