Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 61723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
The first few minutes, she’s stiff.
I can feel it in the way her knees grip the bike, in the way every muscle in her arms is locked. Then, little by little, she loosens. Her grip changes from afraid to anchored. By the time we hit the open stretch near the water, she’s leaning with me in the curves instead of fighting them.
At the first red light after the bridge, I glance back.
“You still alive?”
Her eyes are wide behind me through the mirror. Then she laughs. Actually laughs. “This is insane.”
“Bad insane?”
“No.” Her hands tighten lightly at my waist. “Good insane.”
I grin and roll us through the night.
By the time we pull in at the little seafood place over the state line in Florida, she’s flushed from the ride and bright-eyed in a way I haven’t seen before. It’s a quiet spot with string lights on the deck and enough distance from town to feel like its own pocket of night.
I hold the bike steady while she gets off, then take her helmet and set both ours on the seat.
She pushes her hair back from her face, still smiling. “That was,” she pauses looking for a word to describe what she’s feeling.
“Insane?” I offer.
She laughs again. “A little.”
“But?”
Her smile softens. “But exhilarating in the best way.”
Yeah. That lands somewhere deep.
Inside, we get seated on the deck overlooking the dark water. The tables are scattered enough for privacy, the air warm enough that the salt breeze feels good instead of sticky. A couple at the far end of the deck is sharing oysters.
Lucy folds her menu closed almost immediately. “You know what’s good here?”
“Everything fried.” I reply with the truth.
“That is an alarming amount of confidence.”
“I’ve eaten my way through half this county.”
She smiles. “Okay, then. Order for me.”
“You trust me with that too?”
She holds my gaze over the candle flickering between us. “Yes.”
There’s that confidence again. Dangerous to a man like me every single time.
I order shrimp for her, blackened fish for me, hush puppies, coleslaw, and a basket of fries because I’ve seen Quinn enough to know Lucy’s a woman who steals fries whether she means to or not.
When the waitress leaves, a quiet settles over us. Not awkward. Natural and expectant. Lucy traces one finger around the base of her water glass.
“This is nice.”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know what to expect.”
“That good or bad?”
“Undecided.” She smiles softly.
I huff a laugh. “Fair.”
She looks out toward the water for a second, then back at me. “How long have you lived in Freedom Falls?”
“Off and on a while. For good? Last ten years or so.”
“You said something about traveling before that.”
It isn’t a question. Just a thread she’s been holding from some earlier conversation. “Yeah.”
“Everywhere?”
“Enough places.”
She lifts a brow. “Still vague.” She tests me.
“Still true.” That gets a smile. But this time she doesn’t let me sit in the mystery of it.
“Why’d you settle here?”
I lean back in my chair, looking out over the dark water. “Because leaving stopped feeling like freedom and started feeling like drifting.”
Her eyes stay on me. I can feel it. “Now we are getting somewhere. That’s more honest.”
“Don’t get used to it.” I tease.
“Too late.”
The waitress brings our food and breaks the moment before it can get too sharp. For a while we eat and talk easy. Small things at first. Quinn and kindergarten. The spring festival. The way Harold at the diner thinks subtlety is a government conspiracy. Lucy laughs more tonight than she usually does, and every time she does, I feel a little more fucked.
Then somewhere between the fish and the hush puppies, the air changes.
Maybe it’s the sun going down. The privacy. The ride there. Maybe it’s the fact that she trusted me enough to get on the bike.
Whatever it is, when I ask quietly, “How long’s he been chasing you?” she doesn’t pretend not to know who I mean.
She sets her fork down. “Too long.”
I wait.
She looks down at her plate, then out at the water. “I met Clint when I was sixteen.”
Clint.
Her voice stays steady, but I can hear the old tension under it. “He was a little older. Already out of school doing life. Charming when he wanted to be. The kind of man who made you feel like the room changed when he walked in.” A humorless little laugh touches her mouth. “I thought that meant he was strong.”
I don’t say anything.
She keeps going. “At first he was the rock I thought I needed. Turns out, life was simply being life, kicking me hard, and he happened to be the person in the right place to pick up the shattered pieces. My parents died in a car accident before I graduated high school. I was seventeen and didn’t want to be in foster care. He had his own place, offered to let me move in. It sounded like the next step in life. By that point I was in love, well, as much as a teenager can be. What started easy became intense. He did everything under the guise of being protective. Wanted to know where I was, who I was with. Made it sound like love.”