Caroline’s Diner was just like any of the others they’d stopped in over the last five days or so: red seats and white tables, jukebox in the corner, burgers on the menu. But this lunch didn’t feel anything like the same.
‘So, what are your favourite burger toppings?’ Cooper asked, already hidden behind the menu, and Dawn knew it was time to call him out.
‘Cooper. Stop.’
‘Stop what?’ His dark-brown eyes appeared over the top of the menu, trying too hard to look innocent.
Dawn sighed. ‘Look, if you’re regretting the kiss, or even last night... If you want to forget that it ever happened—’
‘No! I don’t. Really.’ Dropping the menu to the table, he reached out and placed his hand over hers. ‘Really, Dawn.’
‘Then what’s with the constant games of twenty questions, when none of the questions are anything either of us actually care about?’
Cooper pulled a face. ‘I guess I don’t... I don’t know how to do this.’ He gestured between them.
‘What, hold an actual conversation?’
‘About our feelings? Basically.’
She laughed. Of course he didn’t. The man didn’t have any friends.
‘I figured if I just kept talking, eventually I’d say the right things just by sheer probability theory.’ He shrugged. ‘Of course, there was the chance I’d say all the wrong ones first.’
‘Not wrong. Just irrelevant.’
‘Is it, though?’ Cooper tilted his head as he stared across the table at her. ‘I mean, we agreed we were friends. Friends know this stuff about each other, right?’
‘I suppose so,’ Dawn allowed. ‘But is friends what we’re still going for here?’ Because those kisses had said otherwise. As had her rather spicy dreams the night before. In fact she was almost certain she’d woken in the middle of the night to feel his arms wrapped around her before she’d drifted off again...
Cooper looked away. ‘Dawn, you’re still engaged to my brother. And I know he left you, but he had reasons, and I can’t get between the two of you until you sort things out.’
Of course. It all came back to Justin. How was he still screwing her over even after he’d jilted her?
‘Your brother left me at the altar,’ she pointed out. ‘Trust me when I tell you that even I, Miss Dry Run herself, has more self-respect than to chase after a man who has made it so abundantly clear he doesn’t want to marry me.’
Cooper raised his eyebrows at her and gestured to Claudia. ‘Then care to explain to me what the last five days have been about?’
She supposed he had a point. It did look rather a lot like they were chasing Justin across the country.
Dawn took a deep breath. ‘I’m not going to talk to Justin to win him back.’
‘Or to reclaim your passport or belongings, I assume, since he could have easily have arranged to courier them back to you by now.’
She winced as she remembered the lame excuses she’d made that first night. She should have known he’d see through them.
‘No. Although I do want them back.’ Dawn tried to find the right words to explain, and settled on the one Ruby had used that first night. ‘I’m not chasing Justin. I’m chasing closure.’
‘Closure?’
‘Yeah.’ He wasn’t getting it, she could see. ‘This time, I need to know why. I need to know what it is about me that isn’t good enough for anyone to want “forever” with me. I need to understand what I did wrong.’
‘What you did wrong?’ Cooper asked. ‘Sweetheart, you remember that he was the one who stood you up on your wedding day, right?’
Dawn sighed, searching for a way to make him understand. ‘When you found out that Rachel was cheating, did you ask her why?’
‘No.’ Cooper shifted in his seat as he said the word, looking uncomfortable.
‘Well, maybe you should have done. It might have helped you move on sooner if you understood her reasons.’ Although, to be honest, Dawn could only assume insanity. Had the woman even seen Cooper? Who the hell had she thought she was going to find who was better than Cooper Edwards madly in love with her?
‘Her reasons were that she was an untrustworthy, lying, cheating—’
‘Those aren’t her reasons,’ Dawn interrupted. ‘They’re your interpretations. Like me saying that Justin is a twisted, cruel man for jilting me.’
‘Dawn, I know my brother isn’t perfect, but he’s not cruel. Usually.’
‘I know,’ Dawn said simply. ‘And that’s why I need to see him. To understand what made him act that way.’
‘I suppose that makes sense,’ Cooper allowed. ‘But what happens next? When you have your closure?’
‘I move on.’ Just the thought of it made her smile. ‘I start the rest of my life. But first, I need to exorcise all my ghosts about every guy who ever left me and went off to find his true love. I need to let it all go.’
Cooper smirked. ‘In that case, you’re going to love our next stop. Come on. I’m driving.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
COOPER WASN’T ENTIRELY sure what he’d been expecting from a ghost town, but it hadn’t been this.
The highway petered out as they approached, the road becoming cracked and uneven. Grass grew between bits of tarmac, and he thought he could even see a strange wisp of steam rising from between one of the cracks.
Uneasy, he pulled Claudia over to the side of the road and cut the engine. He had a feeling the car wouldn’t enjoy exploring the town ahead.
‘It says on this website that there’s been a fire raging underground here for over fifty years,’ Dawn whispered, staring at the road ahead rather than the phone in her hand. ‘The fumes are toxic, so I guess we’d better not get too close to those cracks.’
Cooper reached for Claudia’s keys again. ‘Okay, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. We can just exorcise our ghosts the way normal people do—with alcohol and bad choices.’
But Dawn was already climbing out of the car. ‘No. I want to see it. I want to do this.’
Well. It wasn’t as though he could let her go alone, so...
Locking Claudia behind them, Cooper followed her along the road into what remained of the town of Centralia.
‘It used to be a mining community,’ Dawn told him as they walked. He smiled to himself. It might have been his idea to come here but, as usual, it was Dawn who’d read up on all the details and memorised them. ‘There were fifteen hundred people living here once.’
‘So what happened?’ He’d already read the website himself, but somehow it felt more real when Dawn told him the story.
‘They think the fire started in a rubbish dump over a coal seam,’ she said. ‘Firefighters tried to put it out, but the fire clung to the coal and went underground. It’s been burning u
p the earth under the town ever since, making everything unstable. Including Graffiti Highway.’
She gestured to the road in front of them, and Cooper saw instantly what she meant. The whole road was covered in street art spray-painted on the crumbling road, a riot of colours and designs.
‘Graffiti artists come from all over to paint here, even though they know it could collapse at any time.’ Dawn sounded bemused by the idea.
‘I guess some people like living on the edge. Taking chances.’ He couldn’t help but stare at her as he said it, though, instead of the road.
‘Do you?’ she asked, looking up to meet his gaze.
‘I never thought I did,’ he answered honestly. ‘But this week... A little risk-taking doesn’t seem like the worst thing in the world.’
Her smile told him she knew he wasn’t only talking about exploring a volatile ghost town.
Cooper reached for her hand as they wandered up the highway to a small graveyard—one of three in the town, according to Dawn’s research. Cooper let her words wash over him as she told him about the residents who wouldn’t leave, and how the town had been shut down in pieces. It was interesting, of course, but none of it seemed to matter as much as being there with her.
She wasn’t trying to win Justin back. She was ready to move on. She hadn’t told him she wasn’t still in love with Justin, of course, but it was a start. No, it was more than that. It was something he hadn’t felt in a long time. Hope.
Maybe all he’d take away from this road trip in the end was memories of the person he’d been. But maybe, just maybe, he could keep something more.
Dawn.
‘Are you ready to go back to the car?’ she asked as they looked out over the small graveyard. The eerie stillness of the place sent a shiver down his back but, even though every inch of him was itching to get away, he made himself stand there a moment longer.
‘That depends. Have you exorcised those ghosts?’ he asked.