Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
“What should I pack in a bag?” she asked.
Chapter 16
“You’re not seriously considering this, Delaney. You don’t even know that man—you’ve gone on a single date with him! He could be dangerous.”
Bexley’s last warnings to Delaney as she’d packed the warmer items of clothing Lucas had suggested she bring still rang in the back of her mind as the chopper held steady high above the Saint John River. Her cousin’s words didn’t linger because she thought Bexley made a fair point—her cousin knew Lucas even less than Delaney did, so who was she to suggest a man who showed up on their doorstep looking broken had any ill intentions?
No, it was the last thing Bexley said.
Her parting words.
“I’m calling Gracen.”
Yet another person in Delaney’s life who didn’t need to worry about the choices she made, but Bexley tossed the comment out like a threat. As if telling Gracen of Delaney’s unexpected—and perhaps, slightly foolish—plans would stop her at all.
It didn’t.
Here they were.
High in the sky.
Despite the cab of the helicopter being heated, the pilot, who introduced himself as only Millard, unpacked two heavy quilts with thick fleece lining for his passengers to use. Just behind the man who kept the helicopter safely traveling upriver, occasionally pointing out the many dams and small rural communities on the way through the headset comms each person wore, Delaney and Lucas sat strapped into seats with only a foot of space between them.
He saw her shiver once and doubled up his own quilt before adding it on top of the heavy weight of hers. Her argument for him to keep it, or even share, fell on deaf ears of the man who pretended like he couldn’t hear her over the chopper’s noise and the downward pressure making their voices an echo in the comms.
He could hear her, though.
She knew it.
Delaney had expected a bumpier ride, but other than the initial lift off that sent her stomach jumping into her throat, the first hour and a half had gone by smoothly. The view, and Lucas’ warm hand holding hers under the quilt resting against her jean-clad thigh, certainly gave her something else to focus on other than the scariness of a new experience.
Really, it wasn’t that scary at all.
Just … different.
Delaney started to recognize the shape of the forested mountains on the horizon, and the large bridge connecting one side of a familiar town to the other, before the man heading the chopper did. Her fingers tightened around Lucas’ when the chopper started to climb higher. Something it had done before during the flight.
He’d felt her squeeze; his gaze turned on her.
“You see that first range, the small one there,” Millard noted from the front as he lifted a hand to point out the lower mountain in question compared to the ones further behind. “That’s—”
“Montgomery Mountain,” Delaney said, her voice a crackle to her own ears in the comms.
Millard glanced back with a grin. “That it is, Miss Reed.”
She was more focused on the town they currently approached from up above. Not once had Delaney been able to make it this close to home without falling into some kind of panic-induced fit. She still felt the tension, of course, tightening her shoulders and vibrating through her body as her gaze instinctively searched the ground for the hole in the landscape of a town where she’d put so much of herself, her life, and love …
In the seat next to hers, she heard Lucas mutter, “Hey.”
Through the comms.
She kept looking down from the windows, searching for that blank spot in the canvas of her previous life. It took her far too long to finally pinpoint why she continued overlooking the place where their salon had once stood.
It had been turned into a parking lot, it seemed. For the lawyer’s office next door, apparently. The high snowbanks pushed against the far end of the lot and the handful of cars parked in various spots made it difficult to picture what the salon must have looked like from the sky back before it burnt to the ground.
Maybe it was the new perspective, being so high, but she found it easier to swallow the many changes—and familiar sights—of her beloved valley town. Cars crossed the bridge connecting the main streets as they always did. The thick sheet of ice blanketing the river had tracks from one side to the other where everything from skidoos to people used to make the trek.
Still tiny.
Sleepy.
Only a little had changed.
“Delaney?” Lucas asked. “Are you okay?”
He shouldn’t be asking her that. Not when his eyes were still a pool of sadness and pain that he had yet to explain. Yet, his stare leveled on her where they sat side by side in the back of the chopper, and she could only shrug.
“This is my hometown,” she explained.