The Last Way Home by Liz Johnson

Author:Liz Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Romance;FIC042040;FIC027020;FIC027270
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2022-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

thirteen

Eli drummed his thumbs against the top of the steering wheel for the fourth time in ten minutes. Those minutes had never felt so long. Not even when his team was one goal ahead with ten minutes left in the game. The handful of times that had happened, even those seconds had ticked by faster than they did now with him sitting beside a very silent, very awkward Violet Donaghy.

They were ten minutes outside of Victoria with more than an hour left in their trip to Montague, and she’d said exactly nothing except when she’d handed him a few boxes of inventory to put in the back of Mama Potts’s small SUV. “They’re fragile.”

He’d said he would be careful and asked her how she was doing.

“Fine.” She’d said the same thing when he sat beside her in the church pew that morning. She had opened her mouth—presumably to ask him a question—then closed it.

He searched for another question for her. The problem was that every question he thought of led right down the road he’d promised not to pursue. Everything he wanted to know about her had an awful lot to do with her past. So he kept his mouth shut. Clearly this was how it was going to be.

He didn’t think she was angry. She was just silent. And fidgety. And apparently fascinated by the rolling green fields and round hay bales that lined the highway.

He cleared his throat. She didn’t even glance in his direction. He was tempted to stomp on the brakes to get her attention, but that would only manage to extend this silent torture.

After another ten minutes, he’d had enough. “Did I do something to offend you?”

She looked at him, her eyebrows dipping and meeting in the middle. “No. Why would you think that?”

“Well, you’ve been not looking at me like I have a giant zit growing out of my forehead.”

She blinked, and he missed the color of her eyes when they vanished for even a moment. But then her gaze settled on him in all of its vibrant glory, and he had to force himself to watch the road or else he’d put them right into the ditch.

She remained silent for several more seconds. Finally she volunteered four little words. “I was just thinking.” Her voice was raspy, shredded. Like any good fan’s after a big game.

He could work with this. “About what?”

“Things you probably don’t care about.”

Okay, he could not work with that. If he let her shut down, they would go back into silence, and he’d rather listen to nails on a chalkboard than silence for an hour. Because if there was nothing to listen to for an hour, then he was left to think on the things he’d so much rather forget.

“You might be surprised. Try me.”

She crossed and uncrossed her arms, then gave a firm nod. “All right. I was thinking about the game yesterday.”

“Was that your first hockey game?”

Her face twitched like he’d crossed a line into the verboten territory, but before he could backpedal, she said, “No.

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