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Without a trace.
TWENTY-FOUR
CHARLEIGH
River
You thinking about runnin’?
I bitmy lip to ward off the rush of eager anticipation that gushed through me when I opened my phone to find the waiting text from him.
It’d been three days since things had gotten heavy between us. Three days since I’d cut myself open and allowed him to see a piece of me that I’d thought would be forever unexposed.
Three days since I’d given a view of the most broken, fractured pieces of me then had turned around and offered him the hope he’d sparked inside me.
The need.
This…this…expectancy that had bloomed and filled my aching chest with something new.
I had the sneaking suspicion that what I was feeling was joy, but it’d been so long since I’d experienced it that I couldn’t be sure.
During the last few days, he’d gone back to playful, and God, I loved it. Loved when I woke up or took my lunch break or powered up my phone after work that there was always some message waiting for me.
Constant reminders that he was there. That maybe…maybe I didn’t have to be alone anymore after all.
Grinning as I pushed through the front door of the medical office, I tapped out a reply.
Me
Not today, Guardian Angel.
I could almost feel his scoff ripple through the distance.
The first time I’d called him that, he’d warned me that he was no angel, but I couldn’t help but tease him about it, anyway.
Even though I meant it. There was something about him that made me feel protected. Watched over.
I blinked rapidly as I stepped out into the bright rays of the late afternoon sun. It’d be hot if it wasn’t for the breeze that whispered through the woods that surrounded the town.
Easiness billowed, and I felt it.
The fact that this place was becoming a sanctuary.
A refuge.
I wouldn’t try to deny that it didn’t have everything to do with the people I’d met here.
Raven and Nolan gliding into the vacancy. Assuaging it with their care and their laughter and their friendship. It was a rare day that Raven wasn’t standing at the door of Moonflower after I got off work, waiting to drag me inside so she could flick the lock and pull me into the back so we could share a bottle of wine.
We’d giggle and chat and goof around, though we both seemed to skate over the more substantial topics. Each tiptoeing, seen and understood without actual confessions to support it.
But River? River was an entirely different story.
He was a riot to my senses and a whisper to my soul.
There was no doubting it when another text blipped through as I walked across the parking lot.
River
