Page 6 of Breaking His Exile

“Who are you?” Her voice came out rough, and she cleared her throat. “Why did you help me?”

He kept his eyes on the road and didn’t answer.

A man who wouldn’t say why he’d kill for you was one you should be afraid of…

So why the hell wasn’t she more afraid?

two

Stupid.

He’d been stupid, and now he was paying for it in switchbacks that came faster than the headlights could reach. Evander drove them too hard, too fast, the truck’s weight pitching through each turn.

He never should’ve gotten involved.

No doubt his truck description was already out there—white 1986 F-250, Montana plates. They’d have at least a partial plate number.

He’d broken every rule he had for himself. All for this woman beside him, who was shaking hard enough he could feel it vibrating through the bench seat.

What the fuck was he thinking?

He knew exactly what he’d been thinking. He’d been thinking about Greta Dougherty and her needling certainty that he was lonely. Greta—who’d appointed herself his best friend somewhere along the way—nagged him about his loneliness until he’d driven forty miles to a roadhouse to maybe get laid and prove her wrong.

So much for proving a point.

No doubt Greta would have something to say about this too, if he ever told her, which he wouldn’t.

Tilly shifted in the back, her head resting on the seat back, her breath warm on his neck. She’d held those two bikers without a command.

Such a good dog.

Better than he deserved.

“Why did you help me?” the woman asked again.

He kept his eyes on the road. The pines closed in on both sides, black trunks sliding past, the headlights carving a tunnel that ended six feet ahead and started again six feet later. He’d mapped these roads years ago. Knew every cut and every dead end.

The road steepened. Gravel gave way to dirt churned to mud and dried into ruts. The truck bucked through a washout, and her hand shot out to brace against the dash, knuckles white.

He needed her talking. Conscious people talked. Unconscious people were dead weight when you needed to run.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

She didn’t move.

“I just knifed a man for you. The least you can do is give me your name.”

She turned from the window. The dash light caught the edge of her face—blonde hair, the glint of a septum ring, shadows under her eyes deep enough to fall into. “Rainey Beckett.”

The name kicked behind his sternum. The air went out of him in a rush, and for a moment, the road in front of him wasn’t the road. It was a different road on a dark winter night, eight years ago, a winch line singing under tension. River’s voice—“you sure, man?”—and then the wet crack of the line snapping and the bright arterial spray of blood, and River on the floor with his hands pressed to his leg like he could hold it in⁠—

Fuck, no.

He killed the memory. Shut it down behind the wall he kept for things like this, locked the door, turned the key. The road came back. The pines. The ruts under the tires.

“Relation to River?” He tried to be casual about the question, but his voice sounded wrong to his own ear, all edges.

She swung around fast. “You know my brother?”