You know I’ll always catch you, right?
Those were Jamie’s words, the ones he’d spoken to her the night of the reunion when she almost bit it on the sidewalk outside her apartment and again the next morning when he’d kept her from face-planting on the wooden stairs before brunch. She’d been so focused on not needing saving that she couldn’t see past her own stubbornness, the fear that made her unwilling to let him back in.
But holy fucking shit. She got it. Maybe they’d both crack wide open if he fell and she tried to catch him, but oh my God. She wanted to be the one to break his fall.
Damn it.
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.
Jamie was dating Liz, and she was on her way to Spencer, and now was not anywhere near the right time for—for—these feelings. Not halfway between Chicago and L.A. with him almost killing himself while spray-painting his version of the White Sox logo on a half-buried Cadillac. And certainly not ten years after her teenaged self went down this road only to have him slam on the brakes before they got past their first kiss.
Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. You don’t just fall for someone in a single moment of time. A millisecond doesn’t even qualify as a moment, does it?
This was not part of the plan.
Damn it, James Van Der Beek Kingston. What the hell are we supposed to do now?
Chapter Sixteen
Jamie had planned to drive one more hour through Amarillo and on to Adrian, Texas, the true midway point between Chicago and L.A. But they needed gas. And food. With Brynn sleeping the whole way from Tulsa he hadn’t stopped, not until Cadillac Ranch. Now the truck’s gas light was on, and his stomach was growling. He was pretty sure he heard Brynn’s stomach protest as well, but she was quiet in the passenger seat, which, for an awake Brynn, was on the strange side.
“How about we eat, find a gas station, and then get back on the road for one more hour? I have a reservation at a Holiday Inn just outside Adrian.”
Brynn didn’t answer at first, so he pulled into the first restaurant parking lot he saw, the Coyote Bluff Café. He didn’t need any convincing that this small white shack of a restaurant was the right place for him. The green frame of one window was painted with the word Burgers. The other said Beer. Jamie nudged her and said, “Food,” and Brynn snapped into focus from wherever it was she had been.
“Yeah,” she said absently. “Sounds good.”
Brynn squinted at the sign, then looked at him.
“Cash only,” she said, and Jamie groaned as his eyes found what hers had already seen, a sign on the door that confirmed her words.
He put the truck in park anyway and hopped out, slamming the door behind him. He paced a couple of times, muttering to himself as he threw his arms in the air. He would have found an ATM first if he knew burgers and beer could only be obtained with actual bills in his wallet.
His stomach growled again. This had to be a joke. Or maybe some new reality show that followed unsuspecting road-trippers who were out of cash to see if they could MacGyver their way to a free meal. On one of his paces back toward the truck, he saw Brynn had gotten out, too, so he made his way over to her side where she leaned against the passenger door.
“Any cash left from when we filled up in Tulsa?”
Jamie shook his head. “Not enough for both of us to eat.” He pulled a quarter out of his pocket. “Heads I eat. Tails you do.”
She narrowed her eyes, and this at least let him ease into a smile. Whatever had gotten under her skin at Cadillac Ranch seemed forgotten. He’d wanted to ask her about it, but she seemed so lost in thought when he hopped off the roof of the car that he was afraid to disturb her. It was like one of those days in late March when he’d bring her lunch so she could eat while working, always in the zone as it got close to filing Annie’s taxes for Two Stories. When she fixated on something, it was as if Brynn were in a parallel universe, existing on another plane. Physically, she was there. But mentally, she was unreachable. Somehow she would still be able to eat whatever he brought her, even if it involved chopsticks, but other than that, she was aware of one thing only—her spreadsheets and tax programs.
That’s what the ride to town had been like, though Jamie was pretty sure she wasn’t doing taxes in her head. She was back now, and that’s what mattered. He had someone to commiserate with him in his insatiable hunger that would not be filled at the Coyote Bluff Café.
He tossed the coin. “I’ll take heads.”