Chapter 2 - The Drive Back
Daniel slid into the booth beside Emma, immediately reaching across the table to steal her cup of hot chocolate.
"Hey!" Emma swatted his arm. "Get your own."
"I just spent forty-five minutes navigating an epic multi-car pileup in short-term parking, Em," Daniel groaned, taking a deep gulp anyway. "I deserve hazard pay. Also, Ryan, your truck is parked in a loading zone, and a cop was eyeing your bumper when I ran past."
I checked my watch, grabbing Emma's suitcase handle. "Let's move before I get a seventy-five-dollar parking ticket."
We walked out into the chilly November downpour, our shoes splashing through the puddles of the terminal parking deck.
Daniel climbed into the back seat of my extended-cab pickup truck, immediately reclining across the bench with his phone held high. "Shotgun is yours, Em. I need to take a nap before Mom forces us to eat seventeen pounds of roast beef."
Emma gave me a wry look as I opened the passenger door for her.
She climbed in, pulling the heavy canvas jacket tighter around her frame as the heater vents began blowing warm, dry air into the cabin.
I put the truck in reverse, backed out of the space, and headed toward the highway exit.
The rhythmic thump of the windshield wipers was the only sound inside the cab for the first ten miles. In the rearview mirror, Daniel was already knocked out, his mouth slightly open, snoring softly against his folded jacket.
"He hasn't changed at all," Emma murmured, looking back over her shoulder.
"He's twenty-eight going on twelve," I agreed, keeping both hands on the wheel. "Still leaves his gym bag in my shop. Still borrows my impact driver and loses the batteries."
Emma smiled, a soft, genuine curve of her lips that made my chest tighten all over again.
"It’s good to hear," she said quietly. "In Chicago, everything moves so fast. People change jobs every six months, change apartments, change friend groups. Sometimes it feels like you're standing on an escalator that won't stop moving."
"You can always step off," I pointed out, glancing at her profile in the dash lights.
Emma turned her face toward the passenger window, watching the rain-slicked Ohio River bridges blur past in the dark.
"It's not that simple, Ryan."
"Why isn't it?"
She didn't answer for nearly two miles. When she finally spoke, her voice was strained, carrying a brittle fragility she had spent the evening hiding behind sarcasm.
"I broke up with Greg last week."
My hands tightened around the leather steering wheel until my knuckles popped.
Greg.
The senior architectural partner at her Chicago firm. The guy with the condo on Lake Shore Drive, the sailing club membership, and the toothy, polished smile in every holiday card her mother had proudly shown me over the last two years.
"I didn't know," I managed to say, keeping my tone perfectly neutral, hiding the sudden, violent surge of adrenaline coursing through my veins.
"Nobody knows," Emma whispered. "Not Mom. Not Dad. Definitely not Daniel."
"What happened?"
She let out a dry, bitter laugh that misted against the cold glass. "He asked me to move into his place. On paper, it made sense. But when I stood in the middle of his living room, looking at his modern furniture and his perfect view... I realized that if I married him, I would spend the rest of my life feeling like an unpaid decorator in someone else's museum."
May you like
She turned her eyes to mine, raw and completely unguarded.
"I didn't love him, Ryan. I never did."
