Never thought it would twist me up inside like this.
When we turned onto the gravel road leading to the house, I slowed to let a jackrabbit sprint across our path. Jojo jerked awake, startled, then giggled as if he’d been in on the joke.
“You really okay?” he asked, softer now.
“Yeah. Just thinking.” I shut off the ignition, but didn’t move. “You ever meet someone and immediately know you’d do anything to keep them safe?”
Jojo cocked his head, like he wasn’t sure if this was a test. “Is this a trick question?”
“No,” I said, more honest than I wanted. “Never mind.”
We unloaded the plants in silence. I carried the box to the greenhouse, barely noticing the prickle of thorns digging into my arms. All I could smell was Danny—basil and green things, and something sweet underneath. It clung to the back of my throat, impossible to forget.
I was halfway to the main house before I realized my hands were shaking. I flexed them, tried to remember the last time I’d cared this much about a stranger. The answer: I never had.
That night, as I lay in bed, every muscle twitching with adrenaline, I replayed the afternoon on a loop. The quicksilver flash of Danny’s eyes. The way he’d flinched when Dennis got close. The bruise, angry and purple, hidden under a borrowed shirt.
I didn’t know what the hell I was getting into, but I knew one thing for sure: I was going back.
And next time, I wasn’t leaving without getting his story.
Chapter Two
~ Danny ~
I had a system for late nights at the Jenkins house, and it started with finding the least-squeaky chair. My bedroom was more of a glorified closet, tucked under the eaves with a window that caught all the streetlight and none of the breeze, but I’d carved out a safe zone.
Desk pushed against one wall. Cheap laptop, secondhand keyboard with keys that stuck on all the vowels, and a stack of community-college textbooks that still smelled like someone else’s coffee stains.
I ran a macro to auto-fill the blank spreadsheet for my Intro to JavaScript quiz, and it crawled across the screen one cell at a time, blue bar inching forward like a caterpillar on barbiturates.
I tried to focus on the assignment. Really, I did. But every time I scrolled to a new tab, my phone—taped to the corner of my monitor, the screen cracked like a windshield—lit up with the contact I’d entered hours ago:
BURKE (GARDEN GUY)
Burke Callahan, with his stupidly perfect teeth and the kind of laugh that made you want to laugh even if you had no idea what was funny. More than that, the way he’d smelled—pine resin and leather, but not the fake kind you get in car air fresheners. This was real, rooted deep. Like he’d rolled in a pile of forest mulch then sealed it in with a twenty-four hour armor of sweat and something sharp, green, alive.
It was still in my nose. On my hands, in the fabric of my sleeves. Even after I’d showered—quietly, so as not to wake Dennis—Burke’s scent clung to me, a living thing. I hated it. I wanted it. I hated that I wanted it.
A double ping broke my train of thought. New chat notification, plus a calendar alert:“SUNDAY = CLOSED, NO WORK, NO PAY.”
Typical.
Dennis insisted we attend the “family meal” on Sundays, even if all it meant was micro-waved lasagna and six hours of him on the couch watching MMA reruns.
Which gave me a rare day off, if you could call it that, and left me with absolutely nothing to distract from the hunger curling low and insistent in my gut.
I closed my eyes and tried to reset. Instead of counting sheep, I counted all the ways I’d screwed up today.
One: I let an alpha flirt with me on company time. Stupid. Even if Burke’s jokes came at me like softballs, easy to hit and even easier to duck. I’d recognized the type—big man, quick hands, always looking for the next button to push. But there was something in the way he lingered. Like he was watching me for my reaction, not his own performance. Like he cared whether I smiled or just pretended.
Two: I’d frozen when he touched me. Barely a graze, but it set off a chain reaction that I hadn’t felt in…what, years? Since that last disaster of a “relationship.” I was so careful now. Never let anyone in, never let anyone see the soft spots, because soft was just another word for target.
Three: I hadn’t been careful enough. Not with Burke. Not with Dennis, who’d shown up at the garden center ten minutes after my shift ended, smelling of gasoline and beer and bad decisions.
Flashback hit me like a cold shower: Dennis waited in the cab of his truck, engine running, music vibrating the whole parking lot like a swarm of angry wasps. He hadn’t come to buy anything; he’d come for me. The moment I’d clocked out, he was there,leaning against the tailgate, arms folded to display the amateur tattoo that wrapped his bicep like prison wire.
“You get your check?” he asked, eyes narrow under the brim of his hat.
