and approached the car. She looked good. That was Dani’s first thought. The Kate from her day had been skinny, dressed in goth, and had a chip on her shoulder telling the world to go to hell. This Kate had gained about ten pounds, had a soft smile, and even smoother skin. She looked happy.
“So the rumors are true.” Kate waved a hand. “Hi, Dani. It’s been a long time.”
They’d never talked except for one time. Both had been ordered to the counselor’s office. In the lobby, Kate cursed at her, and Dani moved down a seat. That had been the extent of the interaction and their history.
“Kate.”
“How you holding up against the Craigstown scrutiny?”
“Oh, you know, the power of one eye twitch can go a long way.”
“Yeah.” Kate laughed, resting on one hip. “The nonverbals in this town are legendary. I remember in school. I’d walk through a store, and by the time I finished making one trip, there were twenty different stories made up. I was either going to to rob the place or blow the owner’s son. Those were the two main ones.”
“Kate, do you mind?” Jake gestured to Dani before his hand fell back to rest on his holstered gun. “We were in the middle of something.”
Dani held up a hand. “Ignore him. I’d rather talk to you.”
“Dani.”
Kate’s gaze skirted between the two, then she glanced in the direction Jonah had gone. “So, is it true? Are you and Jonah Bannon an item? That’s what I heard from one of the regulars at the Piggly Squiggly. Everyone is talking about the two of you.”
“Kate!”
“What?” She looked at Jake.
The ends of his mouth turned down in sharp disapproval, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “I can’t believe you listen to that stuff. That’s just all rumors and gossip.”
“Say what you want. You get the best dirt there.” Kate shrugged. “So, is it true, Dani? You and Jonah Bannon?”
“Kate.” Jake’s laugh came out sounding forced. “Dani and Jonah? Seriously. If those two aren’t the oddest and complete opposites, then I don’t know who is—”
“Like you and Julia?” Dani interrupted.
Jake fell silent.
Kate remarked, “And opposites sometimes attract, Jake.”
“Or you and Erica?”
Jake shook his head. “That’s completely different.”
“How come?”
Kate closed her mouth as her eyes darted between the two. She edged back a step.
“Dani.”
“Jake.”
“Come on.” He now laughed. “What are you—are you serious? You and Jonah? Jonah Bannon?”
Jake had no right commenting or speculating on her love life. He’d been a part and played his part well, but he was out. He’d been out for a long, long time. He had no place passing judgment, no matter what was the truth.
She lifted her chin up. “Maybe.”
He went still. “Are you serious?”
Kate commented out of the side of her mouth, “I think you should be asking yourself why you care so much.”
“Kate.” Jake shot her a glare, and it shut her up.
Dani sighed. She was suddenly done with this conversation. Jake was jealous, but that was old news. He’d been jealous in high school too, and there’d been no basis for it then. She loved him, completely and whole-heartedly, and seeing him yesterday took her back there. It’d been brief, but hearing that same shit from him now, she was over it.
She was grateful to him for one thing, and that was realizing she truly was over what they had. She could safely answer Mae’s questions if she was going to get Jake back. She didn’t want him. Julia was welcome to him, but as for the rest of her aunt’s questions: Dani still wasn’t ready to admit them even to herself.
Her sister had been buried. She had been clothed, prayed upon, and blessed. She had been put into the earth’s dirt. It was something that Dani was beyond familiar with. Feeling the same emptiness that haunted her at night, she heaved a deep breath and shook her head clear. She couldn’t expel the shiver that ran down her back, putting the hairs on her neck straight up.
“Hello?”
Startled, Dani jumped and cursed.
“Sorry.” Jonah poked his head through the open door.
Dani realized that she’d forgotten to shut it. After leaving town, she went to the cemetery. She hadn’t planned on going, but she found herself parking along the gravel driveway. That was as far as she got, though. She stared at the set of tombstones where she guessed Erica was buried. She would’ve been put next to their mom’s grave. And sitting there a full thirty minutes, Dani couldn’t make herself get out. When she got back to the cabin, she couldn’t remember what she did for the rest of the afternoon. She remembered making coffee, and with a jerk, she was still standing in her kitchen.
Her coffee was cold now.
“What time is it?”
He checked his watch. “It’s about six-ish. You were going to let me drive the car, remember?”
“Oh, yeah.” She frowned. “I, uh…sorry. I was just…” She pushed away from the counter and dumped the coffee into the sink. “I got busy and forgot all about tonight.”
“That’s okay.” He produced a package from behind his back. “Two steaks. I wasn’t sure if you went back in the store for them after this morning, so I did.”
“Thank you.”
“Yeah.” Jonah nodded and moved to her side. “Do you want to spice those up? I’ll go and light the grill.”
He was out the door as her hand came up to take the steaks from him. He’d already placed them on the counter, and she could hear him removing the cover from the grill outside.
Her mother once told her that spices attracted the best magic. They each had their own purpose. Garlic protected the soul against invading temptations. Oregano protected against cynicism. Parsley protected against old age. Her mother would go down the list, and Dani would sit there, mesmerized by everything her mother told her. She remembered lying in bed that night, and as she would look up at the ceiling, all the spices danced above her. They each twinkled, protecting her against the world.
Dani believed that for the longest time.
As she took the steaks out of the wrappings and placed them on a plate, Dani perused Aunt Mae’s old spice rack. Her eyes fell on the ginger, and for a moment, her fingers lingered. She knew the truth by now.
There was no magic.
There was no protection.
“Those steaks ready?” Jonah called from outside.
Dani went outside. “I don’t like my meat spiced.”
“Okay.” Jonah cast her an easy grin and flipped open the grill top. As he put the steaks inside, he asked, “You got anything else in there that you want grilled? I know some folks like a roasted corncob every now and then.”
A moment later, with slabs of butter placed inside the corn’s husk, Dani sat on the porch’s step as she watched Jonah flip the meat and everything else on the grill. She grabbed a few more vegetables and put them in tinfoil for the grill.
“You know,” Jonah began, his back turned to her. “The steaks look like my best work, if I have to say so myself.” He glanced at her and flashed a grin as he began to fill the plate with their food. Placing it on the porch’s table, he asked, “Got anything around here to drink? Maybe even some utensils?”
She’d forgotten to prepare the table.
She’d forgotten about a lot.
“I’m sorry. I was just…” Dani trailed off and saw that he wasn’t even waiting for a reply. Jonah had already ducked inside and emerged with most everything they needed. Plates. Forks. Knives. Butter. Salt. Two glasses and a pitcher of water.
She took the plates from his hand, and they arranged the table with the food in the middle. When she sat down, Jonah still stood. She cast a questionable grin his way, and Jonah chuckled, pulling out a bottle of beer from his back pocket.
“We can share, if you tell me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Why you love that car so much.”
She’d been to hell and back, and that car was the only thing that still stood intact. “I bought that car with money I earned and because my sisters hated it.”
“I bet their boyfriends loved it.”
“That made them hate it even more.” Dani grinned. It was true. Julia had thrown more than her share of fits. She threatened, she pleaded, she cried, and every time—Aunt Kathryn and Erica would get pulled into it. Aunt Kathryn hated that car almost as much as Julia and Erica.
“I know I did.”
Dani looked up. Erica…
He pulled back the parted husks. “I’d never been to your home except one time. I saw your car, and I asked Erica about it, if it was hers, who owned it. Questions like those. Your sister blew up, literally just—she went off like a firecracker.”
“Bet that made her hotter.”
“No.” Jonah laughed. “I guess I was always grateful in some way.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” He shifted and leaned his elbows on the table, holding the corn just before his mouth. “I think—when I asked those questions about your car, your sister’s lid flew off, and I always thought that I got a window to the future. I saw a little into your sister. Scared the shit out of me. I tucked tail and ran.”
“She was so mad, too,” Dani noted, grinning. She still hadn’t moved to place any food on her plate. Her hands hadn’t left her lap. “You never dated Julia.”
“Ah nah. She was always kinda quiet around my crew, but some of the guys were into her. I wasn’t. Nah—I wanted to know who the owner of the Mustang was.”
“How come you never said anything?”
“We were at the Rush one day, and I saw you pull up to pick up Erica. I was going to come over then, but when you got out of the car…” Jonah shrugged. “I just…you had this look about you that…”
“What?”
“When I saw you, I recognized you from around town. I never really took notice of you, but that day at Tenderfoot—it looked like you wanted to be anywhere but around there. And then Erica snapped at you, and she made you wait for her.”
Erica wanted to finish hearing about Kelley Lynn’s date with Ted Foster. Dani knew from previous experience that Erica would make her wait for hours. Dani hadn’t wanted to wait. So when Erica turned her back on her, after chewing her head off, Dani turned right around and got inside the Mustang.
She laughed now at the memory. “I left her. She screamed my head off that night. I got the silent treatment for two weeks.” Those two weeks had been a vacation.
“Yeah.” Jonah grinned over his corncob at her. “Your sister was pissed.”
“You never introduced yourself to me because of that?”
“I never introduced myself because I saw why you didn’t want to deal with the rest of us. Every time I saw you, you were always walking away from something or someone.”
She left. She did it her entire life. She just left and walked away. She left her family. She left for ten years.
I’m here if you decide to stop running…
She left everything that she had in the last ten years too.
Jonah began cutting into his steak. “I always felt that I would’ve been pestering you if I ever said hello or something.”
Dani’s plate was still untouched. Her hands had yet to leave her lap.
He added, holding her gaze, “Truth is, you kinda intrigued me after that day when you ditched your sister. I thought it took balls for someone to do that to Erica O’Hara. No one did that. All those girls worshipped the ground your sister walked on, but I thought you must’ve had steel in that spine of yours to do what you did.”
“I was her sister.” Her voice grew hoarse. She didn’t know what compelled her, but she heard herself saying, “When I left, I traveled a bunch. I wanted to be something else than what I’d always been here. I worked here and there, but there was this group. I got involved with them, and at first it was great. We laughed, we drank, we…they were nice to me.” Then things changed. “This one girl, her name was Parker. She—she had this thing for this guy who started traveling with us.”
I’m here…
She swallowed a lump in her throat, and kept going. “She was a little like Erica. She got all the guys, but she wanted this one guy and he wanted me. So she started to hate me, and then the group did too.”
“Hi.” He had dark eyes, dark hair, and a warm smile. He looked like Jake, but he wasn’t Jake. He offered his hand, and said as she shook it, “I’m Mitch, but call me Boone.”
Boone chose her.
“I went off on my own again.”
Boone went with her.
She remembered when she shook his hand. It was sturdy, the tiniest bit rough like he wasn’t used to manual labor until recently, and she blushed that night. She felt her cheeks now. She was blushing again. “Sorry.” She ducked her head, laughing softly. “I don’t remember what I was talking about.”
“What happened to the guy?”
Boone had fallen in love with her. “Nothing.” It didn’t matter. She left him, too. “I’m a walker. That’s what I do. I walk away.”
“I know.”
Her breath caught in her throat. She stared into those eyes. He was serious, but there was depth there. “You’re not what everyone says you are, are you?”
“That depends on what they say?” He gave her a half-grin.
“You’re a ladies’ man. You can charm your way into anyone’s pants. You’re a heartbreaker.” But as she was saying that, she couldn’t remember if those words had been used to describe him or if it was her own memory. She remembered what Mae said about him that first night over their nightcap. “Mae told me you’re dangerous to a hurting heart.”
His half-grin lessened. “Really?”
“I think that was her way of warning me to steer clear of you. She said you moved back to Craigstown a few years ago.”
“A few, around three. I take care of the river now.”
“You were a big head hunter before.”
He nodded, half-grin was almost gone. “I worked for my father’s company for a bit. Yeah.”
She frowned. She couldn’t remember anything about his parents from before. “Your father?” She remembered he had a sister.
“My sister and I grew up here with my mom. She let us believe that our dad didn’t want anything to do with us, but that changed when she died. Lawyers had to involve him and suddenly he wanted back into our lives again. I was a junior in school. Aiden was a senior. I went to college on his dime and worked at his company for a while.” His eyes grew downcast, and he cleared his throat. “I didn’t like who I was becoming, so I decided to change. I’ve never regretted it for a second.” He looked up, looking right into her eyes. “How about you? Anything you regret?”
So much.
It was on the tip of her tongue. She swallowed those words and instead said, forcing a small laugh out, “I know one thing that people think I’m going to do, but I’m not. I’m not going to break up Jake and Julia, and I’m not going to regret not doing that.” She laughed again, this time it was less forced.
“That’s good to know, but I’m not here to find out that information either.”
“You’re here for my car.”
“Not really.”
“You’re here for a ride.”
“That’d be nice.”
There was a different look in his eyes. Something more. He didn’t react to her comment about the car, not like before. It was like… She cocked her head to the side. “You’re not here about the