The beer is ice cold and the grilled meat is delicious. “Hunted it myself,” Beau tells me.
The first fewsips of beer relax me, smooth over my sharp edges.
Beau asks me about the bar, and I tell him about Elinor. How she calls us The Jects.
“She sounds like fun,” he says.
“She is,” I agree. “She said this is a famous reject town. Guess that’s why my mom brought me here.”
Beau is looking at me with amusement. “Home for losers, misfits, and ne’er do wells.”
“Is that true?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I was just passing through for work.”
“You were looking for someone?”
“I received intelligence he might have blown through here.” He stretches his feet out in front of him, gazes at the darkening sky.
I study him while his attention is directed away from me. “I really screwed up your day, didn’t I?”
He jerks forward and lays his big hand on mine, his gaze intense. “No, honey. Not at all. Trust me, you were the best part of my day.”
A prickly kind of heat sweeps through me. “But don’t you need to find this guy?” I manage to say.
“Nope. If I don’t find him, someone else will. It’s no big deal.”
I frown, wondering if that’s true. Wondering what he gave up to help me.
I ask him all about his job. Sure sounds like fun tracking people down, hunting for obscure pieces of information. I can see it suits him well, this life on the road. He doesn’t seem like a guy to stay in a place for long, I think, and the thought tugs at me.
When we’re finished eating, I insist on clearing the plates away and washing up.
“Come out here,” Beau calls as I’m finishing.
There’s a ladder attached to the side of Bertha, and he’s waiting to hoist me up.
I clamber up, intrigued. He’s laid out some camping mats and a couple of blankets and pillows.
“I like to come up here in the evenings,” he says, throwing himself down carelessly.
I drop down beside him, wrap my arms around my knees, feeling a little awkward.
But when he reaches for me, I tumble into his embrace easily. He lays me down on the pillows and wraps the blankets around us.
I shiver against him in delight.
“Cold?” He pulls the blankets up beneath my chin.
“Not anymore,” I say. Hesitantly, I lift an arm and lay it across his chest. I’m shy to touch him like this. Despite everything we did this evening, we’re still strangers. But Beau lays his hand over mine and gives a sigh of contentment, and it just feels right. Like we fit together perfectly.
He’s so much bigger than me. So powerful and fierce, but I feel safe in his arms. I shuffle a little closer, Beau holds me more tightly, and I lay my head on his shoulder. Bliss. Pure bliss.
“Look up at the stars,” he growls in my ear.
They’re dazzling. It’s a perfect, clear night. No moon, no clouds. Just thousands and thousands of stars scattered across the sky. I feel like I can see deep into the galaxies.
He chuckles at my exclamations of awe, and his thumb chafes my palm. I feel him trace the hard calluses that sit at the base of each finger.