that.”
Then he reached out to turn on the rock station.
Ashton
A widow. She said widow. Holy shit. She was twenty-seven and she was a widow? That was tragic as fuck. This whole time I’d thought she was someone untouched by misfortune and now we shared something. We’d both lost someone close. It made us alike in a way. I wasn’t going to tell her that, but it was an unsaid thing. When you lost someone close to you, then you were in a club. A certain depressing club but a club nonetheless.
Millie was not the woman I had originally judged her to be.
I was in dangerous waters here. She was beautiful, she worked for me, and she’d just shared something deep. I could ask her more questions and it would bond us in a way I wasn’t ready for … or I could let it go.
“I’m … sorry to hear that.” I reached out and turned on the radio, switching it to the rock station for her.
I’d fucked a few girls since Jenna died, but I hadn’t told any of them about her or the accident. If they asked about the scar, I usually told them I was born with a heart defect. If they asked about Jenna’s picture, I just said it was my twin sister who lived across the country. We looked enough alike that they knew she wasn’t my girlfriend. I never let anyone in; it was safer that way and I intended to keep it like that.
We drove in companionable silence for a good thirty minutes when it started to get really hot inside the truck. We’d just passed Gaitlin, basically the boonies between Nashville and Lafayette.
“Where are we? I don’t see signs of life.” She rolled down her window as we sped through Bethpage, population 288. Panting, she tied up her hair into a ball on top of her head and hung her face out the window like a dog.
I chuckled. “Halfway there.”
It was green trees and rivers and farms for as far as the eye could see. The most peaceful drive in the country if you asked me.
I was about to make small talk when a bang shot out from somewhere under the hood of the truck and suddenly we jerked to a slow crawl. Smoke streamed out from beneath the hood and I let loose a torrent of cuss words. Better not be that dammed carburetor again. I let the car slowly careen off the road into a patch of wild grass and then lay my forehead on the wheel. This fucking car was a piece of shit, my bar was a piece of shit, my dad was a piece of shit, my life was—
“What was that?” Millie hedged, her voice full of nerves. It suddenly got twenty degrees hotter with no breeze coming through the open windows.
I pulled my head up and looked over at her. “That, sweetheart, was the sound of life shitting on me for the hundredth time this year.”
I cracked open the door and stepped out to pop the hood. Millie got out and stood behind me as gray acrid smoke flew from the open truck.
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
It looked and smelled expensive.
Millie pulled out her cellphone. “I’m calling a tow truck,” she informed me.
“Let me see if I can fix it first!” I pulled off my shirt, and used it as a rag to loosen the bolt on the filter. As I pulled the air filter off, my eyes fell to the giant metal piece of shit carburetor.
It was completely shot.
Millie peered over my shoulder, took one look at the broken smoking pile of metal and put the phone to her ear. “Hi, we need a tow truck.”
When I told her the mile marker number, she relayed it to the local tow company.
“An hour wait!” she told me with wide eyes.
I nodded. “That’ll do.”
“We’ll die!” She started to fan herself after hanging up.
I just grinned. “We’ll be fine. They don’t have heat in New York?”
She sighed. “Not like this on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere! You just jump into a bodega and cool off.”
“A what?” I frowned at her, confused.
She grinned. “You’re cute.”
My stomach clenched and my gaze hooded.
“I mean … what you said was cute—”
“No no.” I held up a finger. “You can’t take it back. You think I’m cute.”
She rolled her eyes and then crossed her arms. “Please tell me you have a secret ice chest or something hiding in the back of