Page 75

My stomach dips, and I can feel my cheeks heating up.

“My mom lives in a van,” I blurt out. Throwing a bucket of ice over this conversation.

Cal looks at me briefly. Back at the road. “Like, full time?”

“Full time.” I watch the streetlights go past. “She’s in New Mexico right now, I think. Or she was last week. She moves around a lot.”

“That sounds incredible,” he says, and he means it.

“It works for her,” I say.

“Not your thing?” he asks.

“I like being outside. I like all of that.” I think carefully. “I just like knowing where I’m going to be tomorrow. Having a place that’s mine.” I pause. “She loves it. It’s exactly right for her. It’s just not exactly right for me.”

“How long has she been doing it?”

“Five years. Since my dad died, really.” It comes out straightforward, the way it does when you’ve said something enough times that you don’t feel the emotion anymore. “Before that, we traveled a lot as a family. But I needed to finish up high school so my grandma took me in mostly.” I shrug, small. “I get it, she needed air.”

“How old were you?” he asks. “When he died?”

“Sixteen.”

Cal’s hands tighten slightly on the wheel.

“That’s a rough age to lose your dad.”

“Yeah.”

I watch the road slip past my window.

“I lived with my gran after. Mostly. Mom was still travelling, so I’d go out on the road with her sometimes. Summers. Christmas. Random weeks when she was somewhere close enough to collect me.” I shrug. “It was good, actually. Parts of it were really good.”

“What happened to him?”

For some reason, I want to tell him. All of it. That never happens.

“Heart attack,” I say. “Sudden. He was forty-one.”

Cal’s head turns a fraction before his attention goes back to the road.

“Forty-one?”

“He didn’t look after himself. He smoked. Drank too much. Slept badly. Ate whatever was easiest when they were travelling. He did all the things you’re told not to do for years, and then one day his heart just…”

I open my hand.

“Stopped.” Cal doesn’t rush to fill the silence.

His jaw tightens once.

Then he reaches across the center console and turns his palm upwards between us.

He doesn’t grab my hand or anything, he just leaves his there. An offer. I stare at it for a second before sliding my fingers into his.

His hand closes around mine, the warmth sending a shiver down my spine.

“I’m sorry, Bea.”