Page 58 of Caleb's Salvation
I laughed, grabbed our stuff and went out to greet Eve. I settled him in the kid seat in the back of the truck. Eve now kept two in this truck since, a lot of time, either she or Shelby hauled around both Zeke Jr. and Sam.
Today Eve was taking us to her place as there was a storm coming. One severe enough Zeke didn’t think the cabin would provide enough shelter. The temperatures were expected to drop to twenty degrees below freezing, which was too much for our potbelly stove to combat.
“Hey,” I said, settling myself in the passenger seat.
“You pack for a few days? Not sure how long this storm will last.”
I nodded. “Yep. We’re set. I appreciate you guys doing this. How did you know it was going to be this bad?”
“Zeke’s got ways of tracking the weather, don’t ask.”
I never did with Zeke. Or Eve, for that matter. Not since she’d admitted she sort of maimed people. But only the bad guys, of course. I thought about what my father might have to say about her, but then I pushed it aside. Whoever Eve was or whatever she and Zeke did, they were kind and thoughtful neighbors.
Good people who had given me everything when I needed it. I would never judge her for anything.
Besides, I decided most of what she’d said had to be made up. I mean, it’s not like she was actually some paid assassin who had come here to kill Zeke. That’d be ridiculous.
“So you going to tell me what the deal is?” Eve asked once we were on the main road to the home Zeke had built for her and Junior.
“Deal about what?”
“Uh, two nights ago, the engagement party. Cal plastered to your side.”
I shrugged uncomfortably. I hadn’t heard from Caleb since the party. Not since he’d run—again—from me. “I wouldn’t sayplastered,” I hedged.
“Ha,” Eve snorted. “I was there. I would sayplasteredand he wouldn’t let Sam go for a second.”
I turned to look at Sam and smiled at him so he would smile back at me. Also, to hopefully avoid Eve’s attention.
“I didn’t notice,” I said noncommittally. Although I knew I was a terrible liar.
Eve spared a glance at me. Then another.
“Holy shit, you two fucked!”
“Hush!” I said as if Sam might understand. It was bad enough I exposed him to the wordfuckwherever we went, but I didn’t want him putting that word in context with…well, fucking.
“You did!” she pressed. “How could you not tell us? Do Shelby and Kate know? Am I last the one? Is this because you’re a preacher’s daughter and, technically, I do bad things to bad people sometimes? Because that’s so not fair. I’m, like, your best mom friend.”
“No, you’re totally my best mom friend!” Which was insane, but true. While I adored both Shelby and Kate—Jenny, too, for that matter, though she was more distant—they didn’t understand what came along with motherhood like Eve and I did. The constant worry, the constant self-doubt that you were making the right decisions.
Heck, just the self-doubt of choosing to live in Hope’s Point with a young child. We were a plane ride away from a hospital. An hour’s drive from the medic at Dyson’s camp. Sam had been super sick, but it wasn’t like there had been a doctor on hand to make house calls.
There’d been Caleb instead.
“Nobody knows. I didn’t tell anyone.” Because Caleb didn’t want people to know, or I didn’t want my friends to know I was sleeping with a guy who didn’t want other people to know. Because it might look like I was being pathetic again. Desperate.
I wanted to believe I had come so far from that virginal waitress behind the dinner counter desperate to have someone else fulfill her dreams. But had I? Had I really?
“Well?” Eve asked basically encapsulating ten questions into one.
“I don’t know what to say. The sex was amazing, he doesn’t want people to know, and his favorite new thing is to run away from me like I’m a hideous monster.”
“He’s adjusting,” Eve said. “You have to be patient. His whole world has shifted underneath him and it’s just taking him some time to catch up with it. He’ll come around.”
I wasn’t sure. A man like Caleb was defined by his role as a leader. The person in charge. The one who had to make the hard decision. Responsible for everything and everyone around him. It was his nature.
I’d seen that in the stupid picture on his profile.
