Kristina Knight - Famous In A Small Town

There would also be no midnight walks along the lakeshore with that boy—man, now—who couldn’t help being practically perfect; it was simply his way. No whispered conversations through their bedroom windows on hot summer nights. No smell of Mama Hazel’s coffee cake on lazy Sunday mornings and no comforting hugs or encouraging words from the only father she had ever known.

No disappointed looks when the three people who had saved her so very long ago learned that she, once again, had made every possible wrong decision.

God, she wanted to turn left. Take the easy road. They wouldn’t really miss her. It might even be easier for them if she just kept driving out of their lives. Choosing to adopt her didn’t mean they had to be stuck with her screwed-up self for the rest of their lives.

The turn signal kept clicking. Savannah checked the rearview, but there were still no other vehicles on the narrow country road, and so she continued to weigh her options. This might be the last chance she had to make a right decision, and it needed to be right not only for her but also for the people around her.

She hadn’t had a choice about coming to Slippery Rock before, but it was her choice whether or not she returned now.

Maybe if she stopped running away from Savannah Walters she would finally stop mucking up this life she’d been given. Savannah clicked off the turn signal and rested her forehead against the steering wheel. Maybe it was time to stop being afraid of who she might have been, and time to start figuring out who she wanted to be now. She couldn’t do that by running away.

It was worth a shot.

Before she could talk herself out of it, Savannah turned right. She rolled the window down and caught the faint scent of new grass. Tall trees lined both sides of the road. Maybe oak; she’d never bothered to learn the names of trees or the grasses along the road, or the vegetables whose baby stems were just beginning to show through the pencil-straight rows of tilled soil. Naming everything from the crops to the trees seemed too personal. She’d been waiting for her new family to send her away, to decide they didn’t want her, either. Now she wished she’d paid at least a little attention to Bennett and Levi, her adoptive father and brother, while they’d talked at all those family dinners.

The city limits sign, with its welcome message from the local chapters of fraternal organizations, churches and veteran’s groups came into view just as the engine coughed once, twice, and the car rolled to a stop.

Savannah clicked the key to the off position and then back on. Pressed the gas a couple of times and tried again. Nothing. Not even the clicking sound of a dead battery. She glared at the illuminated red check-engine light that had been on since she’d bought the car with her tip money from the Slope, where she’d chosen to clean up and wait tables instead of take a scholarship at a nearby college. Because she convinced herself she wasn’t good enough for college. Of course, if she’d done the college thing, she’d have never tried the talent show and wouldn’t have had a song on country radio.

Wouldn’t be running from scandal now.

The blinking engine light she’d ignored for nearly four years mocked her. One more checkmark in the Savannah the Screwup column.

If she’d only turned left, the stupid car would have run without so much as a twinge, she was positive about that. Lord, sometimes doing the right thing just sucked.

Anyone else would arrive back in her hometown driving an Escalade and find a parade in her honor. Savannah had a broken-down Honda with more than two hundred thousand miles on it. And she’d have to call her parents just to make it into town.

She thunked her head against the steering wheel a few times, but that didn’t make the check-engine light flicker off or the car miraculously start back up. The last thing she wanted to do was to call her parents. Maybe some of that car talk—Bennett helped Levi build his first car from parts found at the local salvage yard—at the dinner table had sunk in by osmosis or something.

Heaving out a sigh, Savannah popped the hood of her car and then stepped onto the pavement. The light wind was brisk—she should have remembered early May in Missouri was touch-and-go weather-wise—so she grabbed her neon-yellow hoodie from the passenger seat and shoved her arms through the sleeves.

At the front of the car, she pulled on the cherry-red hood but it didn’t budge. She tugged on it again and then bent to see the hook still caught in the hood latch. She hit the hood, trying to jar the hook loose, but no matter what she did the hook remained safely in the latch. There must be a mechanism in there somewhere that released it. Savannah bent to look between the narrow spaces of the grille, but didn’t see anything that looked like it might release the latch.

Crap, crap, crap.

Turning, she crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the hood.

There were two options: walk the five or so miles to her childhood home or call the house so someone could come pick her up.

A responsible person would probably walk it, but Savannah had already done the responsible thing by not turning left and look where that had gotten her: stranded on the side of the road at six thirty in the evening. She sighed.

Call home. Like she’d done a hundred times in the past. Well, better now than in the middle of the night.

She grabbed her phone from her bag on the passenger seat and scrolled until she found the word home, clicked the button and stopped. The sound of an engine caught her ear. Maybe she wouldn’t have to make that call, after all.

A dusty, blue truck rolled to a stop behind the old Honda and a broad-shouldered man sat behind the wheel, looking at her for a long minute. Savannah stiffened under his scrutiny. It was unlikely she had ever spoken to whoever was behind the wheel. When she’d lived in Slippery Rock she’d only had a handful of friends, and most of them had hung out with her just hoping to get to her brother. She tilted her head to the side, still studying the big truck. Not a single one of them would be caught dead in a big farm truck like the one taking up space behind her little car.

Dread crept down her spine.

It was likely, however, that whoever was behind the wheel knew her brother. Or her father. For all she knew, he was now making the call she should’ve swallowed her pride to make as soon as the engine gave out, instead of pretending she knew anything about general car repair. Or maintenance. Her knowledge of the car began and ended with how to put gas in the tank.

Well, this wasn’t going to get better if she didn’t get the man out of the truck. Savannah swallowed and offered a halfhearted wave.

“Hey,” she began as the man opened the door of his truck and stepped down to the pavement.

Dusty boots to match the dusty truck, along with the frayed end of a pair of faded jeans appeared below the open door. Then he slammed it shut and the rest of him came into view.

Well-worn jeans covered a pair of nicely shaped legs. A red T-shirt with a grease stain near the hem hinted at a nice set of abs, and the tight sleeves highlighted a set of biceps that made her mouth go a little dry. Which was just silly. Savannah didn’t go for athletes.

She liked gangly guys who knew how to work their instruments, and not the double-entendre instrument. Their guitars or drums or, a couple of times, keyboards.

He started toward her and it was as if her body went on point. Savannah stood a little straighter, every muscle seemed to clench and a warm heat sizzled to life deep in her belly.

Apparently gangly musician wasn’t her only type.

Finally her gaze arrived at the man’s face and her mouth went from dry to Sahara. This wasn’t a stranger. And he wasn’t a friend.