Page 6 of Soft Flannel Hank

The server’svoice cut through the tension. “Closing now,” she said with a yawn before walking back to the counter.

“Can I give you a ride?” Hank asked. She looked at his lips moving behind the fringe of his overgrown mustache. They looked full and soft, glistening from where he’d licked them moments before.

“I walked here. I’ll walk back,” Esther replied.

“It was probably light outside when you walked here.”

“Yeah, but I’m just staying at the Olympia Motel. It’s only a half mile or so away.”

“Let me give you a ride,” he said before hastily adding, “please.”

She raised an eyebrow and said, “I don’t even know you. Didn’t your mama ever tell you not to get in cars with strangers? Because mine did.”

“I’m a cop. Was a cop.” He coughed. “You can trust me.”

She barked a laugh. “Hank, honey, every man says he’s trustworthy, and then the majority of them aren’t. And the fact that you are or were a cop—I’m sure there’s a story there—but I’m sorry, it doesn’t mean shit. I’ll be fine.”

“Look,” he said, “You could ask any person in this town if I’m trustworthy, and they’d tell you that I am. Here,” he said, fishing his wallet out of his jeans and plopping his driver’s license on the table. “Take a picture of it and send it to someone. Anyone.”

She squinted at him, one eyebrow raised. “I’ll be fi—”

“Esther, either you let me drive you home, or I will drive right next to you while you walk. But either way, I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight unless I see your door close behind you. Please. There’s a lot of scary things that come out at night.”

“What if I’m one of them?” she said quietly, quirking an eyebrow.

He narrowed his eyes, taking her in. She wondered what he’d write about her in a police report if he were taking one down.Obstinate Caucasian woman refused escort from former officer of the law. Stubbornly walked back to her motel in the rain while said former officer tailed her, playing electronic dance music at top volume through the open windows to punish her for what is clearly a bad case of terrible judgment.

“Please, Esther?”

Hank Dove was trustworthy. She knew this with absolute certainty and had known it since she’d first laid eyes on him. Hank would throw himself into the line of fire before he let anything happen to her, a perfect stranger, let alone anyone he cared about.

But understanding his hero complex and indulging it were two completely different things.

“Esther, please. Please.” It was the secondpleasethat did her in, the hint of begging. The touch of desperation.

Taking pity on him, she nodded, gathering her backpack and standing, stretching her stiff muscles. He gestured for her to lead the way. The server turned off half the lights from the other side of the room. Esther wove through the maze of tables before pushing through the door and walking out into the damp cold.

A truck idled in the parking lot. She turned to look at him, her instincts about him at war with her hard-learned knowledge about men—that no man was safe until he proved he was.And even then.

Clearly sensing her apprehension, Hank said, “My daughter got me a remote starter last Christmas. I started it while you were packing up. No sense making you sit in a cold car if you don’t have to.”

She felt her body relax again. “That’s a thoughtful gift,” she said. Hank grunted before jogging ahead and opening the passenger side door.

“And they say chivalry’s dead,” she teased as she climbed in.

He looked like he wanted to say something, but didn’t. Instead, he closed her door and rounded the front of the truck. He didn’t say anything as he pulled out of the parking lot. Or as he pulled onto the dark road, the streetlight flickering overhead. The rain had stopped at some point. The radio was off. The only sounds were the slushing of the tires on the wet road and the heat blasting from the vents. She held her hands up in front of one.

His presence was larger than life in the small space. She could feel everything—his tension, his anger, his sadness, his brokenness, his determination, his confusion, and his loneliness, which was perhaps the largest presence of them all. And beneath them all, a delicate curling smoke trail leading like a path to a tiny, burning ember of lust. It was such a small feeling that Esther doubted Hank had even registered it, or if he had, he was repressing it with all his might, starving it of the oxygen it desired.

She looked at him. The green light of the dashboard dials cast his face in stark relief. His jaw clenched. His fists gripped the wheel. His shoulders bunched. A muscle ticked in his cheek. Beautiful in his restraint. She kept thinking of those shipwrecks as she looked at him, how the hull of him was strong and solid, albeit weather-beaten. How he could shine again with some care and tending.

As quickly as the ride began, it was over. He pulled into the parking lot of the Olympia Motel, an L-shaped building with the office at one end and ten rooms taking up the rest of the length.

“I’m the last one,” Esther said quietly. “Number ten.”

He pulled into the space right in front of her door and pushed the gear into park.

The car was warm, mist thick in the air around it. She noticed for the first time that the numbers on her motel door were crooked. Hank rubbed his hands up and down his denim-clad thighs. She opened her mouth to thank him for the ride when he said, “So, are you staying in town? Or passing through?” He hadn’t looked at her when he said it. He was staring at her door.