Page 3 of Bolt To Me
He took a long, thoughtful pull from his beer before answering. “Can’t say I have. But I’ve run from a few breakfasts after.”
That earned him a snort. A reluctant one, but real. “Charming.”
“Always.” The silence stretched, not awkward but heavy. The atmosphere was charged with something he couldn’t quite name. Cory watched her carefully now, the way her hands trembled just slightly around the glass, the way her eyes darted once toward the mirror behind the bar, like she didn’t recognize the woman in white staring back. Gone was the bossy little girl with scuffed knuckles. This was someone weathered and angry and fragile in places no one could see.
“You okay?” he asked, quieter now.
She didn’t answer at first. Just stared into the whiskey like it held answers she hadn’t earned. Finally, she spoke, voice low. “Not really. But I will be.”
And there it was, that flicker beneath the ruin. Steel under velvet. The kind of honesty that punched you square in the chest. Cory sat with it for a beat, then said, without thinking, “I can drive you home.”
Carli blinked, caught off guard. “What?”
“You probably shouldn’t be wandering around barefoot in a thousand-dollar dress with half the county ready to tweet about it.” He tossed back his beer and pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his tight Levi’s.
She looked at him, eyes narrowing like she was trying to see the catch hidden between his words. “Didn’t peg you for a gentleman.”
“I’m full of surprises.”
She studied him for a moment, weighing the offer like a woman who’d learned the hard way not to take kindness at face value. “You have ulterior motives?”
“Only one,” he said, sliding off the stool. “Getting you somewhere safe before your ex-fiancé‘s mama shows up with pitchforks and pearls.” He tossed a twenty on the bar andmotioned to Carli’s drinks. The bartender nodded and took the bill, squaring up both tabs without saying a word.
Carli let out a dry laugh, her first real one, jagged and unwilling. “Fine. But if you try anything, Hayes, I swear to God I’ll knee you so hard your future kids will feel it.”
He held out his arm with a smirk. “Fair enough.”
She took it, cool fingers curling around the crook of his elbow like it was no big thing, and together they walked toward the door. The bar was still staring. Half the town had probably seen them. But Carli didn’t look back, and neither did Cory.
Outside, the air was cooler than before, dusk creeping in at the edges of the sky. The thunderstorm was moving closer, but cicadas still whined from the trees, and the first stars blinked high above them.
They didn’t speak as they crossed the lot toward his truck, her dress dragging behind them like a broken promise. She moved slower now, as if the adrenaline had drained and left her hollow. He opened the door for her, and she climbed in, careful of the fabric, wincing when her foot hit the floorboard.
Cory rounded the truck and slid in behind the wheel, starting the engine with a soft rumble. Only then did Carli exhale, head leaning back against the seat. Her curls were wild and tangled, her eyeliner smeared into smoky shadows, and her lips were cracked where she’d bitten them. And she was still the most breathtaking thing he’d seen in years. Cory stole one last glance before shifting into gear and thought,Well, shit.
He hadn’t planned on Willow Creek being anything but a layover. But now? Now he wasn’t so sure.
Midnight Ride
Cory Hayes’s truck still smelled like cedarwood and sun-baked leather. It was clean and worn, a scent that didn’t belong to any cologne bottle but to the man himself. It lingered in the air like memory, subtle and masculine, the kind of smell that spoke of saddle oil, pine-soaked trails, and long days split between sleek boardrooms and dusty fence lines. The cab was dim except for the dashboard lights glowing faint green and the dull glint of moonlight filtering through the windshield. Carli sat in the passenger seat, still cocooned in her wedding dress, the full white skirt bunched awkwardly in her lap like a deflated balloon. One bare foot was propped on the dashboard, the other tucked beneath her as she stared out the window like she might vanish if she looked away from the road too long.
“This is surreal,” she muttered, brushing a loose curl out of her face as she caught sight of herself in the side mirror. Her tone was dry, like a pile of tinder wood waiting to start a fire. “I look like a rejected soap opera character. You know, the onewho got drunk and shot her groom before running off into the desert.”
“You look like a woman who just reclaimed her life,” Cory said, his voice low and easy as he turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life, steady and familiar beneath them, a comforting thrum that filled the quiet like a heartbeat.
Carli turned her head and gave him a look, her eyes still rimmed in fading mascara but sharp with skepticism. “You always this philosophical at night, or is it the whiskey talking?”
“Little of both although you were the one drinking whiskey,” he said with a sideways smirk, shifting into gear and guiding the truck onto the county road that stretched like a ribbon of dark silk through the fields. The tires hummed against the asphalt, steady as a lullaby. “Besides, I’ve always had a thing for runaway brides.”
She snorted and leaned her head back against the seat, exhaling hard enough to fog the glass. “Of course you have. You probably collect them.”
The corner of his mouth curled, but he didn’t reply. The night wrapped around them like velvet, thick and inky, the kind of Texas darkness that erased the horizon and blurred the world into shadow. Overhead, stars blinked through the thinning clouds, sharp and diamond-bright, scattered across the heavens like spilled sugar. The moon hung low and swollen, silvering the edges of the hills and turning the mesquite trees into lacework silhouettes. Lightning flashed off in the distance.
They drove in silence, the hum of the truck and the wind whispering against the windows the only soundtrack. Carli let herself sink into the seat, into the quiet, into the surreal truth of the day she’d just detonated. Her chest still ached with adrenaline, her lips chapped from wind and sun and nerves. Somewhere behind them lay a church full of gossiping guestsand a groom probably nursing a bruised ego, but ahead, just darkness, and the road.
“So,” Cory said, his fingers drumming a slow rhythm on the steering wheel, “you gonna tell me what made you bolt?”
Carli closed her eyes for a second, weighing the question. Her voice came out soft, worn down at the edges. “You want the PR-friendly version or the real one?”
