My Not-Yet Mate and the Thirty-Day Trial novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Ridge

On Saturday, day eighteen, we stopped in town for diner takeout after the evening calls.

Main Street was busy with people leaving the feed store and the hardware store before closing.

I had my arms full of two paper sacks.

A woman whose calves I had vaccinated stepped off the curb and smiled at me.

"Evening, Luna," she said.

I kept walking.

A man outside the barber shop touched his hat.

"Luna Laney."

Two girls on a bench, maybe nineteen, went quiet and watched me pass.

"We saved you a pie at the Grange," a third voice called. "Whenever you want it, Luna."

Joss held the truck door for me and I got in and shut it hard enough to rattle the window.

He climbed in the driver's side and put his hands on the wheel.

"They mean it kindly," he said.

"I know what they mean."

"It's only a word."

"It is not only a word."

My voice came out sharp and cold and surprised me.

"It's a job. It's a chair at a table. It's a whole life, and every one of them has already decided I'm taking it."

He turned his head and looked at me.

He did not look angry.

He looked like a man who had touched a stove he thought was off.

"I never asked them to say it," he said quietly.

"Then tell them to stop."

"I can't tell eighty people what to call you."

"You're the Beta."

"I'm not the one who decides it for you."

I opened my mouth, and nothing in me was fair.

I shut it again, and my face burned.

He did not argue.

He started the truck, and he turned left at the light instead of right, toward the switchbacks.

"Where are we going?"

"Somewhere with a view," he said. "You said that once."

I almost laughed and almost cried.

He drove up Ridge Road in the last gold light with the diner sacks going cold on the seat between us.

At the overlook he did not park nose to the drop, like last time.

He backed the truck in until the tailgate faced the valley and cut the engine.

He got out, dropped the tailgate and climbed up into the bed.

He pulled a canvas tarp back off a heap of blankets, a sleeping bag and two pillows.

I stood by the wheel well, watching him.

"You packed this."

"Thursday," he said, not looking at me. "For when you were ready to be somewhere that wasn't a house or a barn."

That was the thing that undid me.

I climbed up over the tailgate and into the truck bed on my hands and knees.

I did not say I was sorry.

I took his face in both hands and kissed him, hard and wet, with the taste of the diner coffee still on my lip.

He made a low sound and kissed me back.

His hands settled on my waist and stayed.

"Don't be nice to me yet," I said into his mouth.

"I'm not being nice."

"You are. You packed pillows."

"I'm being practical."

"Then take my jacket off."

He took it off.

He unbuttoned my flannel and pulled that off too, and the cold air coiled around my arms.

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