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‘Cold,’ Brooke gasped, though it wasn’t really that cold in the room. I took her hands again, which were like ice, and rubbed them to warm her back up.

‘Breathe with me,’ I told her, and took deep, exaggerated breaths until she started to copy me.

She was still silently crying, and I reached up to swipe the tears off her cheeks with my thumbs.

‘You are so fucking brave,’ I told her. ‘You are the bravest person I’ve ever met.’

‘You stabbed someone,’ she said incredulously, and she wasn’t quite in control of her voice or her breathing yet.

That made me laugh. ‘I’d do it again.’

Slowly, Brooke’s shaky breaths evened out, and I felt it was safe to dash into the bathroom to grab some tissues for her to blow her nose and dry her tears.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

‘Not really.’

‘That’s all right. You don’t have to be. Do you want to talk about it?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m so tired.’

‘Come on,’ I said, nudging her back under the covers.

As soon as I settled on my back, Brooke rolled over toward me and I opened my arms to her so she could settle with her head on my shoulder.

We fell asleep like that.

When I woke up the next morning, Brooke was in the shower again, and I stretched out into the space she’d left behind.

I guessed it was pretty late from the angle of the sun pouring in through the gap in the curtains.

I’d crashed, and every time I’d woken up during the night, Brooke had been pressed up close to me.

I forced myself not to think about what that could mean.

While Brooke was taking the longest shower of her life, I rolled onto my side and dozed for a while. I felt like I could sleep for hours more, and I couldn’t remember what time we needed to check out, and if that was soon. I was also insanely hungry.

Even though we weren’t that far from Nashville, I wanted to stay right here. Maybe for a month. Or forever.

We definitely didn’t have enough cash to stay for a month. We’d have to go back to a city and find another convention hotel full of careless businessmen who we could steal from, and by that point we’d probably be in Nashville anyway, so it was all moot.

Brooke came out of the bathroom in jean shorts and her wolf-howling-at-the-moon T-shirt, and I forced myself to sit up.

‘How are you feeling?’ I asked.

‘Better. A lot better.’ She came over to sit on the edge of the bed.

‘Do you remember anything?’

I wouldn’t push her into talking about what had happened if she didn’t want to, but at the same time I really needed to make sure she was okay.

The sensible thing would have been to have taken her straight to a hospital or a police station last night, but I couldn’t have done that.

It would have been too risky for me personally, and with Brooke having been so out of it, I hadn’t wanted to make decisions for her.

She shook her head like she was trying to clear her thoughts. ‘I remember snatches of things. They kept giving me bottles of water with the top already off. Jessie … I think they were giving me drugs.’

She said it so seriously I had to laugh.

‘Yeah,’ I said, reaching out to take her hand. ‘You were definitely on something.’

‘Shit,’ she drawled. ‘I’ve never done drugs before, and I couldn’t even enjoy it my first time.’

I squeezed Brooke’s hand, appreciating that she needed to joke about it. I thought she’d probably been given a date rape drug – something that would blur her memories and make her compliant. I wasn’t going to say that out loud unless she did, though. I didn’t need to make her paranoid.

‘Did they say why you? Why us?’

Brooke shook her head and frowned. Her fingers played with the frayed rip in her shorts, and I tried to give her the space to think things through.

‘Drugs,’ she said angrily.

‘What, like, dealing them?’ I asked.

She looked up at me. ‘He wasn’t importing avocados. It was drugs.’

I had a sudden moment of clarity, of what a dangerous person Chris must be if he was importing drugs over the southern border. I couldn’t let myself reflect on that, though, or I’d get freaked out all over again.

‘That’s … wild , Brooke,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ she replied, like she needed me to confirm that before she could believe it. ‘I think they wanted me to be, like … what’s the name of someone who smuggles stuff over the border?’

‘A drug mule?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, pointing at me. ‘They wanted me to be a drug mule.’

‘Why were they following you specifically, though? I don’t get it.’

‘The woman …’ Brooke looked down at her shorts again. ‘Her name is Ashley. She knew we had run away. She has some way of tracking missing people by listening to bulletins or something. Police reports, maybe?’

I nodded. ‘Maybe. How did they follow us after you found the tracker, though?’

‘Turns out Luca at the garage is a really bad liar,’ she said with a wry smile.

‘Oh, shit.’

‘It’s not his fault. They didn’t believe him and one of the other mechanics mentioned something about Denver … Jessie, I think they’ve been following us the whole time. They were just waiting for their chance.’

That was genuinely terrifying.

‘Why did they want you?’ I asked.

‘They find runaways and take them down to El Paso and threaten to kill their families unless they take drugs back and forth across the border.’

‘Holy crap,’ I muttered, pushing down my instinct to be even more terrified by this new information.

Brooke nodded. ‘They knew what they were doing. They knew me, anyway.’

‘They knew your name?’

‘Yeah. And they knew who my dad is. His job.’

‘To blackmail him?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said, her eyes sad and desperate. ‘To blackmail me .’

I reached out for her hand and squeezed it. ‘You’re safe now.’

‘I don’t remember much else, Jessie. Just the drugs, and Ashley saying I would be valuable to them.’

I didn’t want to push her. She’d only been with Chris and Ashley for a little more than a day. I had a feeling the last traces of drugs were still working their way out of her system, too.

‘How’s your head now?’ I asked.

‘Okay. I’m just really hungry.’

‘There’s Pop-Tarts in the bag,’ I said quickly. ‘And the woman on reception last night said there’s a diner next door, so we can go get something decent to eat in a minute, once I’ve had a quick shower.’

‘That sounds good.’

I didn’t want to leave Brooke alone for too long, so I tried to scrub myself down as quickly as possible.

She seemed to be coping incredibly well, even considering her breakdown last night, which was probably the best thing to have happened.

I knew from personal experience that holding on to those messy feelings wasn’t helpful in the long run.

‘Hey,’ Brooke said when I stepped out of the bathroom, dressed in underwear and jeans, but without a shirt because I’d forgotten to take one in with me. Her eyes lingered on my belly button, and I wanted to curl up like a bug under her close inspection. ‘Does that hurt?’

‘Not really,’ I said, trying not to scramble for a T-shirt. ‘It’s starting to scab over.’

She gave a little shudder. ‘That’s so gross.’

I went to my bag and quickly found a shirt. Since Brooke had kissed me, our whole relationship had changed, and for some reason being undressed around her now was so much scarier than it had been before. Maybe it was because I knew she was looking at me the same way I looked at her.

‘Will you braid my hair for me?’ I said impulsively. I wanted it off my face in this heat, and styling it up in braids would be quicker than blow-drying it.

‘Sure. Sit down.’

Brooke nudged me into the desk chair and finished roughly towel-drying my hair.

On the desk was a small white card, the size of a postcard, with useful phone numbers printed on it: the front desk, the takeout number for the diner, the activities line where you could book horseback riding or hire bikes.

It finished with a reminder: Check-out is at noon!

That meant we had time to get breakfast.

I closed my eyes as Brooke efficiently folded my hair back into two short braids that tucked behind my ears and left little tufts bouncing off my shoulders.

‘You look super cute.’

I snorted with laughter. ‘Thanks.’

She smiled at me in the mirror over the desk, then leaned down to press a kiss to the crown of my head.

I closed my eyes and let myself soak in her newfound affection.

Responding with a kiss of my own still felt like it could be seen as taking advantage, but my self-control was on the verge of evaporating at any moment.

‘Come on,’ I murmured. ‘I need to feed you.’

Brooke walked outside onto the wide wooden porch and stretched up her arms. I locked the door behind us and took a deep breath of crisp morning air.

‘This place is totally your shit,’ Brooke said.

I laughed. ‘Yeah. It is.’

‘Is it bad that I don’t remember getting here?’

‘No.’ I reached out to take her hand, but Brooke was the one to thread our fingers together. ‘I think we need to go this way.’

She didn’t let go of my hand as we walked back around to the front lobby building, passing a handful of other people all dressed like they were ready to go hiking.

The trees offered dappled shade under a perfect blue sky, and I wanted to stay here forever, live here forever, and not see a dirty roadside gas station motel ever again.

I hadn’t noticed the diner when we drove in last night, but this morning it stood out like a neon beacon among the trees.

‘Wow,’ Brooke said.

‘I love it.’

The diner had a glowing neon sign above the door, declaring it MOLLY ’ S in electric pink. I pushed open the door to what felt like a movie set: red leather booths, circular stools at a long bar, an open kitchen at the back and a refrigerator case packed full of pies.

‘Pie,’ Brooke whimpered from behind me.

‘Y’all grab a table,’ a waitress called over. ‘Wherever you like.’

The waitress was maybe my mom’s age, mid-thirties. She wore jeans and a pink polo shirt with a white utility apron tied around her waist.

I let Brooke choose a booth near the window and slid in opposite her.

The diner was clearly winding down from the morning rush, with a few stragglers still eating. A family with two young kids, a couple who I guessed were in their sixties, a pair of men who looked like truckers and who I wanted to think were secret lovers.

I’d definitely been reading too many romance novels.

The waitress came over with a pot of coffee, and Brooke turned our cups over.

‘Mornin’,’ the waitress said, pouring Brooke’s coffee, then mine. ‘I’m Molly. I’ll be looking after you today. Menu’s there, but you let me know if you want something that’s not on it and we’ll do our best to fix you right up.’

‘Are you still serving breakfast?’ I asked.

‘Oh, only up until eleven tonight,’ she said with a wink.

‘Great, thanks,’ I replied with a smile.

‘I’ll be back in just a tick.’

Brooke doctored her coffee with two creamers and three sugars and drank most of it in one gulp.

‘Did you eat the Pop-Tarts?’ I asked her.

‘No. I decided to save myself.’

I knocked my foot against hers under the table and she smiled at me, making my hungry stomach clench hard.

‘Let’s stay here another night,’ Brooke said quickly, like she was expecting me to say no.

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. I don’t want to go anywhere today. I can’t …’ She shook her head. ‘This is nice.’

‘I think so too,’ I said easily.

Molly came back and topped up Brooke’s coffee. I hadn’t started mine.

‘What can I get ya?’ she asked.

Brooke snapped her menu closed. ‘Can I get an everything omelet, with extra everything, no mushrooms?’

Molly grinned. ‘Sure. You want hash browns?’

‘Please. And a slice of pie.’

‘What kinda pie?’

‘Surprise me.’

‘Surprise pie and a double-everything-no-fungus omelet, got it.’ Molly turned to me, still chuckling a little after hearing Brooke’s giant order.

‘Uh, just bacon and eggs, please,’ I said, laughing with her.

‘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 you stab Chris 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 some bacteria 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.

‘ Very sure.’

This girl was going to make me lose my freaking 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 plate down, 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.’