Long Shot

Chapter 12

He wasn’t going to throw. There was no doubt about that. Yet he crouched in the back of his truck as the thing thundered under his boots, going where Jen was driving him. Because he’d lost the silly darts game? Partly. Because he didn’t want to let her go tonight? Most definitely.

The caber was tilted up and over his head, his fingers latched around it from underneath. Funny how the weight and length of a caber could differ from place to place, competition to competition, but the feel of the wood was so similar.

Jen kept her word and drove like an old lady on the way to church. She flicked on the brights as she pulled off Route 6 and headed down the long drive onto Hemmertex land. She crossed the empty parking lot on a diagonal, angling for the large lawn on the northeast side of the building. She killed the engine but kept the headlights blaring into the darkness.

He stood as she exited the cab, and he felt like a giant looking down at her upturned face.

“The athletics field is going to be just beyond that line of bushes. I need to know if it’s big enough.”

“Isn’t that Duncan’s job as AD?”

She grinned. “Duncan isn’t here.”

“We couldn’t do this tomorrow?”

“No time. Booked solid pretty much every minute of daylight from now until the games. I need you tonight, Dougall.”

There was something else in those words, something he’d been looking for, dying to hear. Just yesterday she would have looked away after having said something like that. Just yesterday she would have glossed over it, pretended she hadn’t inserted a hidden meaning. Ignored her own intentions, her own desires.

But right then, she seemed to remember very well how he’d kissed her.

“So.” She planted a hand on the back hatch. “Go on out there, throw the thing and tell me if I have enough room.”

She was damn sure she had enough room. In fact, he could pretty much bet that she’d already been out there with measuring tape and survey equipment and a GPS system to ensure the place was absolutely perfect. She was just playing with him, thinking she was lightening the mood, trying to get him to smile after all the sadness she’d seen inside Da’s house.

They’d had an incredible evening; every second, every laugh, every word nudged them close together. He wasn’t about to let the big giant elephant wedge itself between them. He’d talk her out of throwing. He’d distract her by what they both wanted.

Putting one hand on the side of the truck, he launched himself over, landing heavily on the cracked asphalt. Straightening, he saw her catch her breath. Saw the way her eyes had gone a bit glossy, a bit lost. Good. He felt pulled toward her from deep inside, as though the very essence of him, down to his molecules, was calling to her, and she was answering.

“Wow,” she whispered. Or maybe it was more like an exhale, with a curse unknowingly tagged on.

“What?”

She threw an exasperated hand at his chest. “No one should look as good as you do in a green plaid shirt. It’s a ridiculous thing to wear. I mean, really.”

Suddenly it was his most favorite shirt in the whole world. “I can’t throw, Jen.”

“Sure you can.” She reached over and flipped open the truck hatch. The caber, having been braced by the hatch, slid out.

“Jesus!” Leith lunged, caught the stick just before it hit the ground. “Watch the truck!”

“Sorry, sorry.” She helped him get it out and laid it on the grass just inside the yellow circle made by the headlights.

He moved to the back of the truck, forcing her to follow.

“You’re not actually thinking about welching on the bet, are you?”

He turned around, mid-eye-roll, to find her much, much closer than he expected. There was a soundless bang inside his mind and a virtual lurch of his heart as he looked down at her and found himself caught between two worlds.

The thing was, for the last ten years, all he’d had of her was the past. An eighteen-year-old Jen owned the images and memories that had remained in his mind, and they carried such mixed messages. Most good. Some sour.

He realized something profound. It felt better to be with her today than it had back then, because of the time spent apart. Because of who they’d become during those years. Because of who they were today.

“I’m not welching,” he said, suddenly finding it difficult to swallow. “I haven’t been—”

“Don’t even say you haven’t been working out.”

“I was going to say training, which is an entirely different thing. And I’m not warmed up at all.”

“So get warmed up.”

The invitation couldn’t have been more intentional, more sexy. Just looking at her mouth fed his brain some pretty wicked pictures—ones sprouted from memories of what she’d once felt like, and enhanced by a man’s experience and exposure. And ones from just a few days ago, when he’d teased himself with her lips. The things he wanted to do to her . . . the things he wanted her to do to him . . .

But.

This had all happened once before. He’d pursued her, caught her, and in the end she’d slipped free, run off. Only this time he was under no assumption that she would stay. After all, neither would he. So why did he still want more? He knew the dangers, the stakes, and yet he wanted to be more to her than someone reappearing out of the past. He wanted her to be more than that to him, but there was no way, in this universe, that that could happen.

Fuck it.

He grabbed her. Just shoved his hand around her waist, pulled her to him with a not-so-tender yank, and wrapped his other arm around her body, fingers splayed between her shoulder blades. He waited for her to protest, to push away, to say something that would contradict her earlier invitation, but then he felt the pressure of her arms around his neck, and it wasn’t gentle at all.

Despite the speed of the embrace, the clinging desperation of it all, the kiss happened slowly. It took forever to reach her mouth, and he savored every millisecond.

The other night against his back door, that hadn’t been a true kiss. This, this, was their first kiss.

He thought “first” kiss because it was, in fact, entirely new. A first kiss with this new woman he somehow knew so well. It was the strangest feeling in the world. And also the most wonderful, the most natural. All his other first kisses—yes, even with her that night outside the Stone—had been precursors to true emotion, driven solely by a teenager’s throbbing need. But this time, the emotions were already there. Already strong. His head felt light, spinning. His arms tightened on their own, needing no prodding from his brain. Tilting his head, he deepened the kiss.

Holy hell, her mouth. He couldn’t exactly recall her taste from all those years ago, but it didn’t matter because it was now all new. Jen. Here. Now. The taste on his tongue was exquisite—fine and sweet and rich. They were perfectly in tune, on the same beat, sharing the same need as the pressure and intensity of the kiss evolved into something almost painfully hard and teasingly soft.

In the back of his mind he was sure he’d kissed other women in the past ten years, positive that he’d slept with some of them, too, but the feel of Jen in his arms, in his mouth, erased all that. There were no others. He couldn’t recall a single moment in time when she wasn’t wrapped around him. Couldn’t remember a single one of those bad dates and relationships with unsuitable women.

Her fingers curled into his hair. She’d never been able to do that before, and it caused waves of sensation to ripple across his scalp. She gripped him like he was about to dissolve, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. He wasn’t going anywhere.

He was, however, losing it. Fast. The fact that she’d angled her body, turning him so his back hit the lowered hatch, and then essentially started to climb him, didn’t help. If there was anything he needed right now, it was control.

In a swift movement, their mouths never releasing, he flipped her so her back was the one against the truck. There was a moment’s pause, a simple stillness of her mouth that either spoke of shock or dislike, but he didn’t care. He sank down, knees bent, and nudged her legs apart so that he could fit himself against her body. As he expected, it was the perfect puzzle piece, the one you search for on that table of a thousand tiny others.

He thought he might have made some sort of sound, because he could feel his throat vibrate, but he couldn’t hear himself over the way her presence rang in his mind. And maybe he was moving, too, but his body seemed to be following the direction of his heart. Blood thumped in raging rhythms in his dick, and his movements were loose and uncontrolled.

Then she started to move. The slow undulations of her hips, perfectly angling the sweet warmth of her body against his hard-on, suddenly made him intensely aware of himself and his needs. As well as their past and lack of any future.

He wrenched his mouth away, desperate to breathe. Desperate to take hold of reality again. His forehead dropped to the curve of her neck, and he thought the whole world might shake with the force of his heartbeat. Her hands slid from his head, over his shoulders, to rest on his chest. Her cheek felt so warm against his ear.

“Jesus, Jen . . .”

He meant to take a break, to get a handle on himself, he really did. But there was hot, soft skin less than an inch from his lips. His tongue darted out, and it was just that little taste that got him going again. Pushing a hand into the hair that felt as smooth and dark and luxurious as it looked, he tilted her head to an angle he liked and gave himself the exquisite treat of her neck. At first she offered no resistance, and images of how else he could arrange her—on her back, on her knees, on her belly—flashed in smoky, sexy moving pictures behind his eyelids.

Then she pushed him off her, his mouth releasing, and his face was in her small hands. Her mouth was swollen, her eyes clear with wide-eyed wonder.

“I think I missed you,” she said. Then she gave a little shake of her head as if to clear it and even in the very dim light, he could tell she’d reddened. She hadn’t meant to say that; the admission had sneaked out under cover of desire, and he loved it.

“You think?” he teased. With a nudge of his chin, he indicated the big, open back of his pickup truck. “I want to see you up there.”

She glanced dubiously over her shoulder. “Are you forgetting the last time we tried to do it in the back of a truck? We woke up the whole town with the squeaking.”

He ran a loving hand over the taillight. “Aw, that was the old truck with the bad suspension and the rusty fender. This baby’s practically brand new. Made for me in every way.”

She rolled her eyes, but it was with a smile.

“Come on. Get on in.” Then, leaning over to brush her lips with words, he added, “Promise the only thing that’ll be making noise up there is you.”

The way she drew back no more than a centimeter, the way her breath gave a little hiccup, had him shaking with anticipation. If lust had an image, it was her face at that moment. Her body felt so warm and free, but there was still an underlying tension, issuing a challenge he was more than willing to take up. He wanted to explore her new curves with his eyes and mouth and hands. He was dying to know how his larger body would fit into hers.

Maybe it reeked of caveman, but there was something about being that much bigger than her. Something incredibly appealing about having such a delicate, gorgeous thing all to himself, to protect and take care of. Something undeniably humbling about having that small, lovely woman want to take him into her body.

Wrapping his hands around her waist, he lifted her up without any sort of warning, her perfect little ass dropping onto the hatch. She let out a little yelp of surprise, and there was no mistaking the glare in her eye over that one. She looked ready to hop down and then climb back up, just to say it had been on her terms. Fingers splayed over her thighs, he held her in place and smiled up at her.

At last she answered him with a kiss, and a long, lingering lick of her tongue. He groaned and she pulled back with a wicked twist to her lips, just as he was about to go in for something deeper and harder. Hands next to her butt, she scooted back, out of his reach. Looking at him with sparkling anticipation, her face framed between her bent and raised knees, the picture of her made him go completely brain-dead.

She moved farther back. “It’s hard up here.”

He chuckled. “Yep. It certainly is.”

“Walked right into that one.”

“You sure did. There’s a blanket in that metal box by the cab.”

Bad suggestion. Bad, bad suggestion. The second she rolled over onto her knees and started crawling for the silver corrugated box in which he kept some essential tools, his mouth started watering. Her ass swayed as she moved, calling to him. He hopped up, the truck lurching violently but, keeping him true to his word, with no awful squeaky protests.

Jen had one hand on the box and was ready to open it. He couldn’t help himself. He reached out and wrapped a hand around the front of her thigh, dragging her away from the box and closer to him.

“What are you doing?” she said as he pulled her back and turned her over. She was trying to look pissed off but wasn’t succeeding. “The blanket—”

“Fuck the blanket.”

After a pause filled with obvious consideration, she grinned up at him as he hovered over her body. She was spread out below him, her hair falling into the ridges of the truck bed. His truck bed.

She said, “But your knees—”

“I’ll live.”

He started to shake, could feel the little tremors shooting through his limbs. Something tickled his waist, and he looked down his body to see her fingers dipping under the drape of his shirt to curl around the waist of his jeans. He sucked in a breath, and then he didn’t know if she was pulling him down or if he’d covered her all on his own, but she was under him.

Finally. Again.

Then she was arching up, her tits rising to meet his chest in that tiny tank top. His hands found her hair again. They dug in, held on. Shifting one knee, then the other, inside hers, he slowly pushed her legs outward and settled in. For a moment he worried about his weight, so much more than hers, but then she did that little roll with her hips again, a wordless synonym for more.

He kissed and kissed her, never wanting to stop and purposely not thinking about when it would.

“Remember how good we were?” he murmured against her mouth. “I barely touched you and you came. God, I remember that.”

Ever since then, he’d been trying to figure out why no other woman had been like that for him. Because it was Jen? Or him and Jen together? Or youth mixed with new experiences and enthusiasm?

She released a little moan, then said mischievously, “As I recall, the same went for you.”

He had to laugh, pulling back a little to run his tongue over his bottom lip. “I’m not eighteen anymore. I can last longer.”

She raised a single eyebrow, something he’d never been able to do. “Care to test that out?”

He searched her bright face, saying “Oh my God,” under his breath. He wasn’t sure what the oath meant exactly. Disbelief? Pleasure? Awe? Then, louder, he said, “You first. Just like old times.”

She’d barely nodded when he pushed up her tank top and slid his hands around to unclasp her bra. Looking into her eyes, his palms grazed her ribs as they moved around to her front. When his fingers scraped at her nipples, she sucked in a breath. When he filled his hands with her breasts, all soft firmness, his lungs nearly shattered.

He pushed her breasts together, his mouth dragging through their deep crease, then he freed one and sucked her nipple, the little bit of hardness like candy on his tongue. Shifting to her side, he kept his mouth where it was and spread his hand over the smooth, tight skin of her belly, fingers teasing just under her jeans snap.

Heat everywhere, coursing through him, being fed into her. The whole night felt ready to explode.

He released her nipple and moved to her collarbone, just to see how it tasted. Underneath his hand, he sensed her quivering, felt her hips curling up in a silent beg.

“Can I touch you?” He dipped his hand lower.

“Yes,” she said, the S dragged out in a hiss.

Pop went the snap, zzzt went the zipper, and then his hand was down her pants, in the most secret part of her that was so wet he almost didn’t believe it. His composure fractured and he shuddered.

“Oh, God,” they said at exactly the same time.

Then he began to touch her, slowly first, in light circles. It was all coming back to him, how she’d once liked the slow tease and then the quick buildup to a really intense orgasm. Back then, he’d done this with an almost-crazed glee. It was better now, with this adult understanding of her body, this adult patience, this adult pleasure.

Back then, making her come with his hand—and pumping away inside her until he came, too—was all he’d known how to do. But that was back then.

Abruptly he stopped, rose up to his elbow and gazed down at her panting, flushed, and frustrated face.

“Why’d you stop?” she asked.

“I want to go down on you.”

A lovely little surprise shimmered across her face. “We’ve never done that.”

“No.” He smiled. “Too nervous before.”

“And now?”

“Nervous as fuck, but I want it so bad I can’t think straight.”

She looked around at his truck, then up at the stars. “It’s not how I really imagined it, how I’d planned it in my head.”

He ignored the fact that she’d done her share of fantasizing and replied with a grin, “Don’t care. It’s happening.” He wasn’t giving in to any of her little control issues right now.

The kiss he gave her was deliberately sweet. “There’s lots we haven’t done, Jen. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all new, from here on out.”

How long the “on out” part would last, he didn’t know. But he’d sure as hell enjoy each step of the journey. Slowly, feeling her stare weigh heavily on him, he moved back between her legs and kneeled. Sliding both hands under her ass, which she graciously lifted, he grabbed the back of her jeans and pulled them down. Her underwear came, too, and he was dimly aware that it was some kind of dark-colored G-string. Then her clothing didn’t matter, because her pants were trapped at her knees and she was bared to him, scraps of clothing dangling around her intensely gorgeous body.

He stared down at her, at the pink, damp flesh the teasing light showed him. He had to close his mouth because he could feel himself salivate. He’d seen her before, but never like this. Hands on either side of her hips, he came down, kissing first just below her belly button. She let out a sigh and then he heard her head hit the truck bed. He slowly kissed his way down, savoring her taste and scent.

A great burst of light filled the truck bed, then disappeared. Jen’s eyes were closed, her head tilted far back, but his were wide open, taking it all in. The headlights, approaching from the rear, swept a long, too-brilliant path over them, and he let out a snarl of frustration. This was not happening.

“Shit.” His forehead dropped to that amazing place between her hip bones.

“What?” Jen lifted her head. “Oh, God!”

Now it wasn’t just headlights hitting the truck, it was a bona fide spotlight, filling the whole area like noon sun. Jen bolted upright and scrambled backward on hands and knees, stopping only when her back hit the long metal box, making her wince.

Behind them, a car door opened and closed. Leith moved right in front of Jen, using his body to throw her nakedness in shadow. She frantically redid her bra and smoothed down her tank top, but it was still crooked, and a bit of lace peeked over the top. He reached out and tucked the lace back in. Leaning back, she yanked up her underwear and then her jeans, and he let out a gravelly sigh of pained regret to see her clothed again.

“Damn it, Olsen,” Leith growled over his shoulder. “Mind giving us some privacy so Jen here can get decent?”

Jen glared at him as she drew up her zipper, but the footsteps coming up behind them did stop. Good. Leith wouldn’t have to kick a cop’s ass.

“What?” Leith whispered to her. “Not like he didn’t know what we were doing anyway. He would’ve kept coming if I hadn’t said anything.”

Covered now, but still pretty disheveled, she came to her knees and peered around his body. With a great eye roll, she said, “We did not just get busted by the cops.”

Her hair was a messy drape covering one of her jeweled eyes, and Leith reached out and nudged it aside. “Yeah. I’m sorry to say that we did.”

“Don’t laugh.”

“Who’s laughing? Believe me, there’s nothing funny about being cockblocked by the sheriff.”

With Jen all put together, the two of them clambered off the truck, into the spotlight beaming off the top of the sheriff’s green-and-white car. Hands stuffed into her back jeans pockets, Jen directly faced Olsen without any outward embarrassment.

Sheriff Olsen looked more annoyed than pissed off, his chin nearly disappearing into the bulge of his neck. “Got a call about two people carrying a caber through town, and making an awful lot of noise doing it. So I went to the park and saw that that one was gone. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” He looked right at the caber lying in the truck’s headlights.

Leith scratched at his neck. “No?”

“We’re going to put it back,” Jen said.

Olsen sighed. “This is private property.”

Jen pushed forward. “Oh, I’m renting the land for the games. Technically it’s mine—well, Gleann’s—for the next two weeks.”

“I heard,” Olsen said. “I like the new location. Better than the old one. That barn blaze might’ve been a blessing in disguise.”

The sheriff was watching Jen intently, but Jen, to her credit, just rolled her eyes in the face of the not-so-subtle intimation that she’d had something to do with the fire.

“That’s why I brought Leith out here, Sheriff”—she patted Leith’s arm—“to help me figure out the new layout. To determine if the athletic field is big enough.”

Olsen pursed his lips and nodded dramatically. “Makes perfect sense. At midnight.”

“Actually,” Jen added, “Leith lost a bet. He’s supposed to throw for me.”

Olsen’s eyebrows shot into his forehead as he looked at Leith with renewed interest. He crossed his thick arms over his even thicker chest. They’d gone to school together, with Olsen three grades ahead. He’d always been on the portly side.

“That so?” the sheriff said. He shifted his weight back and forth. “Tell you what, Dougall. You throw that thing right now, show me you still got it, and I’ll let this theft and vandalism thing pass. And you’ve got to put it back in the park.”

Jen was staring at him with that lovely smeared mouth and big eyes, enjoying this way too much.

Tell you what, he wanted to tell Olsen. Why don’t I take the damn stick back to the park right now and I can pick up where I left off with Jen?

Leith glared at the sheriff. “You serious?”

Olsen clapped his hands once. “Absolutely.”

Leith turned his head to look at the caber. He could do this. Just one throw. It didn’t even have to be good. No one was around. No audience to impress. No competition. No personal records to reach for.

No Da.

“Going into next week without a police record would be really, really great.” Jen smiled.

Leith turned, heading over to the caber. As Olsen got back in his car and swung it around so its headlights and spotlight mixed with that coming from Leith’s truck, Leith dragged the caber farther into the field.

He stood next to it, staring at it for a moment before circling his arms and bending his torso, warming himself up, stretching. He cracked his neck. Then he went to the thicker end, picked it up, and walked forward, pushing it up so it balanced on the narrower tip. Years later and the motion came back to him easily. Too easily. He set the long, heavy weight against his shoulder, laced his fingers tight around the front of the wood, and glanced up.

Olsen stood to the side of his cruiser, his shape a thick shadow against the night. But Jen stood right in front of a headlight, her body outlined perfectly. He couldn’t see her face.

“You throwing or not, Dougall?” she called. Hearing his nickname, spoken in her voice, calmed him a bit.

He gave the two onlookers his back, swiveling around the stick so that when he picked up the thing, he could run in the opposite direction. On the grass before him stretched the long, long shadow of his own body, the great caber looking like it was shooting out of his shoulder, fading far in the distance.

Memories came back to him with a jolt. Good memories. Training with Duncan. The days in the sun. The good-natured ribbing between competitors, and sometimes back and forth with the audience. The applause and cheers. The tinny, echoing sound of the announcer’s voice reverberating across the field, calling each throw.

Fingers laced, he crouched a few inches, adjusted the caber’s weight against his body. Then he slid his hands down a good foot, repositioning.

Oh, man, he’d missed this. There was an energy to it, to lifting the heavy stuff and heaving it with all your power. It was cathartic in a strange way, to use everything you had to flip this great object far away from your body and up in the air. You could put anything you wanted into that huge thing. Any bad issues or arguments or frustrations. As long as you kept your focus. As long as you kept your form.

Another crouch, feet planted, thighs strong. The caber pressed harder against his shoulder in the increasingly difficult angle, its thick end thrust into the sky. He shimmied his hands even lower.

In that moment, he’d forgotten why he’d stopped competing, especially because he’d once loved it so much. The reasons were there, somewhere in the dimness just beyond the headlights, but he couldn’t see them. Couldn’t make them out.

He lowered himself into the deepest position, knees bent far, and let the caber fit nice and snug against his neck and shoulder. He inserted his fingers underneath the narrow end, the grass and dirt cool against his knuckles. He was ready. He would do this. All he had to do was straighten his legs, find his center and capture balance, take off on his run, then throw.

It’s been a while, boy. You can do it. You’ve always been able to do it.

Da’s brogue, wheeling down from heaven, caused Leith to sag and break form. The caber tilted and Leith caught it, brought it back.

Da wasn’t speaking to him. It was all in his head, Leith knew. Then Da’s low chuckle, skewed and endearing from where his lips had always been curled around that pipe, sailed over the field and twined around Leith’s body.

I’ve never left ye, his old man said.

Yes. You did. You were all I had, and you left.

At the very edge of Leith’s periphery, he could see Da scooting forward on the edge of that old aluminum lawn chair with the woven, green-striped seat. He could see the twinkle in Da’s eyes just under the brim of his gray cap, and the confident nod—the same nod he’d given Leith before every football game or track meet or Highland Games.

Quit your excuses and throw. Like I taught ye.

But the last time I did this, Leith thought, I lost. And then you were gone.

The following silence spurred him, making him realize he was imagining this whole exchange. He was stupid for holding on to the grief and loss for so long. With a great heave upward, his heels digging into the soil, his thighs powering to stand, he lifted the caber, the thick end straight up.

It’s all right, boy. You’ve got it. You’ve got it.

Leith didn’t have it.

The smell of the grass, the hollow memory of last time he’d thrown—after Da’s illness had shattered his concentration and Leith’d had the worst competitive day of his life—Da’s voice and image coming back to him after three years gone . . .

The caber wobbled in his grip. Fell forward. No running, no throwing. Just limped out of his hands to land with a thump on the lawn.

“Hey, what happened?” called Olsen.

Leith gathered himself, plastered on his perfected nonchalance and carefree grin, and turned around. He walked toward the vehicles with wrists held out in invisible handcuffs. “Arrest me if you want, Olsen. Don’t have it in me tonight.”

The sheriff took off his hat and ran a hand over that shiny head. “Looked like you had it to me. And I was looking forward to telling everyone tomorrow I saw you throw.”

“Mind if I leave the caber there and come back for it tomorrow, when I can strap it down properly?” At that last word, he threw a teasing look at Jen, who was gazing back at him in a very non-teasing way. He didn’t like that look. It was too inquisitive, but in a way that said she’d already figured out way too much. She had, after all, been in Da’s house.

Olsen blew out his cheeks. “I suppose.”

“Come on,” he told Jen. “I’ll take you home.”

On the short drive around the fairgrounds, he rolled down all the windows and let the breeze sweep through the truck cab. Jen didn’t say or ask anything. Neither did he. He wasn’t sure whose silence disturbed him more.

When he pulled into the driveway at 740 Maple, Da’s voice was still rattling around in his head. Jen inhaled as though preparing to say something Big and Important, but just ended up saying, “Good night.”

“Good night.” He risked a glance at her, but there was that knowing look again, and it made him feel naked and flayed. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he looked out the windshield at the garage.

“See you tomorrow?” The note of hope in her voice reminded him of how well they’d fit together earlier that night. It was too much to think about just then: the confusion of his feelings for her layered over Da.

“Yep. Sure.” He didn’t fool himself into thinking she’d bought it.

The next morning before sunrise, he went back to Hemmertex, roped down the caber to his truck, and brought it back to the park. Then he tossed a duffel stuffed with several days’ worth of clothes in the passenger seat, veered the truck out onto Route 6, and headed south to Connecticut, too many memories and emotions biting at his heels.