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Hattie’s hand flew to her chest. “Oh, you poor thing.”
“Failed marriage, huh?” Babs said. “The dramatic kind or the boring paperwork kind?”
“Babs,” Hattie chastened again.
“There’s a difference,” Babs snapped.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly tight. “The…messy kind.”
Another lie. Or half of one. Or whatever you call it when the truth is worse than the lie.
Sterling’s gaze stayed on me—steady, unreadable, and far too aware for comfort.
“Well,” Hattie said brightly, a little too loudly, “you’re here now. And Blackwood is very good at fresh starts.”
“That’s great,” I said, straightening my spine. “But I’m leaving as soon as I can.”
That statement was met with silence, the kind that made you realize you’d said something aggressively questionable in this town. Which was ludicrous, considering their serial killer habit.
I opened my mouth, ready to double down, when a question hit me, one I probably would have been asking the second I’d opened my eyes…if not for Sterling’s presence in my room and the inconvenient concussion. “Where is my car, anyway?” I asked. “I need to know when it’ll be ready to go.”
Three sets of eyes blinked at me.
Hattie tilted her head. Babs raised a brow.
Sterling…just watched me. Too calmly.
He cleared his throat. “It’s at Mack’s Garage. I already checked on it for you.”
My stomach dropped. “You—what?” I was still confused. Why was this man acting so interested in me, and why did he keep helping me? I couldn’t help but feel suspicious…and intrigued.
I was actually confused why everyone I’d met in this town was acting the way that they were, but that was besides the point.
“What did—” I swallowed. “What did Mack say?”
Sterling rested one forearm on the bar, looking the kind of devastating where a single flex of muscle and the faint line of a vein could ruin a woman’s entire belief system. “It’ll be at least a month before it’s drivable again. It needs parts that take forever to get in.”
My jaw unhinged, and that was enough to get my eyes off his forearm. “A month?”
“At least,” he said, giving a shrug. “You’re lucky that it's going to be able to drive at all.”
“But—I—I can’t—California—my timeline—” I sputtered. A month stuck here? With what money? The last year with David, my ex, had cost me everything—my job, my savings, the part of me that used to believe I’d be okay.
“I can’t stay here a month,” I said, still staring at Sterling as if he’d personally rerouted fate with his bare hands.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Looks like you have to, unless you plan on walking to California.” He glanced at my flip-flops, ironically completely inappropriate footwear for walking. “One month in Blackwood. Then, if you still want to go…you can go.”
I didn’t need his permission. But I did need my car. “Fine,” I said. “I can do one month.”
CHAPTER 7
SIENNA
The burger I’d ordered was more than passable. In fact, under the circumstances, it might’ve been the best thing I’d ever tasted—greasy, perfectly charred, dripping down my wrist like it had been engineered in a lab to heal everything that ailed me…or at least momentarily distract me from the fact that I was trapped in a small town.
Hattie chattered beside me. “That’s Wade Turner over there,” she whispered, nodding toward a man in a camo hat. “Got struck by lightning twice and says it improved his memory. It didn’t. And see Darlene? She’s banned from karaoke after last year’s incident. Let’s just say she doesn’t handle her tequila. Oh and Earl?” Hattie went on, lowering her voice with the gravity of someone revealing state secrets. “Don’t let him buy you a drink. He’ll spend the next forty minutes explaining how the government replaced all our deer with surveillance decoys.”
“Surveillance…deer?” I questioned.
