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‘You want toast and hash browns, hon?’ Molly asked.

‘Sure. Thanks.’

‘No problem. Give me a holler if you need anything else.’

We both leaned back in the booth, and, for a minute, a comfortable silence settled over us. We’d learned how to be together without having to fill every minute with nervous chatter. It would be a long and incredibly dull journey if I couldn’t just sit in Brooke’s presence without talking.

‘I don’t know if I’m remembering this right,’ Brooke said slowly, still looking out the wide window at the beautiful forest. ‘But did youstabChris last night?’

‘Uh … that’s accurate, yeah,’ I said cagily, not sure how she was going to react to that.

‘Where did you get a knife from?’ Brooke asked. She wasn’t giving much away.

‘Walmart,’ I said simply. I reached for my coffee and cradled it against my chest. It wasn’t an iced oat milk caramel latte, but it would do the job. ‘I used it to slice up an apple and then left it in my pocket for a couple hours, so hopefully that was enough time for somebacteria to grow on it. Oh, and I used it to slash Chris’s tires.’ I sipped my coffee. It was almost perfect. ‘Maybe his hand will get infected and he’ll have to get it amputated.’

Brooke tipped her head back and howled with laughter. One of the trucker guys looked over at her, then turned back to his friend, smiling and shaking his head.

‘Holy shit, Jessie. I didn’t think you had it in you.’

I shrugged. ‘I did what I had to.’

‘You never told me how you found me,’ she asked, looking at me intently from under her long lashes.

‘I will,’ I said. ‘Not now, though. Let’s just enjoy being … not there.’

‘Okay.’ She seemed relieved that I wasn’t about to dredge up more memories. ‘I definitely remember what happened after the stabbing, though.’

A flashback of Brooke’s kiss appeared in vivid Technicolor detail, and I felt the blush climb from my chest up to my throat and bloom over my cheeks.

‘Me too.’

‘That wasn’t an accident, you know,’ she said.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked hesitantly.

‘Verysure.’

This girl was going to make me lose myfreaking mind.

Molly came over with our food, saving me from terminal embarrassment.

Brooke’s double-everything omelet was enormous, covering more than two-thirds of a dinner plate, and the remaining third was full of potatoes. Molly put the platedown, then mine, before producing a bottle of ketchup from her apron pocket and setting it down between us.

‘I’ll be right back with your pie,’ she said.

‘You can hold that for a minute,’ I said. ‘We might need to get it to go.’

She laughed brightly. ‘Sure thing.’

Brooke pouted at me, already slamming the heel of her hand against the bottom of the ketchup bottle to cover her hash browns.

‘I want pie,’ she said petulantly.

‘Finish that and you can have your pie.’

Brooke grinned. ‘Challenge accepted.’

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