“I can’t promise that, Eli.”

“Why?” he asked, looking long-suffering now.

“Because if there are buttons, I may not be able to resist the urge to push them.”

“I’ll dump your ass on the roadside and leave you to hitchhike back to town.”

“No, you won’t,” she said, breezing past him. “You’re too nice.”

“I am not.”

“Sure you are,” she said, waiting by the passenger-side door of the car. “You’re so nice you’re letting me come on a ride-along.”

He opened his door and unlocked hers from that side, then got in without waiting for her. She opened the door and climbed in. There was a laptop mounted to the dash, and in the center console were all the buttons, radios and things she generally wanted to mess with, but didn’t, because the car wasn’t moving yet, and at this point he probably would still kick her out.

“That is not evidence of any particular niceness,” he said, starting the car and putting his drink in the cup holder.

“You don’t like it that I think you’re nice?”

“I don’t want you to get the wrong idea,” he said.

“You’re just annoyed because I have the right idea.”

He pulled the car away from the curb and onto the mostly vacant streets. It wasn’t quite lunchtime and it wasn’t peak tourist season, so the main street of Copper Ridge was quiet.

“So how did you sleep?” he asked. “Real answer this time.”

“Like a baby.”

“So you woke up every few hours crying?”

“Meh,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee.

“Or maybe just...wet and aching and wishing it was my hand between your legs instead of your own.”

She snorted, coffee spurting over the hole in the cup lid and down her chin. She lowered the cup and wiped at her face.

“What?” he asked. “Was that not a nice question?”

She was wet and throbbing now. And not just from the slight dribble of hot coffee on her chin.

“No, it was not nice. Or polite. Or gentlemanly.”

“I warned you. Good, sure. Nice, no. Also, not a gentleman.”

“I feel like I’m learning a lesson about still waters running deep. And a little dirtier than expected, to be honest.”

“Are you sad about that?”

She thought back to last night. To his much-better-than-average bedroom skills. “Uh, no. Can’t say that I am.”

“I thought you seemed to enjoy it.”

“Are we allowed to talk about this on a ride-along? Shouldn’t we be talking official sheriff’s department business?”

“We could. Do you have questions?”

“Funniest call you’ve ever gotten?”

“Concerning piglets who scattered in the elementary school.”

“Wow. That is...way to break small-town stereotypes, Copper Ridge.”

He laughed. “A student had brought them in for show-and-tell. And I happened to be there for a Say No to Drugs assembly. So when all hell broke loose I took the call over the radio. So I was the official first responder to the pig debacle.”

“Legend,” she said.

“Pretty much.”

“Did you always know you wanted to do this?”

“Sort of. I mean, at first I thought maybe I’d do state police. Or head up to Portland and work there. Do something in the city. But I always had my eye on law enforcement because I liked the idea that I could...make people follow the rules.” His voice halted a little on the last part.

“You wanted everyone to behave?” she asked.

He cleared his throat. “When I was a teenager I thought...I thought maybe if I were a cop I could make my mom come back. Make my dad quit drinking. It was power to me. Authority that I didn’t have. I mean, I got over the fantasy really quick, but the desire to be able to change things stayed with me.”

She clutched her coffee to her chest, her eyes on the thinning buildings and the increasing trees, the waves in the distance. Something about his words had made her feel raw. Like the admittance of his own childhood fantasies, of change and control, had scratched against hers.

Interesting how those two desires had put them on such different paths. She’d thrown up her hands and let it all go. Walked away and never looked back because when she’d realized that nothing in her family would change, she’d realized that she couldn’t stay. That she couldn’t even tempt herself to try.

And yet Eli had stayed. And he’d made changes here that were concrete. He’d done what he’d always dreamed, in many ways. Even though he still hadn’t saved his family. It made her feel like the flake she’d been accused of being more than once.

Especially next to this solid man who had dug his heels in and stayed, even when it was hard. Even when it seemed like there was no point.

But then, she had no brothers and sisters. She’d had no one to stay and fight for.

What about your friends? Alison?

But then they would have known. They would have known what had happened to her and the simple fact was, she hadn’t been able to take the humiliation.

She’d lost her spleen and her family, so it had seemed a bit much to also lose her pride by letting everyone know that her dad had beaten the shit out of her and her mother had sided with him.

No, thank you. Internal bleeding was enough.

Man, what a massively horrible train of thought that was. She was done with it in three, two...

“I think it’s amazing you did what you set out to do,” she said.