“I’m not your responsibility,” he said, the words coming out stiff, like he’d rehearsed them and still wasn’t sure they were right. “Once we get to Montana, I’ll figure something out. I won’t—“ He stopped, started again. “I’m not looking for charity.”
I glanced over at him. In the dim light from the dashboard, his profile was all angles—cheekbone, jaw, the straight line of his nose. “Nobody said you were.”
He turned to look at me then, really look, his eyes doing the same quick assessment mine had done when I first saw him. “Why are you doing this?” he asked. “You don’t know me. You don’t owe me anything.”
It was a fair question. One I’d been asking myself since my grandfather had first explained the situation. I could have told him about the debt I owed—about standing by people who’d stood by me, about being the only person someone trusted. But those explanations would have required more words than I was willing to spend.
So I gave him the simplest truth I had. “My grandfather asked me to.”
He held my gaze for a long moment, then nodded once and turned back to the window. The conversation was over, but something had shifted between us—a door opening just a crack, not enough to walk through but enough to see what was on the other side.
The road stretched ahead, empty and dark. Montana was still twelve hours away. I settled in for the drive, hands steady on the wheel, and tried not to think about what would happen when we got there.
Chapter Three
~ Jasper ~
I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the passenger window, watching the dark Nebraska countryside slide by. Sleep wouldn’t come—not with my ribs aching with every breath and my split lip throbbing in time with my heartbeat.
I’d tried closing my eyes, but the images kept coming: the sudden gleam of a belt buckle, the way the fence had rattled behind my back, the first crack of a boot against my ribs. So I kept my eyes open, face turned to the glass, and watched Decker drive instead.
The man’s hands rested on the wheel at exactly ten and two, shoulders relaxed but alert, eyes tracking the empty road ahead with methodical care. No sideways glances at me. No performance of being my savior or my friend. Just the quiet certainty of a man who knew how to drive at night—the kind of competence that came from years of doing it.
The truck smelled like motor oil and pine. A faded pair of work gloves sat in the center console. The dashboard lights cast a green glow across Decker’s face, highlighting the straight line of his jaw, the shadow of stubble along his throat. A tactical watch with a black face and luminous hands circled his left wrist.
Everything about him was steady, measured, controlled.
I did what I always did when I was scared: I took inventory. Decker’s hands were steady. His breathing was even. He hadn’t touched me since helping me off the ground—no casual shoulder claps or “you’re okay now” hand squeezes. He‘d kept his distance without making it seem like distance. He’d answered my questions without adding unnecessary reassurances.
When I closed my eyes, my grandfather’s face surfaced—the thin line of his mouth, the worry in his eyes, the way his hand had trembled when he’d passed me the duffel.
I pushed the image away and redirected to what was in front of me: a man my grandfather had vouched for without hesitation, a road moving west, the first time in months I’d been moving away from something instead of sitting inside it.
The flat Nebraska dark stretched around us, broken only by the occasional light from a farmhouse or the distant red glow of a radio tower. We’d been driving for hours.
My grandfather was miles behind us now, in the house with its yellowed linoleum and the collection of carved animals on the shelf above the radiator. I wondered if he was sleeping or if he’d stayed up, watching the clock, wondering if we’d made it out.
The thought made my chest tight. I turned away from the window and looked at Decker.
“How much longer to Montana?” I asked, the question practical, unemotional—the kind of thing that didn’t require more than a direct answer.
“Twelve hours from Nebraska,” Decker said, eyes still on the road. “We’re crossing into Colorado soon.”
No extra weight on it. No follow-up about how I was holding up or if I needed anything. Just the information I’d asked for, delivered with the same steady certainty he brought to everything.
I nodded, filing that away. “You in the military?”
“Navy,” he said. “Eight years.”
“SEAL?” I asked, the word coming out before I could stop it. There was something about the way he moved—the economy of it, the quiet focus—that made the question necessary.
Something flickered across his face—not quite surprise, but close to it. “Yeah,” he said. Then, after a pause: “You?”
It took me a second to realize he was asking if I’d served. “No,” I said. “I’m a nurse. Was a nurse. Neonatal. In Omaha.”
Another nod, acknowledging the information without trying to do anything with it.
The conversation died there, but the silence that followed felt different somehow—not empty or tense, just a pause, a space where more words could go if either of us wanted to put them there.
