Page 26 of Castaway Whirlwind
Cooke is wearing another frown when the ladies leave.
The breakroom is full by the time Gibson and I make it in there, everyone watching over my shoulder while I take a seat at one of the long white folding tables big enough to seat ten and pull up the surveillance footage. It doesn’t matter how good the video quality is—whoever damaged our vehicles mostly avoided the cameras. The few glimpses we do get show a tall figure dressed in a plaid button-down, dark blue jeans, brown cowboy boots, and a baseball cap with a big silver star in the middle pulled down low, so we can’t see their face.
At first glance, you’d think it was Davis—and maybe that’s the point. But the vandal was stupid enough to roll their long sleeves up their forearms, showing nothing but untouched skin instead of the tattoos Davis has slowly been adding.
“Bright enough not to show their face, but dumb enough not to roll down their sleeves to frame Davis. Exactly what I would expect from one of Steven’s friends,” Gibson says, which earns him a few chuckles from the staff in the room whodon’thave a damaged vehicle. Those who do don’t find it funny.
After sending Gibson a copy of the surveillance footage, dealing with filing the police reports, finally getting ahold of my insurance company, and having all the vehicles towed on several flatbeds to have new tires put on, it’s the wee hours of the morning. And even though I talked briefly with Layla when she called hours ago to let me know she was home and everything was ok, I still pay my employee, Timothy, to drive me into town and park outside Layla’s apartment complex so I can see for myself.
After ten minutes, Timothy shifts in his seat. “You good now?”
“Ten more minutes.”
When I ask for another fifteen minutes after that, Timothy grows visibly uncomfortable. “I get that you’re paying me to sit here, but this is starting to feel like some stalker type shit, and I don’t want nothing to do with that.”
“Alright.” Pushing the heels of my hands into my tired eyes, I direct him to the tire shop where our vandalized vehicles were towed. I sit on the stoop with my back to the glass front door, wanting to be the first inside when the shop opens, willing to pay extra to have my truck moved to the front of the line. Because, yes, I am a stalker, and I can’t do it nearly as well without my truck and everything I have stored inside it.
Chapter 8
Layla
It’s been months since I came across the video online that couldearnme life-changing money. It was painful dipping into my savings to invest in more professional cleaning supplies and ordering mockup business cards, not to mention the whollyunprofessionalclothes needed to perform the job…but I’ve been too nervous to go through with it.
Every time I see Russell—which is every single day, except when he’s visiting his son—he asks to hire me. Sometimes even multiple times a day. He’s like a dog with a bone, and I wish he’d never found that stupid business card. It’s hard to keep telling the man I’m falling in love withno.
I want to sayyes. Badly. Iwantto make him happy instead of testing his patience and consistently disappointing him. I alsoneedto because it feels like I’m stuck on a hamster wheel—no matter how far ahead I get, I always end up right back where I started with a new emergency. Namely, my car, which has been in and out of the shop more often than not.
What stops me is what Russell would think of me if I gave in. Of what my dad would think if he was still alive. Of how Russellmight treat me differently afterward, keeping his distance, or worse—want me back, but not for the right reason.
Of course, the moment I have that thought is when my car drops to one side as I’m taking a curve in the road, halfway to the diner at five in the morning. I slam on the brakes, metal grinding on asphalt, after one of my back tires speeds down the road ahead of me in my headlights.
I rub my eyes, then look again to make sure I’m not seeing things that aren’t real. The tire rolls into the treeline, bounces off a thick trunk with a bang, and finally topples over in the grass. I’m breathing hard, body shaking as I wonder how on earth this could have happened. A flat tire is one thing, but one coming off is a whole ‘nother, and the only way that could happen is if the lug nuts came loose…if someoneintentionallyloosened them.
I reach for my phone in my tote bag, which had flown forward into the footwell. Headlights blind me in the rearview mirror when I sit up. My driver’s side door is wrenched open, and I’m pulled out of the car into a man’s solid chest, his hand cupping the back of my head.
“Are you ok, darlin’?”
Russell. Somehow, I knew it would be him.
“Yes. Shaken up, but…I’m ok.”
“Scared me something awful, seeing your tire fly off like that.”
I push my arms up over his shoulders, hugging him extra tight as the reality of what just happened becomes overwhelming, imagining what would have happened if the tire had flown off while going seventy-five miles per hour on the interstate.
“Oh, darlin’…” Russell kisses my temple, then bends and scoops me up, carrying me to his truck, setting me in the front passenger side, where I have to rest my feet on top of a large blue cooler left in the footwell. “Do you have a spare tire?” When I shake my head, he says, “I’ll grab your things and call a tow truck.”
Russell locks the doors after closing mine, then goes to my car, returning with my tote bag. I roll down the window to accept it, then make the split decision to tell him about the cleaning supplies I have stored in my trunk since I don’t know how long it’ll be before I get my car back.
His jaw ticks, but he collects it all as well, everything still in its packaging, and stows them in the backseat. It still gets cold in the early spring mornings, and Russell grabs a blanket from the back that he shakes out over my lap once he climbs into the driver’s side.
I’m silent as I scroll through the video footage from my doorbell camera to see if anyone tampered with my car while Russell is on the phone. I come up with nothing.
Russell talks to the tow truck driver, Jovan, when he pulls up fifteen minutes later. I was hired by the tow company but politely let go within a month after accidentally putting a gargantuan dent in a customer’s front bumper. I cringe a little when Jovan waves to me through the windshield while my car is loaded onto his flatbed, then again when he drives off.
Russell drives me to the diner, and once he’s parked and turned the truck off, I stare off into the distance. Hoping I’m not making a mistake, I blurt, “Ok.” I turn to face him, his big body already turned toward me in his seat. “I’ll let you hire me.”
He nods, a slight grin softening his serious expression.
