Just a Little (5-8) (13 page)

CHAPTER THREE

Saturday, April 06 | 7:30 a.m.

“What’s the word?” I asked, watching Luke end a call. He’d just hung up with Charlie, who’d called right in the middle of breakfast. Still seated on opposite sides of our diner booth, he tucked the prepaid phone back into his pocket.

“We’re staying put,” he said, but his expression didn’t give away much else.

I assumed “staying put” meant one thing: Charlie and all the fine men and women of the Oakland and West Bridge Police Departments had no reason to believe that Luke and I had been followed out of town. I could only guess that “staying put” meant we were far enough away, but close enough for comfort. I truly hoped that it meant that Charlie had zeroed in on (or at least had some kind of clue about) Conan Milton’s whereabouts.

“Did he say for how long?” I mindlessly stirred my orange juice with a straw.

“No, but my guess is a day or two,” Luke gave me more information in those nine words than he’d given me in the last fifteen hours. Since he’d given me a little insight, I figured that Charlie must’ve told Luke something sensitive about what was going on back in Oakland.

“Do they have any leads?”

“Nope,” he smacked his lips together, clearly indicating that his “nope” was a big, fat lie.

“So,” I looked around the diner. It reminded me of the diner back in Oakland, the one where I’d shared many meals with my friends and family. I already missed them, and I hated being so far from home. “What do you propose we do here?”

“Well,” he let his gaze fall out the window, “Piqua’s a small town, so you’re not going to find much to keep you busy. But if you’re interested,” he nodded to a large, framed map hanging on the diner wall, “there’s a town map. You’ll find just about all of your options there.”

I slid out of the booth and walked across the diner, leaving Luke to finish his breakfast in peace. I stopped at the opposite wall and stared at the map, letting my eyes wander from street to street. Somehow I wasn’t surprised that we’d ended up in the middle of nowhere;
of course,
Charlie would pick the smallest town within a thousand-mile radius of Oakland.

“We’re just a few miles out from some hiking trails,” Luke said, his breath just inches from the back of my neck. I hadn’t heard him come over, but he was suddenly leaning over my shoulder and pointing at a road on the edge of town. I didn’t want to think that he’d purposely tried to get under my skin, but just the warmth of his body behind mine sent a shiver fluxing through my body. “What do you think?”

“That Charlie doesn’t think being on the run is punishment enough,” I stammered. In that moment, I seriously considered the fact that Luke had no perception of personal boundaries. Given our circumstances, considering everything we’d been through, I couldn’t believe he stood there—barely an inch from touching me—so comfortably. “He couldn’t have sent us somewhere bigger, somewhere with a few more options?”

“Your uncle didn’t pick our location, Julie,” Luke kept his eyes fixed firmly on the map.

“He didn’t?”

“No. I did.”

“You?” I spun on my heel. As soon as I turned, I wished I hadn’t. We were suddenly standing nose-to-nose. Luke watched me with a furrowed brow, and then he settled his stare directly on mine. I tried to back away, but I had nowhere to go. Pressed against the wall, I looked to the ground and waited for Luke to step back. He wasted no time moving out of my way, so I brushed by him and headed straight for our booth.

“Where did we land on hiking?” he asked as if nothing about what had just happened seemed the least bit awkward to him.

I glared at him as we both settled back into our sides of the booth. “You’re seriously suggesting that I go hiking?”

“You saw the map,” he said. “Did you come up with any other ideas?”

“Yeah,” I nodded my head so hard it almost hurt, “anything but hiking.”

“It could be fun,” he used his napkin to wipe the (already clean) corners of his mouth, “and it’d help get your mind off of everything back home.” No sooner than he folded the napkin up and placed it on his empty plate, he yawned.

“You know what I think?” I kept my voice low. “I think we should leave this rinky dink town—God only knows why you thought this would be an appropriate destination, anyway—hit the highway, and set up shop at the first hotel we can find.”

“Damn,” Luke said quietly, and it sounded just a little bit sexy. “What is it with you trying to get me to a hotel, Little?” His lip twitched, and I could see that he was fighting to restrain a smirk. Somewhere beneath his restraint, I saw a tiny remnant of the Luke I’d once known and loved.

“I’m not trying to get you to a hotel.”

“It’s the second time you’ve brought it up in the last twelve hours,” he said shamelessly. “It’s an intriguing offer, don’t get me wrong, but it would be unprofessional; I’m on the job.”

“
If you would just shut up and let me finish
,” I said, not letting his little joke get to me the way I knew it easily could’ve, “I was going to say that we should find the nearest hotel for no other reason than to get you some rest. There’s no telling when Charlie’s going to call and have us back on the road. It’d be nice to know that when that moment
does
arrive, you’re well rested
and
able to tackle another long drive.”

He brushed it off as easily as I’d brought it up, picked up the check, and slid out of the booth.

“Luke—”

“Let’s roll,” he said, suddenly back to his old ways. He’d gone so quickly from being laid back to uptight, and I had no idea what had initiated his sudden change of demeanor. He made his way to the register at the front of the diner and stopped to make small talk with our waitress.

Letting go of a sigh, I followed him.

After paying the check from the envelope of cash Charlie had given him back at the house, Luke sent our fifty-something waitress a flirtatious wink. He turned out of the diner without another word, and I trailed slowly behind him and watched as he walked for the car.

“Hey,” I reached forward and took his wrist. He turned back and watched me for a second, and then his gaze fell on my grasp. “Sorry,” I dropped my hand and stood a little taller. Even after I’d let go of his arm, Luke still stared at his wrist as if my touch had lingered. “Can we strike a deal?”

“A deal?” he asked, finally pulling his brown eyes up from his arm.

“Yeah, I’ll go hiking if—”

“I promise to get some sleep?” He tried not to smile at my predictability. “Julie, I’m not tired.”

“That can’t be true,” I watched him lean back against the car and cross his arms at his chest. “I know for a fact that you worked first shift yesterday morning, which means you were up by four to get your morning run in. And then you went straight from patrol to picking me up, packing your bags, and driving through the night. That’s over twenty-four hours you’ve been up.”

“I’ve stayed up longer—”

“
Lucas James Reibeck
,” I scolded him in the way only a girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, I guess, could. “Quit being stubborn.”

“Don’t
Lucas James Reibeck
me,” he said, and his face twisted.

I rested my right hand on my popped hip and watched him with pursed lips.

“Let’s say I don’t agree to your proposition,” he shrugged a shoulder. “If I don’t get any sleep, and you don’t go hiking, then what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” I stood straighter and dropped my arms to my side. “You said
you
were the one who picked this town.” He nodded to confirm that I’d heard him correctly. “Obviously there was a reason.”

“Maybe,” he said, and that
maybe
sounded a lot more like
well, duh
.

“Then,” I tried to put my faith into the fact that my fate for the day rested in Luke’s hands, “surprise me.”

Saturday, April 06 | 9:00 a.m.

We drove about a mile out of town before Luke turned onto a shaded dirt road. The tree-lined street was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Back home, in both Oakland and West Bridge, we’d never had anything quite so simple. The little town of Piqua was tiny in size, rustic in charm, and as quaint as quaint could get.

I stared out the window the entire drive, rendered speechless by the simplicity of Piqua’s natural beauty. A small creek ran alongside the dirt road. The two bridges we crossed were wooden and covered, and the air smelled cleaner than I could ever remember it smelling. There was something about the small town that made life less stressful; it was calming.

Two miles down the road, Luke pulled off into a large turnabout. I looked around to get a better idea as to why he’d stopped, but nothing stood out to justify his pulling over. He parked the car next to a line of trees that ran along the small creek.

“The road gets too narrow up ahead,” he let himself out of the car without another word. He went around to the trunk, opened it, and began unloading the bags.

“Luke,” I said, now out of the car myself. I went around to the back as he slung his brown bag over his shoulder. “Whatcha doin’?”

“We’ll have to cover the rest on foot,” he nodded ahead at the stretch of dirt road. “It’s not even a mile; you’ll do fine.”

“One mile on foot?” I asked, trying to steal his gaze, but he wouldn’t let me. “Where exactly are we going?”

I watched as a semi-playful smirk crept up his lip. He almost looked happy, maybe even excited. If it was at all possible for a Reibeck man to look giddy, Luke did. Giddiness from Luke could only mean one thing—he was up to something.

“Why do I get the feeling that whatever is on the other end of this one-mile walk is going to leave me pitching a tent and setting up camp in the middle of the woods?”

“Pitching a tent?” Luke’s smile faded. He dropped his head and sighed. “Do you seriously think, given the circumstances, Julie, that I want you sleeping outside in the open woods?”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” I helped him unload the last suitcase. “It might be easier for you to just leave, let Milton hunt me down and kill me, and then you’d have one less problem on your hands.”

I half-expected Luke to fire a nasty remark back at me, but he didn’t. A simple smirk formed on his scarred lip.

“That’s one way to handle it, I suppose,” he said, not arguing for a second. “
Or
, we could just wait it out, let your uncle catch the evil son of a bitch, and then carry on with our lives.”

With that, Luke slammed the trunk down. With a bag over his shoulder and his suitcase in hand, Luke took off down the trail. I followed closely behind carrying my own luggage.

Luke hadn’t been lying when he said that the road was narrow up ahead. Slowly but surely, the road we’d once been driving on had turned into nothing more than a small walking path.

We walked along small hills and slight curves, weaved in and out of trees, and stumbled over rocks all along the way. It wasn’t until we were about a mile into the walk, just as Luke had predicted, that we reached a large clearing. I could only assume, based on the smile he bore as we stopped, that we’d reached our final destination.

The wooded area ended, and we stood at the edge of an old, abandoned piece of property. No larger than an acre in size, the grass spanned the area: green, lush, and incredibly overgrown. Placed almost strategically dead-center in the field was a small, two-story log cabin.

“You wanted a place to stay,” Luke said, his eyes running rapidly over the countless tufts of wildflowers. “How’s this look?”

I let my eyes trace all the features that Luke had been studying since we stopped at the edge of the path. Like the dirt road we’d taken to get there, I’d never seen anything like it.

“Where are we?”

He adjusted his bag and smiled up at the cabin, and for a moment I could’ve sworn I heard him whisper “home.”

As if we didn’t need any kind of indication from the other, we both started toward the house, our steps perfectly in-sync as we reached the front door.

Luke reached above the doorframe to retrieve a hidden key. I watched him with a creased brow, wondering how he’d known that the key—or the road, property, and cabin, for that matter—had been there.

He put the key into the lock, turned it once, and proceeded to push the rickety door forward.

He took the liberty of stepping into the house first, so I followed right behind him. He bent over to put his bags down next to the door, and then he turned back to take mine.

“Luke,” I threw a glance around the cabin. Only the living room and staircase were visible from the doorway, but I assumed there was more to the house just beyond my line of sight. Letting my eyes trail up the staircase and to the second-floor loft, my eyes stopped on the beautiful woodwork that made up the indoor balcony. The view overlooked the first floor living space, which was complete with a couch, rocking chair, and three shelves of old books. I had no doubt that the cabin was old, but from what I could see it was clean and well-maintained. I expected to see an inch of dust on every surface, broken windows, and shoddy floorboards, but the house was surprisingly well-kept. “Where did you say we were?”

“Well,” he looked around the dimly lit space. The only light came through the old curtains hanging on the windows. “For the time being, this is our safe house.”

“
This
is our safe house?” I asked, not disguising my disbelief for even a second. “With all due respect to the plan, this doesn’t feel safe in the least. We’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Exactly,” he said with one nod. “Only a few important people ever knew this place existed, and now they’re all gone. No one’s finding us out here.” He finally closed the door that we’d been standing in front of. “Now, make yourself at home, Little. We may be here a while.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Sunday, April 07 | 8:00 a.m.

Our first night in the cabin was a restless one.

After taking a few minutes to give me the grand tour of the house—a whopping two-minute walk-through—Luke proceeded to lay down the ground rules. I was ordered to sleep in the double bed in the upstairs loft. Since there were no windows or entrances to the second floor with the exception of the staircase, he seemed to believe I’d be safest there. His plan was to sleep on the sofa bed in the living room, if sleep became necessary, and otherwise stand guard on the first floor while I slept.

By nightfall, Luke hadn’t said much. We’d already left the cabin once earlier in the evening to find dinner, but he hadn’t even taken
that
opportunity to play nice. He simply kept to himself, and he seemed to be perfectly content in doing so.

We’d only been back at the cabin for a few hours after dinner, but each of us had gone our separate ways. Luke spent most of his time on the couch leafing through an old book he’d found tucked away on a shelf in the living room. He seemed intrigued by whatever it was, and that only made me more curious as to what it could be. I’d never known Luke to focus his attention on something for so long, especially if it wasn’t worth his time. Based on the way he kept his head low for hours, I knew it must’ve been something important. I watched him for a while, but the results of my efforts were inconclusive. I couldn’t quite tell what it said or what it was, only that it was a book, but I studied him from the second-story loft nonetheless.

Sometime after nine, I retreated to my bed at the far end of the second floor. I pulled the old sheets and quilt back, did a thorough check for bugs, snakes, or anything else that could eat me in my sleep, and finally climbed inside. I heard Luke come up the stairs four or five times over the next few hours, but he only seemed to stick around long enough to make sure I hadn’t gone missing.

Falling asleep hadn’t been easy, but when I finally managed to drift off, I slept like a rock. It wasn’t until the next morning that my eyes snapped open, and I realized that I’d made it through my first night in Luke’s so-called “safe house.”

I heard the faint sound of running water downstairs, and I rolled out of bed just after eight. I walked groggily across the floor, wiping the sleep from my still-tired eyes. My clothes were wrinkled and disheveled from a long night of sleep, and there was no doubt that my hair looked exactly the same.

Before I could take the first step on the staircase to retreat to the first floor, the running water trickled slower and eventually stopped. Only moments after the sound vanished, the bathroom door creaked open. I stopped walking once I reached the loft balcony and watched as Luke returned to the living room freshly showered, shirtless, and wearing nothing but a long towel on his hips.

He hadn’t seemed to notice that I was awake, or else he probably would’ve said something. He simply leaned over his suitcase and worked the zipper to open the lid. In all the time that he went through his belongings, he kept his head low and his eyes fixed on the task at hand. If Luke had any indication that I was watching him, he never once let on. He stood there sifting through his folded clothes—practically naked and unashamed—and there wasn’t a thing I could do to tear my eyes away from his still-wet body.

I’d experienced my first crush back in September when I met Luke at the Oakland PD. After weeks of working side-by-side and spending time together, I finally learned what it meant to truly love another person. But it wasn’t until that moment, watching him stand only feet away wearing nothing but a towel, that I finally understood the concept of lust. I found myself staring at him the way I’d seen so many of my female classmates stare at Matt. If my jaw could’ve hit the floor, no doubt it would’ve been resting contently on the cold, hard wood beneath my feet.

Still, I didn’t much care. I enjoyed watching him, so I kept on doing just that. I stared, guiltily putting my nose where it didn’t belong.

Luke wasn’t mine to stare at; he hadn’t been for a long time. Yet, something had me staring with overwhelming admiration.

If Luke’s face was anything to brag about—and yes, yes it most certainly was—then I didn’t even know where to begin to describe his body. True, it had never been a secret that his shoulders were broad and strong, but there was just something about seeing them uncovered that made my muscles a little too tense.

I pressed my lips together to restrain a childish giggle as my gaze trailed down his legs and to his feet; it was the first time I’d seen his little piggies completely unmasked, and it was the first time I’d gotten to see the cold, hard proof of his accident at the shooting range. Just as he’d told me, not that I had ever doubted it, his right foot was missing one very critical thing: a little toe.

I didn’t let my stare linger on his wound for too long; there were far too many curves that had yet to be explored. Though my eyes fought to stay glued to his perfectly sculpted abs, or even the towel as it slowly loosened itself with his subtle movements, my focus fell to his chest, and my heart jumped to my throat.

Suddenly,
crush
,
love
, and
lust
were out the window, and all I could feel was an overpowering sense of remorse.

There, as if I’d completely forgotten all about it, was a familiar reminder of the sacrifice Luke had made for me the night he took a bullet at the hands of Hannah Milton. The gunshot and surgical wounds had long since healed and were nothing more than giant scars against his perfectly tanned skin.

The sound of Luke clearing his throat brought me back to the moment. My eyes snapped up. I was fully prepared to meet his stare, but his head was still low, and he hadn’t noticed that I was staring.

I waited for a few long minutes until Luke returned to the bathroom with a change of clothes—admittedly a
little
disappointed that he’d sought privacy for the inevitable moment when he’d drop his towel—before I quietly took the stairs down to the first floor.

I moseyed into the kitchen and set off on a mission to find food. As I waited for Luke to return, I took the opportunity to open every cabinet, every drawer, and even search the pantry, but I came up completely empty-handed. I only found pots, pans, and utensils, but no food. It wasn’t until I stood staring into the empty refrigerator that Luke returned, fully dressed and back to his reserved self.

“Good morning,” he joined me in the kitchen. He watched as I looked from him to the empty refrigerator, and then back to him again. “Ah, you’re hungry.”

“Ding, ding, ding,” I said, not even expending the effort to smile sarcastically.

“We can head back into town as soon as you’re showered and dressed,” he said, unfazed by my sarcasm.

As soon as I could hightail it upstairs to retrieve my suitcase, I shot back down to the first floor and into the bathroom for a time-breaking shower. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve stayed in the shower until the water ran cold, but I was hungry, and nothing, not even a hot, relaxing shower, trumped the growling in the pit of my belly.

Just like he promised, we left the cabin as soon as I was ready. We walked the mile-long trail back to the car, drove quietly down the old dirt road, and ended up in the center of Piqua within an hour.

A quick stop at the local grocery store ended with Luke paying a rather hefty bill from Charlie’s cash envelope, and together we carried out more paper sacks than we could count. I hadn’t expected Luke to be involved in the shopping process, but he was surprisingly vocal about what we needed, what he thought was necessary to take back, and what (junk foods) he thought I could survive a few days without.

After a drive to the dirt siding and a long, arduous walk back through the woods with the groceries in hand, we reached the log cabin once again.

Luke and I each made something to eat after unloading the food from the countless bags and organizing it neatly in the cabinets and refrigerator. He hovered in his own corner of the kitchen, and I did much the same. When all was said and done, Luke settled for nothing more than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but I needed something more comforting. I needed pizza.

After a silent meal, the rest of the afternoon was uneventful. Luke mentioned something about taking a quick nap, but I couldn’t have gotten so lucky. He remained wide awake, fully alert, and in-tune to everything that was going on. That’s not to say that he really had much to keep an eye on; he hadn’t let me leave the cabin once since we’d gotten back. Where I stayed, he stayed.

There was a lot of peace and quiet, but that was only because there were no (good) books to read, no magazines to skim, and no television to watch. Despite the quiet and ungodly boredom, the only privacy I got came in two-minute increments when I’d excused myself to the bathroom just to bang my head on the wall out of pure frustration.

I waited for hours for Luke to suggest some kind of activity to pass the time, but he never did. Instead, he sat in the rocking chair with an unmarked book in hand and pretended to read. Now, I say
pretended
because, as long as he sat there, I never once saw him turn a page.

Whenever I wasn’t pacing the floor or smacking my head against the bathroom wall, I spent most of our cooped up hours face-down on my bed in the loft. The silence was almost unbearable, but at least it gave me an opportunity to consider everything that was going on back in Oakland.

I couldn’t count the times I’d thought of stealing Luke’s prepaid phone to sneak a call to Derek or Matt. But if I
did
find the nerve to actually steal his phone, Luke would murder me long before Conan Milton ever had the chance.

“Julie,” Luke said from the bottom of the stairs. I rolled off the bed and walked to the landing.

“Hmm?”

“Did your dad ever teach you to shoot a gun?”

Just the mere mention of my father made my heart skip. Not many people, my family included, had ever had the nerve to talk about my parents after their murders. Even when they had, it was usually something simple, and it was usually glossed over very quickly. So hearing such a simple question roll off Luke’s lips was enough to throw me off guard.

But it shouldn’t have been. Luke was one of the few people who’d ever willingly approached that topic without much caution. He’d tried to reason with me months ago about the importance of putting the past behind me; he’d even tried to talk to me about the first time I’d gone to my parents’ graves. Every time my parents were brought up, it was something immediately involving their passing. He’d never asked about our lives before they died.

“No,” I said, and I wasn’t sure he’d heard me. The word was so faint, but I could barely muster much else. The look on my face must’ve said it all because he nodded as if I’d given him all the answer he needed.

Still, his brows drew together, and he continued watching me with great intensity. He looked as if he couldn’t believe I’d gone my whole life without learning to shoot. To Luke, shooting was as much a survival instinct as breathing. To me, it was just another terrifying thing about his, Dad’s, and Charlie’s chosen lifestyle. I’d never been a fan of guns, but after everything that had happened in the last year and a half,
not being a fan
was a gross understatement.

“Do you think you might want to learn?” he asked, and I could tell he chose his words carefully. “Would you feel better protected if you knew how to—”

“A gun’s not going to protect me, Luke,” I said, and I wholeheartedly believed that. “Our house was full of them, and my parents still died.”

He sighed, and I almost felt him drumming up the energy to argue.

“I don’t need to learn to shoot,” I said with a definite sense of finality. “I have you, and…” I tried to keep talking. The last thing I wanted was to pause, but my words stopped, and the breath slowly drained from my lungs. “I’ve never felt safer. So, you can protect yourself however you need to, guns or no guns,” I said. “But I’m okay, really. As long as I have you.”

Luke stood stunned at the bottom of the staircase. He stared at me with parted lips, and then he nodded. I could easily see that he was ready to move past the conversation, and he had no idea what to say before walking away. The moment didn’t necessarily call for any kind of closure, so I turned on my heel and headed back to my bed without another word. I threw myself face-down in the pillow once again, but this time my mind didn’t run rampant with thoughts of Derek, Charlie, Bruno, Matt, or Kara.

All I could think about was Luke, and all I could do was wonder if he even realized what he’d just done.

Had it been a conscious decision, or just a simple accident?

I didn’t know; either way, he’d done it. I couldn’t simply turn a blind eye to that triumphant moment.

Though I knew he hated that I hadn’t jumped on the opportunity to learn, he didn’t push his luck. He never once said that I
needed
to learn to shoot. He didn’t even hint that I was wrong for feeling the way I felt.

He wanted something from me, but he respected that
I
didn’t want it.

He presented a situation. He asked me what I thought, and he asked me how I felt. When I didn’t give him the answer he wanted, he didn’t even try to make the decision for me.

For the first time since I’d met him, what
I
wanted mattered, and that was progress if I’d ever seen it.

Sunday, April 07 | 6:00 p.m.

After our conversation earlier, Luke hadn’t called up the stairs with any more questions. He never even inquired about my wellbeing when I didn’t come down for comfort food. I spent the better part of the day in bed thinking about all of the changes happening around me; I didn’t have much else to do, so I spent that time in deep thought. When that got boring, I went ahead and thought some more. And when thinking became too overwhelming, I simply stared at the ceiling and found faces and shapes in the woodwork.