The car ticks as it cools. I lick my lips, and my mouth is so dry.

This is fine.

This is fine.

People sleep in their cars all the time, and this is still better than sleeping rough in that party barn or curling up on the school sports field. No one comes out here except Harry’s uncle, and he won’t see me tucked away behind these bushes.

The air is cool, drifting through my open window, and I can hear insects shivering in the long grass. It’s not so bad.

Tomorrow will be better.

I clip off my seat belt and roll my stiff neck. Six straight hours of driving is no joke, and I’d really freaking love to stretch my legs out in the fresh air; to lift my arms overhead and reach for the darkening sky; to feel my back pop and my muscles throb. But opening and slamming my car door will be loud, and I can’t risk it. Can’t have the sound drifting across these empty plains to Harry’s uncle.

Can’t risk being found. Not like this.

So: tomorrow will be better. I’ll come up with a plan, and I’ll find somewhere else to stay.

Or I’ll quit fooling myself, and leave Maple Creek behind me once and for all.

Two

Everett

It’s a sawdust day. Building hand-carved furniture is always gritty work, but some days I can get away with a damp cloth wiped over my face afterward, and other times I think I’ll never get the dust from my beard. Tonight, I finish up with an icy cold shower, the water stinging against my back, and scrub myself down with soap until my skin’s pink and raw beneath the body hair.

But I still feel like there’s a layer of grit on my skin when I rub down with a towel. I still need to swill my mouth with mouthwash, wincing at the film of sawdust clinging to my teeth.

No wonder I’m out here all alone. Who wants a man who tastes like wood shavings?

I roll my eyes at myself, shrugging on my flannel shirt and doing up the buttons over the hard slab of my belly. The bathroom is choked with peppermint-scented mist. Talk about self pity.

I like being alone—and it’s not like I’ve never had any offers to change that fact. I just never took ‘em. Never wanted anyone at all.

No one I could have, anyway.

Floorboards creak as I step out into the bedroom, stroking a hand over my damp beard. Everything around me is faded and well-worn, lit by the golden glow of my bedside lamp, the dark bedspread tucked neatly around the mattress. A paperback rests on the nightstand, and my watch lies already unfastened beside it. There’s a telltale strip of paler skin on my wrist.

No alarm clock. Out here, I rise with the sun and go to bed when my body tells me.