Page 23 of A Wolfe in the Woods

And there she was.

Sitting on the old garden bench, shoulders hunched, a bag of groceries at her feet. Her body language said everything her partially hidden face didn’t—like whatever storm she’d been holding back had finally passed but had left her hollow in its wake.

I pulled over slowly.

Leaving the engine running as I stepped out, I shut the door softly behind me. I didn’t say anything right away but just stoodfor a moment, taking her in. This strange mess of a woman who had been thrown at me.

The soft light from the porch caught her hair, turned it to bronze. Her face was turned away, but the tension in her frame told me she knew I was there.

“I’ve been looking for you,” I said quietly.

She didn’t look up at first. But when she did, her eyes were still a little glassy, her face and cheeks rosy red. It was obvious she’d been crying. And for a while. I rubbed at my chest with the realization when I felt a dull ache.

“How did you find me?” she asked, voice hushed, somewhat embarrassed.

“May has a talent for these things.”

A long pause. Then she asked, “Are you here to be rude to me again?”

I gave a slow breath through my nose. “No.”

“I don’t understand why you’d come back for me. You said you’d leave if I wasn’t at the pickup point…”

This made me feel worse. And, strangely, for the first time, I started to wonder if I had gauged the situation completely wrong with this poor girl. I mean, I didn’treallyknow her, and yet I was judging her entire character from one slice of her life. I knew how that felt. It had been done to me a lot in the past—in my career and life.

“I’m here now.” I let that sit for a moment, then gently added, “The sun’s going down pretty quickly, and it’s best if we go back before the road gets too dark. It can be dangerous at night.”

She hesitated. I could see her deciding whether to argue, to dig in and stay just to be contrary. But she didn’t. Instead, she slowly stood, straightened out, and wiped her cheeks.

She went to grab her groceries at the same time I moved to pick them up, and our hands collided. Skin against skin, warmth catching between us, too fast and too soon.

Her breath hitched. I glanced up to apologize but stopped when I saw the color in her face. Red. Again. Not sadness this time. Embarrassment, maybe. Or something closer to surprise. I tried to pretend I hadn’t noticed…but she saw that I had.

For a moment, maybe longer, neither of us pulled away. There was something there as her flesh grazed mine, and heat bloomed under my skin, sharp and alive. My instincts flared—the wrong kind. The ones that didn’t care about reasons or boundaries or the past. The ones that prowled under my skin, ancient and feral, stirred by contact and proximity.

A spark. A flicker of static that passed between us in the smallest touch, as if the air had gone eerily still and was now searching for a reason to ignite.

She looked up then, and I caught the shift in her expression, soft and startled. Something I didn’t want to name. That unspoken thing that threaded between us now, quiet but undeniable.

I cleared my throat, took the bag gently from between us, and turned away before I could think too hard about it. This was thelastthing I needed. Not now. Not here. Not with her.

I loaded the bag into the truck without a word, then moved around and opened the passenger door for her.

She blinked like she wasn’t expecting the gesture. Given the way I’d been treating her since she’d arrived…I guess I hadn’t either.

She jumped up into the cab, and we didn’t speak when I climbed into the driver’s seat. But the air between us had changed. It was charged now.

This time she didn’t slam the door.

This time the silence wasn’t cold.

We pulled onto the road in that silence as I drove us out of Everwick and up the main highway toward Juniper Woods.

Finally, she offered, “That cottage…it belonged to my grandmother. I…I didn’t expect it to look like that. I guess someone’s been taking care of the garden. It’s strange…but then again, she was well-loved in the community.” A pause came. Then, she added, “It means a lot.”

I didn’t look at her, just kept my eyes on the road.

“It’s odd how time passes,” she continued, her voice wistful, her face turned toward the window. Night was falling fast. “How a single day can feel like a year or a year can feel like a single day. It’ll almost be a year since she died…but I feel like no time has passed at all. I feel like she should still bethere. In that cottage she loved so much. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t go in. Because…I didn’t want to find it empty.”