Page 98 of Run Wild Omega

We leave the imaging center at five forty-five. The sun is already behind the mountains, and the parking lot is bathed in that blue-gray twilight that comes early in winter.

Tess is on her crutches, moving with more confidence than she did this morning—the new cast has made a noticeable difference. I walk beside her, my hands in my jacket pockets, maintaining a distance that is respectful and strategic and absolutely necessary because if I get any closer, I’ll be able to smell her again. And if I smell her again, I’m going to have a problem that can’t be solved in a hospital parking lot.

“Miles.”

“Yes?”

“Can we stop somewhere?”

I glance at her. “Where?”

“I don’t care. Anywhere. I just—” She pauses, adjusting her grip on the crutches. “I’ve been inside for two weeks. The café, the Lodge, my parents’ house. I need to be somewhere that isn’t one of those places. Even if it’s just for ten minutes.”

I consider this. The logical move is to drive her straight home. Daniel wants her minimizing public exposure until the registration is filed. The media is still lurking. The risk of being photographed is non-zero.

But she’s looking at me with an expression I’ve come to recognize—the one that means she’s about two minutes from either crying or throwing something, and the outcome depends entirely on whether someone gives her what she needs.

“There’s an ice cream place on Main Street,” I say. “Helen’s. They stay open until seven.”

Her face lights up in the kind of unguarded, uncomplicated joy that makes something behind my sternum shift in a way I can’t quantify.

“Ice cream,” she says, like I’ve offered her a trip to the moon.

“Is that acceptable?”

“That’s perfect.”

Helen’s is a narrow storefront with a hand-painted sign and a single case of homemade ice cream in flavors that rotate with the seasons. Tonight’s options include honey lavender, cinnamon maple pecan, and something called “mountain huckleberry avalanche.”

I let Tess order first. She picks the huckleberry without hesitation, then watches me with raised eyebrows.

“Salted caramel,” I say.

“Classic. You don’t want to try something a little fancy?”

“I’m a classic kind of man.”

We sit at a small table by the window. The shop is nearly empty—just us and an elderly couple in the corner sharing a sundae. The street outside is quiet, the snow-dusted sidewalks lit by the amber glow of the streetlamps.

Tess eats her ice cream with a focus and enthusiasm that I find inexplicably captivating. She’s not trying to be attractive about it—there’s a dab of purple on her lower lip, and she licks it away without thinking, and I have to look at my own ice cream very intently until the urge to trace that spot with my thumb passes.

“I needed this,” she says, gesturing at the shop with her spoon. “Not just the ice cream. This. Being out. Being normal.”

“You’ve been handling the confinement well.”

“I’ve been handling it. I wouldn’t say well.” She takes another bite. “Miles, can I ask you something?”

“Always.”

“When you’re at home—at night—what do you do?”

The question is innocent enough. But the way she asks it—casual, eyes on her ice cream—makes me suspect she already knows the answer, or at least suspects it.

“Read,” I say. “Run models. Shower.”

“In that order?”

“Not necessarily.”