Just Like This (Albin Academy #2) - Cole McCade Page 0,106

the more rounded modern contours, boxy and angular and somehow perfectly suited for Damon, right down to its matte dark green finish. When Rian peered inside, the back seat had been let down to expand the cargo area, a rumpled sleeping bag still laid out on the floor with camping equipment piled against the rear hatch.

“Remnants of your last trip to Rhode Island?” he asked, as he let himself into the passenger’s seat and slung his shoulder bag down at his feet.

Damon tossed Chris’s gym bag all the way into the back and slid behind the wheel, fitting his bulk in easily—but glanced over his shoulder into the back. “Not Rhode Island,” he said. “Not that time. The first weekend school started, I needed a little bit to find my stride. Clear my head. So I headed out to this place in Maine, this harbor city that kind of hid itself away beyond this ridge of black mountains so no one even remembers it’s there. Silver Forge. Hard to get to, but real damned pretty.” He smiled slightly. “Never see the sunlight, during the day there. Just mist and clouds and storms, day in, day out. But at night...” He shook his head, dark hair skimming against his jaw as he fitted his keys into the ignition. “Nothing but bright silver moon and stars, turning the sea into this sheet of pewter.”

Rian watched him curiously, lingering on the warmth in Damon’s face; on the quiet, dreamlike way he spoke. “Sounds like somewhere you wouldn’t mind going back to.”

“Maybe,” Damon said softly. “Kind of feels like next time, though, I don’t want to go alone.”

Rian’s eyes widened. His heart springboarded down into his stomach, then up again.

But before he could say anything, Damon gave him a thoughtful sidelong look, paired with an easy smile. “Buckle up. Let’s go see what’s out at Hank’s Roadhouse.”

“O-oh. Right.”

Rian fumbled into his seatbelt, and settled in; Damon fastened his as well, before starting the engine and pulling out of the small, steeply angled parking lot along one side of the hill, easing the Jeep Cherokee onto the wide paved lane that wound down the deeply forested slope, beneath a cathedral archway of black branches and golden leaves.

Comfortable silence settled; Rian leaned his head against the window and just let it be. He wasn’t sure what had changed with Damon, something easing over the course of late-night texts and time to think...but he liked this. How settled and slow and soft it felt; how nice it was to just relax as the Jeep rumbled its way down the hill and into the town, without a single breath of tension or resentment between them.

Omen was a collection of small cozy houses in that time-worn gray that seemed to belong specifically to the Atlantic, accented with the last bright traces of whatever color they had been painted last. Even the businesses were just small shops set up in the same type of buildings, homes that had been given glass storefronts advertising fresh seafood, antiques, craft supplies, flower arrangements, groceries, secondhand clothing, the one tiny “mini-mall” that was more a collection of converted buildings with several shops linked together and a food court that was just two diners with a shared patio full of cozy seating arrangements. The biggest attraction in Omen was the theatre, and even that had only three big screens indoors and one massive drive-in canvas hanging from the back wall of the concrete building, and a marquee that advertised showings at least six months behind every new release in the country.

The kind of town where everyone knew everyone, Rian thought.

And where people like him ran away to be known by no one at all.

The only bar inside the town limits was a small, friendly pub that stopped serving liquor by ten p.m., and they drove past it on the way along the main road to the bridge that led over the Mystic. Barely half a mile over the river’s choppy, almost metallic gray expanse, a hard-packed, well-worn dirt lane led into the trees, deep tire ruts grooved into it; Damon’s Jeep bounced into the ruts as he turned onto the road, easing down the curves of it until the main road vanished behind scrub brush and clusters of tired-looking trees.

Rian pulled from his drifting half-thoughts, though, as on the next turn the trees opened up into a broad clearing; Hank’s Roadhouse was a grimy single-story brick building with a black gabled roof that looked more