“You poor thing,” she said, looking like she wanted to wrap me up in a giant hug. “Of course. Take the rest of the day off and just give a holler if you need anything.”
Guilt made its debut when I saw how quickly she’d agreed. How easily I’d pulled the wool over her eyes. “Are you sure you and the girls will be all right? I can check back in around dinner time to see if you need a hand.”
“Please,” she said, waving me off, “the girls and I have been cooking meatloaf for so long we could do it in our sleep. Go find yourself a shade tree and get some rest.” She pointed at the old trunk on the porch where she kept pillows and blankets. “Grab a blanket and pillow, and I’ll check in on you later.”
“Thanks,” I said as I opened the trunk and grabbed the first blanket.
“You’ve got your phone with you?”
I patted my back pocket. “For your checking-in-on-me pleasure.”
Rose shook her head. “Go get some rest, silly girl. You must have a headache. Your humor is off this afternoon.”
I flashed Rose a wave before heading down the porch steps and bee lining for the field. My lungs weren’t working right. Not since Garth’s, and Rose’s, words. I felt like I could barely fill them halfway up. I had a theory: the farther I got from Willow Springs, the better I could breathe again.
After hoofing it through a field of grass up past my shoulders for more than a half hour, I realized my theory was wrong. It didn’t matter how far I got or how fast I walked. I still couldn’t breathe quite right. My heart felt like it was shriveling to the size of a raisin, and my head felt like it might explode from everything running through it.
After another fifteen minutes of traipsing around some nameless field, I practically stumbled into something anything but organic. It was an old trailer, and old was putting it generously. It was basically a rat-infested looking, once-upon-a-time human dwelling so rusted out it made Old Bessie look shiny and new. More windows were covered by plastic sheeting than actual glass, and the front door—or was it the back?—looked as if a gentle breeze would blow right off its hinges.
Sweet pad.
Not.
Other than a run-down pickup that looked like it hadn’t been started since Clinton was president, the place gave no indication any humans had ever lived there. Even in the trailer’s prime, imagining people living in it was hard. It was so far gone, imagining it had been anything useful in its past was hard.
I tip-toed away until I realized I was tip-toeing when no one was around to hear me. After that, I continued to step away, but I didn’t turn my back until the trailer was out of sight. It wasn’t the kind of place a person turned their back on.
After I’d put a safe distance between me and the trailer, I spread the blanket under the next closest tree, turned my phone off because I didn’t want anyone checking up on me, laid down, and was lights out a few heartbeats later.
THERE WAS NOTHING quite like being woken up by the toe of a shoe tapping against your shoulder. It had happened to me a handful of times, and I remembered each one. I recalled each shoe that had nudged me awake since kneeling down and using a hand was apparently just too much work. That time, it wasn’t a loafer, or a wedge, or a sneaker. It was a boot. A black one.
I groaned before I looked at the boot’s owner. When I did, my groan deepened.
“What are you doing lurking around here?” Even in the dark, I made out Garth’s twisted smile.
“You know me.” I shoved his boot away and sat up. Stiff, stiff, and more stiff. “I’m good at lurking.” I grabbed the corners of the blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders. If it was dark and cool enough to need a blanket, it was late.
That meant Rose was probably worried sick. That meant Jesse probably was, too. Jesse . . .
The reminders flooded my mind as the sleep cleared from it. I had no future with Jesse. In both the immediate and distant sense.
The pain had been bad that afternoon, but something about the night and being so close to the anti-Jesse brought on something else entirely. I almost reached for my chest, half-expecting to find the handle of a dagger protruding from it.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked, trying to distract myself. I didn’t care. Not really. Some girls might freak out if a creeper like Garth Black stumbled upon them late at night in the middle of some random field, but I wasn’t. I’d been around enough real creepers to know the difference. Garth was a creeper, make no mistake about it, but a harmless one.
Harmless save for the nasty comments he wielded like a damn samurai sword.
“I live here,” he said, like it should have been obvious.
My eyebrows knitted together.
“What? Did you flatter yourself by thinking I’d come looking for you?”
I didn’t like the way he looked down at me, so I stood and tucked the blanket tighter around me. “Of all the people who’d come searching for me if I needed to be found, your name wouldn’t be anywhere on that list. Least of all first on that list.”
Garth couldn’t have looked anymore unfazed. “And who’d be first on that list?” From the curl of his smile alone, I knew who he would name before he did it. “Jesse? Your precious, infallible, ivory tower Jesse Walker, eh?” Garth extended his arms and did one slow turn. “Well, I hate to tell ya, honey, but that white knight of yours isn’t here. He wasn’t the one to come find you when you got yourself lost.” His dark eyes shone. “Looks like you’re stuck with me.”