Shane made a right turn onto Sawmill Road and glanced at his rearview mirror to ensure the Tahoe behind him followed.
Annoyance simmered under his skin. He’d lost the car battle again. Sinclair had met him at her door this morning and announced she’d drive herself because she planned to run errands after their tour. More like she planned to keep him at a distance.
He planned to keep her guessing. When she’d asked where they were going, he’d simply told her to follow him into town and park at the public lot the city had installed a few years ago to accommodate visitors and employees of the shops and businesses downtown. Disclosing their destination would have been the mature thing to do, but after a shitty night spent stewing over the scene he’d stumbled into yesterday evening in the Smiths’ kitchen, he’d bypassed mature. She was keeping a secret from him, and he was just petty enough to give her a taste of her own medicine.
Seeing Sinclair and her mother standing close, arguing in rapid whispers, had told him there was an elephant in the room. The caged look on her face when he’d cleared his throat had told him plainly enough the elephant was him.
She didn’t want to talk about it. That much was clear. But the defensiveness she’d thrown at him from day one was starting to piss him off. If she had something to say, she could say it to his face. He deserved that much. No, things hadn’t gone the way they’d planned ten years ago, and yes, he’d fumbled the ball. But she’d ended the game. That call had been all hers. No discussion. No dialogue of any kind. She’d imposed the forfeit with a wall of silence he’d been in no position to break through—then. The USMC had owned his ass, and they hadn’t been inclined to give him time off to go confront the underage girl dodging his calls and sending his letters back unopened.
Consider her the one that got away and move on.
Screw that. Things were different now. He was here, and they were on a level playing field. She could use silence, or sarcasm, or plain old evasion, but none of those tricks would work on him. He was going to shatter her precious wall.
He signaled and slowed to make the turn into public parking. Unwilling to provide her with any clue of their specific destination, he slid into a slot in the dead center of the lot.
She pulled in next to him.
Brace yourself, baby girl, he thought and turned away to gather up his phone, keys, and wallet from the caddy between the front seats. A few seconds later he approached her Tahoe.
She sat still and straight in the driver’s seat, her long hair spilling like ink over the shoulders of a snuggly, off-white poncho-type thing, her chin flirting with the folded edge of the turtleneck. She stared out the window, ostensibly taking in the dichotomy of downtown Magnolia Grove, where buildings put up over a century ago served as a backdrop to the ebbing rush hour bustle of laptop-toting commuters fixated on their phone screens. In reality, he sensed she was a million miles away from all of it—the bustle, the buildings. Him.
A little flinch from her as he opened her door announced she’d dialed back into the here and now. “Where are we going?”
The question sounded casual enough, but Sinclair’s pale cheeks and the tight press of her lips suggested more than idle curiosity. She hid her eyes behind dark sunglasses, even though the morning clouds crowding the skyline promised rain.
“You’ll see.” He offered her a hand as she slid out of the car, and kept the light hold on her arm as he steered them toward the west end of the lot and the two-level, brick building with rounded front edges and other deco flourishes proclaiming it a landmark of late 1930s architecture.
She dug in her heels and turned to him, eyebrows so high they showed above the rims of her sunglasses. “The bus depot?”
“A very important entry and exit point in the event of certain emergencies.” Also a risky choice, considering the last time they’d been here together, they’d been teenagers, pledging their love to each other and promising no amount of time or distance would tear them apart. Then—big surprise—it had, leaving a sting of regret ten years had never completely erased. Maybe the breakup had been inevitable, given their ages, and everything else, but if he hoped to put the past behind them, they needed to have the conversation she’d been ducking for over a week. Assign blame, if that’s what it took. He’d shoulder his share, but he would damn well know exactly what failings she was holding him accountable for, because at this point, he wasn’t sure of anything except there was something she wasn’t telling him.
Everything he knew with a certainty about them ended here, at this depot, which made it the obvious place to start the what-happened-after discussion. The one that took them places she didn’t want to go. He gave her arm a little tug. “Come on.”
She fell into step beside him but took her arm back and hid both beneath the folds of her poncho. For warmth? Or to discourage him?
Yeah, sorry. Not that easily discouraged. He moved in close enough her shoulder brushed his arm as they walked. Memories swept in, more sensory than visual. Last time they’d taken this walk together, he’d had her nestled against him, anxious to soak up every touch until the last possible second. She’d rested her head on his shoulder, face pressed against his neck, hands clinging to his waist, relying on him to guide them. Together they’d woven themselves into a private cocoon of exquisite misery.
He hadn’t needed to dissuade family from coming down to see him off. His parents had moved the week before. He’d packed his shit, sold his truck, and sofa-surfed with friends until his ship-out date. Her parents had thought she was at the mall in Norcross doing some last-minute shopping for her summer in Europe. Instead, she’d met him behind the Presbyterian Church, and within five seconds of sliding into the shiny little Beetle she’d gotten for sweet sixteen, she’d somehow managed to straddle his lap, and he’d buried himself inside her one last time, rocking together with desperate enthusiasm right there in the shadow of the church. Later, riding on the bus to Parris Island, he’d tasted her on his tongue, smelled her on his skin, and endured a hollow ache of longing so deep it had felt like a hole in his chest.
He held open one side of the double glass doors and ushered her inside the depot. She perched her sunglasses on the top of her head and looked around, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the light. “They’ve expanded since…” Her voice drifted off.
True. The once bare-bones facility now boasted two ticket windows, an electronic schedule board detailing a dozen arrivals and departures, a waiting area full of interlocked seats, and a concession counter complete with a couple of bistro tables lined up against the window wall facing the lot now designed to accommodate up to three buses at once. They’d hit it during a lull, after the morning rush of local and long-distance commuters but before the next wave of arrivals from regional locations, so only a few people occupied the waiting area.
He headed in the direction of the concession counter. “Coffee?”
“Um. Sure.”
“I’ll get it. Have a seat.”
With a less-than-enthusiastic nod, she headed to one of the tables. He took a moment to enjoy the way faded denim hugged her thighs and disappeared into tan sheepskin boots, and then went to the counter and ordered. The bored guy behind the register tore himself away from his phone long enough to fill Shane’s order and promptly resumed crushing candy.
Shane made his way over to the table she’d selected, aware her guarded eyes watched his every step. When he put her coffee in front of her, he said, “Let’s talk.”
Reading body language sometimes took keen observational skills, but not in this case. She pulled her arms off the table and crossed them. The rubber sole of one boot tapped out a soft, impatient rhythm on the black-and-white tile floor. Interpretation? Hell no.
“About what?”
He rested his forearms on the table, and leaned into the space she’d vacated, deliberately pursuing her. Silently telling her he wasn’t going to back off this time. “About secrets. Specifically, th