Page 49 of Diesel’s Desire

I brace for it. For the disappointment, the Penny, we thought you were smarter than this, the same worry I’ve been carrying myself since the wedding. Instead Mom exchanges a look with Dad, something quiet passing between them, and when she speaks again, her voice comes out gentler than I expected.

“We wondered when that might happen again,” she says.

“You wondered?”

“Honey, you left seventeen years ago because you were scared, not because you stopped loving him.” Dad says it plain, the way he says most things, like it’s obvious and I’m the only one who’s spent almost two decades pretending otherwise. “Your mother cried for a week after you two broke it off. Not because we thought he was a bad kid. Because you were hurting and we couldn’t do a damn thing about it.”

“I’m pretty sure he runs guns, Dad. He’s a felon who’s never been caught.”

“And you’re the one who’s gonna catch him, or you’re the one who’s gonna love him. Can’t do both forever, sweetheart, but you don’t have to decide that today.” Mom reaches over, pats my knee. “We just want you happy. If that man makes you happy the way he did at seventeen, I’m not gonna sit here and pretend I’ve got some moral high ground to stand on about it.”

I don’t know what I expected coming here. Judgment, maybe. A lecture about badges and outlaws and everything I’ve built my whole adult life avoiding.

Instead I get my parents on their porch, tea sweating in the afternoon heat, telling me it’s alright to want something that scares me.

I stay another hour, longer than I meant to, and when I finally drive home, the answer still isn’t sitting neat and tidy in my chest the way I wanted it to. But something’s loosened, just slightly, enough that I let myself think about Evan without immediately reaching for every reason it’s a bad idea.

Maybe that’s enough for tonight.

25

DIESEL

Ipark down the street from Penny’s place, same as I’ve done a dozen times now, but tonight I don’t wait in the truck. The porch light is on. Thunder barks once behind the door before he catches my scent and goes quiet.

She answers in an old T-shirt and sweatpants, hair loose around her shoulders, and something in my chest loosens just looking at her.

“You gonna keep showing up unannounced?” she asks with a sigh.

I tilt my head. “You gonna keep pretending you don’t like it?”

She steps back, lets me in. That’s answer enough.

We end up on her couch, her feet tucked under her, a glass of wine she’s barely touched sitting on the coffee table. Thunder rests his big head on my boot like he’s decided I belong with them.

“Morris officially resigns Friday,” she says. “Council’s already fighting over who gets the interim seat.”

“You want it?”

“I don’t know what I want.” She looks at me when she says it, and I know she’s not just talking about the job.

I reach for her hand, thread my fingers through hers. Her hands still fit mine like they were made for it.

“Penny.”

She blinks at me. “That tone means something serious. What?”

I look at her for a long moment, weighing whether to say what’s been sitting on my tongue for weeks now.

“You ever think about it? Us. For real, not just stealing nights whenever we can get away with it.”

“Evan—”

“I asked you once. A long time ago.”

Her whole body goes still. She knows what I mean before I finish asking.

“Don’t.”