“You’re allowed to need help,” she says. “Asking isn’t a weakness. Jesse taught me that. You can let Logan…” She stops. “You’re allowed to let people in without it costing you everything.”
I don’t speak. I can’t.
She eats the pie she doesn’t like and finishes her decaf, then leaves a twenty on the counter and stands. Jesse’s at her side in an instant.
“Take care, Soph,” Nora says.
“You, too.” I force out the words.
Jesse meets my eyes once over the top of Nora’s head. He doesn’t say anything but gives me a look that saysI have her. You handle your end.
Then he escorts his wife out.
Through the front window, I watch him help her into his truck and fasten her seatbelt for her. My brother is a different man—a better one—since Nora came into his life. I imagine my future with Logan. Could that be us someday?
Roz catches my eye from the kitchen doorway. She holds a coffee cup in her hand and a question on her face:You good?
I am about to sayfine.It’s what I’ve said since I returned, and what I’ll keep saying without thinking. But I’m tired, and I’m not fine.
Instead of speaking, I go around the counter and sit on the first stool.
Roz blinks. Sitting during a shift is not what Sophie Wilde does, and she’s known me long enough to know it.
“Five minutes,” I say. That sounds so much better thanI’m fine.
She brings me a glass of ice water and a cup of coffee, then goes into the kitchen. I sit at the counter for five minutes, and the world doesn’t end.
Mason returns. Of course, he does. He must have help at the store today.
At the end of my shift, Logan picks me up at the back door. He doesn’t ask how the day went. He’s been getting briefings from Mason and likely everyone else in the diner all day.
He drives the long way.
Not by much. Two extra blocks, and he turns onto Birch instead of the direct route to the road that leads up to the cabin. He reaches across the bench and finds my hand without looking.
“I heard Nora came by,” he says.
“Yes, she sat at the counter. Said a few things I needed to hear.”
He turns onto his road but doesn’t let go of my hand.
The cab is warm. The radio is off. My hand is in his, we pass the trees on either side of the road, and for the first time today, my shoulders aren’t holding anything up.
At the cabin, Reeves sits alone at Logan’s kitchen table with three field maps and a piece of paper that wasn’t there at five this morning. His team must be at the lodge or taking a break somewhere.
“State trooper clocked the rental on Highway Two at four-fifty,” Reeves says. “He swapped the plate somewhere between Wenatchee and the pass.”
“So that gives us what? Two hours?” Logan asks.
My stomach clenches. Volkov is on his way back.
“If he doesn’t stop.”
Logan puts his hand at the small of my back. Light. Anchoring. The same touch Jesse gave Nora earlier. I lean into him. As Nora told me, I’m allowed.
We talk through the contingencies. Reeves leaves two hours later. The county units are positioned. A cruiser sits in Logan’s driveway with the radio on. The locks are checked. The porch light is on.
Logan stops me at the bedroom door. “If he moves in the morning, you stay where I put you. No improvising.”
