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“Yeah, actually. Do you guys have any good zucchini and eggplant?” Somehow, I came up with the exact idea of what to make.
“Sure,” she said, leading me over to one of the shelves and gesturing to the vegetables with an obvious look on her face, as if I would’ve seen them if I’d just looked around.
“Thanks,” I said, reaching out and grabbing a few of the eggplants and putting them in a small produce bag.
“No problem,” she said, her voice sounding tired.
I couldn’t help my curiosity anymore. “If you don’t mind me asking, are you okay? You look pretty exhausted.”
She flinched again, like she had when I’d first said her name. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just… being in a new place is taking some adjusting.”
“Oh, you’re new in town?” I wasn’t sure why I was so invested in making her comfortable with me. I just wanted her to be able to feel safe.
Whoa. Where had that come from? I barely knew this woman, and already I’d gotten invested in making her feel safe with me.
If anything, life had already taught me that I wasn’t good for keeping anyone safe. I was just as likely to put people in danger as I was to bring them security.
“Just moved here a few months ago, actually,” she said. I reached out for some more veggies while watching her out of the corner of my eye. She didn’t look settled, quite the opposite, actually. She looked like she was about to jump out of her skin any second.
“Where are you from?” I tried to keep my tone casual, but it clearly hadn’t been casual enough. She looked back at me suspiciously.
“Why do you want to know?” her tone harder now.
I shrugged a shoulder. “It’s a small town. Everyone knows everyone’s story around here. People like to help each other.”
“But you don’t live in town, do you?” she said. “If you did, I’d have seen you before two days ago. So why do you want to know my story?”
She had me there. Why did I? “Just call it curiosity,” I said.
“Well, you know what they say about what curiosity did to the cat,” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I should get back to work.”
She turned away and walked down the aisles of the store, fidgeting with every step she took as she walked away.
I’d clearly struck a nerve and put her on the defensive. I wasn’t sure why that surprised me so much. I would have reacted the exact same way if the roles had been reversed. I valued my privacy and my isolation and clearly, she did too. However, my damn cop instincts were still pinging on high alert.
I finished grabbing the rest of my groceries, adding a few more odds and ends to the basket that I knew would last me at least a few weeks before going to check out at the cash register. I barely paid any attention to the person helping me, looking over her shoulder toward Macy, who I spotted pulling bottles of detergent out of a cardboard box at her feet. I turned back to the person in front of me, getting a raised eyebrow from the dark-haired woman I recognized from most of the times that I came down to the market.
“You alright up there on the mountain, Dillon?” Alison asked. “It’s lookin’ like there might be some storms comin’ up soon.”
“So everyone keeps sayin’,” I said, unable to help myself from falling into the twang when I was around other Smokies. “I’m alright, though.”
“Alright. I just know that everyone thinks about you a lot up on that mountain, you know?”
“If you say so,” I said, handing over the money for the groceries. I grabbed the bags and headed back out to the truck. I hadn’t brought Bucky into the market with me that time, so he was really excited to see me when I finally opened the car and got inside, starting it up again and heading back to the mountain where I could focus on myself and forget all about Macy.
4
MACY
I should’ve thrown the phone away after Alex’s call. It was a burner, after all, and I could replace it easily. But for now, it was the only way my mom had of contacting me. I didn’t believe for a second that she had given Alex the number, at least not on purpose, but he was resourceful as all hell. He’d probably gotten one of his less than upstanding cop friends to search her phone records and gotten the number that way.
And if he could find my number once, then he could find it again.
Shit. Shit.
How was I ever going to be able to live if he just kept finding me again? Would I spend the rest of my damn life running?
I couldn’t just keep wandering around the few square feet of my apartment, waiting for it to suddenly transform itself into the home I’d been dreaming of back when I’d left LA.
