Page 47 of My Fallen Saint

Chapter Sixteen

“I’d like to hear more about the DSF’s role,” I tell Devlin. “Maybe details about the other kids—non-identifying, of course. And how the foundation operates. For this article, but also for the main profile. I have a feeling the philosophy behind what you’re doing for those poor kids is similar to the work helping victims of that Nevada trafficking ring.”

“In a lot of respects, it is.” He hesitates, and I watch his face, frustrated that I can’t read it the way I once could. “The Myers article is due tonight?”

I nod.

“We’re scheduled to talk on Monday, but that won’t do you much good. Did you drive?”

I blink at the non sequitur. “Yeah. Why?”

“We can talk on the drive back.”

“You don’t have a car here?”

He glances toward the door to the station. “I was going to catch a lift with Ronan,” he says, and I wonder how he got here in the first place. I don’t ask, though, as he’s pulled out his phone and is tapping out a text. He looks up before sending it. “Is that okay?”

I start to say that it is absolutely not okay, because I’m not sure I can handle over an hour in the car with him.

I must hesitate too long, because he sighs as he drags his fingers through his hair, which hangs like a wild mane around his face today. “You want information for your article. I want to spread the word about the work the DSF is doing. And, as I hope I’ve made clear, I want you to finish your work and head back to New York sooner rather than later. This is pragmatism, not a plot to torture either one of us. But if you’d rather drive by yourself, I can meet you at my office in a few hours.”

“How will you get back?”

“I’m sure I can manage.”

I almost tell him to do that, but I stop myself. It’s been ten years. He was my first love—my only love—and he broke my heart. But I’m an adult now. More than that, I’m a journalist. And he’s offering me a rare opportunity for a long and in-depth interview.

“Fine,” I say before I can change my mind. “I found a spot on the street about a block away. You ready?”

He sends the text, then meets my eyes. “Let’s go,” he says, and I hope to hell I haven’t made a huge mistake.

“You have a rental?” he asks as we pause at a crosswalk.

I can’t help the grin that tugs at my mouth. “Nope. I’m in Shelby.”

His eyes widen with his smile, and for a moment, he’s Alex. “You still have her?”

Something like happiness floods me, a reaction to his own delight. After all, he was the one who taught me to drive her.

My dad loved classic cars, and even though he always had one or two in various stages of disrepair in the garage, the only car he ever managed to completely rebuild was a deep blue 1965 Shelby Cobra.

He worked on her for years, stealing hours when he wasn’t at the station. I’d sit at the worktable that filled the second half of our two-car garage—the actual car parked on the street—and either do my homework or hand him parts, picking up on the tricks and tips for keeping a classic car humming.

When he was killed and I moved in with Uncle Peter, I didn’t think about Shelby for months. I never asked about her. I was only thirteen and assumed that she’d been sold in the estate sale that had witnessed the disposal of so many of my childhood memories.

I didn’t care then. I’d been too lost in grief.

But on the first day of school the year I turned sixteen, I’d come home to find Shelby in the driveway, a big pink bow on her curvaceous hood.

I’d burst into tears. Happy, melancholy, giddy. I don’t even know. All I knew was the flood of emotion that had filled me, erasing some of the lingering loss and reminding me that, even though Uncle Peter was mostly an absentee guardian, he really did love me.

What he didn’t do was teach me how to drive the present parked in the driveway. He’d left on business the night before, so I could only assume that one of his employees had left it in the drive. Neither Brandy nor Alex was around, and so I’d simply sat in my present, pretending I had a clue how to drive a stick, and imagining myself tooling around town with my hair tied back in a scarf, like Grace Kelly in one of my dad’s favorite old movies.

That amusement had worn thin, though, and I’d eventually abandoned my new car to walk to the tide pools. That was where Alex had found me, and as the memory washes over me, I look up at him now, ten years later.

“You remember that day?”

“Of course.”