“Sam.”
He was still furious.
And she saw it there—the jealousy.
The fear.
The terrible, dangerous edge of it.
“Let him go,” she said.
Sam’s throat worked.
Then he shoved Wade away.
Wade stood up and spit a thick string of bloody saliva into the dirt near Sam’s boot. He didn’t look scared. He looked pissed off that his shirt was wrinkled. He wiped the corner of his mouth with his thumb, stared at the blood on it.
His eyes found Clara.
“A pretty thing like you shouldn’t be so reckless with her future,” he said, his voice a lethal whisper. “You made a very expensive mistake.”
Then he walked out of the barn.
Clara stood there shaking.
And somewhere deep in her bones, for the first time, she was afraid.
* * *
The mountains had slipped into that strange blue-gray hour between daylight and dark by the time Clara left the fairgrounds and followed the narrow trail toward the overlook.She hadn’t gone looking for Sam. She’d come straight here instead.
The fairgrounds were miles behind her now, but she could still hear the echo of it in her head.
Sam shoving Wade Hollis backward beneath the carnival lights.
Wade laughing through blood on his mouth.
The whole county staring.
And Sam—the look on his face afterward.
Like she’d broken something in him.
Clara wrapped her cardigan tighter around herself as she stepped through the narrow opening in the trees.
The ridge opened wide before her, revealing the valley below in layers of fading blue mist and gold dusk. The mountains rose on either side like giants standing watch over the hollow below.
It was breathtaking every single time she saw it.
This place had become hers over the summer.
Her painting spot.
She’d spent hours up here with a sketchbook balanced on her knees, trying to capture the way evening light slid across the ridges. Half a dozen pages in her sketchbook held this same view—the little plane crossing the valley again and again, its tail number scribbled in the margins because it kept nagging at her.
And lately…the plane.
Her eyes drifted automatically toward the lower valley.
