Page 107 of Small Town Hunter

“Where are we going for lunch?”

He looks at me quickly. “I was thinking my house.”

I hide my surprise. “Oh. Wonderful.”

“I know you’ve been itching to see it,” he teases.

“Me? No, not at all.”

Of course I’ve been dying to see Crash’s house. When I first came, he picked me up from the Rowanville airport and drove me straight to the Florin Hotel. The apartment I meant to sublease fell through so I had to look for a different one. Crash brought breakfast for me the next day but I was still perturbed he seemed reluctant to be alone with me. If I didn’t know better I’d say he wished I hadn’t come to Virginia at all.

His wife is long gone, the divorce granted in absentia since she never bothered showing up to court. So it wasn’t that. I thought maybe he lived in a house like the ones on that show Mamie and I are obsessed with.

“Is the reason you haven’t brought me to your house because you hoard things?” I ask him.

He laughs. “That’s not the reason I didn’t bring you to my house.”

“Okay.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d be staying in town,” he admits after a long pause. “I, uh, thought you’d change your mind.”

“Why would you think that? I’ve looked forward to coming here for months. I told you I could have bought my own ticket and paid for the apartment myself and—”

“Trina it’s not about the money,” he cuts me off. “I thought since you’ve been living it up in California, you’d have gone all L.A. You’d show up here with big sunglasses and a big purse with some little dog inside it, take one look at my house and, you know.”

“Crash, even if you lived in a trailer–”

“And I don’t.”

“Even if,” I press, “I wouldn’t care.”

“Alright,” he says, looking at me sideways. “Well, my place ain’t like your grandmother’s.”

“Good!”

He reaches across the gearshift as if to take my hand, then seems to think better of it, and I pretend I didn’t see. I fight with the hurt. After what we went through, the feelings we both had for each other, I hate just pretending it never happened.

But his life is complicated enough, and so is mine.

I should just live with that.

We drive down a tangle of roads, then cut a sharp left down a pitted path that has me bouncing in the seat. “This is the scenic route,” Crash calls over the sound of the road doing its best to tear his Ranger apart.

The mountain drops away to a stunning view of the valley and the river snaking through it. Crash halts, keeping his foot on the clutch and looking over at me to see my face. He’s grinning ear to ear. “Like it?”

“It’sbeautiful!”

“I know. Come on– we’re only halfway there.”

“Wait! I need to take a picture.” I jump out of the car and hurrying to the edge.

“They don’t have mountains in California?”

“Not like this.”Not any I want to remember.

I pull out my phone and snap a few shots. Crash turns off the vehicle and gets out. “Watch your step, darlin’.”

“I am,” I reply.

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