What point was there in telling her when he couldn’t love her? And how would he ever explain?
So he held his tongue, and to his surprise, Holly did too. For the next half hour, they drove in weighty silence.
At some point, Holly took out her phone and recorded a long, rambling message about the countryside, spending a long time on its sounds, scents, and textures. All of it narrated in that smooth alto he loved. Was she writing a travelogue?
Then she made a few calls — long ones involving names, places, job opportunities…
“Do you work for an employment agency too?” he couldn’t help asking when she hung up.
She laughed. “No. I just do my best to give kids opportunities.”
“What kids?”
“The kids I work with. Inner-city kids, kids with disabilities. I sort of fell into setting them up with internships and mentors.”
Now he was really confused. “Mentors?”
She nodded. “You ever hear about paying your luck forward? I had Trevor and my parents to teach me and open doors, but lots of kids don’t have that. So I try to pay my luck forward. Like Deshawn — such a sweet girl. Total bookworm. She was on one of our backcountry trips for at-risk teens last year. Backpacking wasn’t really her thing, but she stuck it out. And you know why?”
She paused, and he waited for her to go on.
Holly’s voice dropped to an emotional hush. “She said her mom sticks it out through so much, so she could too.” Holly let the words hang in the air for a moment before going on. “That’s something we hear again and again from kids of single moms who work their butts off in minimum-wage jobs. Moms who are great role models, but who don’t have many connections. Not that I do, but I have a phone and a lot of friends, and they have friends. People who work the kind of jobs that can raise you up out of that kind of life.”
Lachlan stared. Maybe Holly had changed more than he’d given her credit for.
And, damn. She was just getting warmed up.
“After that trip, I made some calls and set Deshawn up with an internship at the publishing company my friend Louisa works for. She’s been there two summers now. Not only does Deshawn get out of the city for the summer, she has a vision for her future — and something relevant to put on her résumé. Louisa even found someone to help her with college applications and scholarships…”
He looked at Holly as she went on. Funny, Holly didn’t seem like the résumé type — or one to plan far ahead. But there she was, helping a young girl set a foundation for a better future.
And not just Deshawn. There was also a Jesse, a Keesha, a Cornell, and many others. Holly went on and on about each of them. All the phone calls, all the pleading to give each kid a chance, all the hiccups along the way — and best of all, the successes, large and small.
“Of course, it doesn’t work out for everyone. And it does take a lot of asking around. You know — friends, neighbors, friends of friends… Still, it makes a difference. It’s only a few kids, but they can end up helping others. That way, more people get a leg up. People who don’t start as lucky as me or you.”
Lachlan thought that one over. From what he gathered, Holly’s parents weren’t that well-off, and a family business like theirs demanded long, hard hours. But the way Holly talked suggested she was the luckiest girl on earth.
Maybe she is, his dragon whispered.
His thoughts strayed to his own parents, and he sighed. Holly was definitely lucky in that sense.
“Mungo,” he grumbled, nudging the dog away for the hundredth time. “What do you want?”
Holly chuckled. “He likes you.”
Lachlan reached up, intending to nudge Mungo away. But his fingers tangled in the dog’s wiry hair, and he found himself stroking it instead. Within minutes, he was picturing himself by the fireplace in Trevor’s study on a stormy evening, nursing a good whisky. Or doing the same by a bonfire in Wyoming, in view of the Rocky Mountains. He’d never been there, but he’d seen pictures.
Before he knew it, his dragon was soaring away on the idea, picturing him and Holly driving with the top down on a whole different continent. He pictured meeting her parents too — the way a man met his future in-laws. Maybe meeting some of the kids she was so fond of as well. He imagined sunsets, mountain vistas, and above all, Holly sharing it all with him, the way he yearned to share his favorite places in Scotland.
A full minute later, he was still petting away, more for his own benefit than the dog’s.
“Good boy, Mungo,” Holly murmured, petting the dog from the other side.
Their fingers brushed, and the flickering warmth inside Lachlan was fanned into huge, dancing flames. His soul ached. Why was it so hard to resist something he couldn’t have?
Their eyes met, and for a moment, he was teleported back to the split second before their first kiss, so many years ago. That sense of wonder, homecoming, and possibility. That fear, too — of the forbidden. Of the unknown. Of an orderly, if boring, life about to go wonderfully askew.
But something pulled Holly’s attention back to the road. Her eyes went wide, and she screamed. “Watch out!”
Lachlan’s stomach dropped as he looked forward — straight into the front grill of an oncoming truck. It strayed wide of the oncoming lane, hurtling at them at top speed.
Horns blared in his ears, drowning out Holly’s scream.
As Lachlan jerked the steering wheel left, his life flashed before his eyes. Worse, Holly’s life did. All that joy and energy, cruelly snuffed out. All the smiles she would never get to smile, all the laughter that would never buoy his day. All those lives she might never touch.
Not on my watch, his dragon roared.
He leaned left, nearly yanking the wheel off the steering column in one of those gut-wrenching, Your fate is out of your hands moments he loathed. All his calculations, all his plans — all for nothing. Even a quick-healing shifter had no chance in a head-on impact, and there was no time to take to the air and shift into dragon form.
Holly screamed, bracing her hands against the dashboard. Horns blared all around. Mungo yelped. In an ear-splitting explosion, the side mirror shattered against the truck’s grill. With a roar, the truck blasted past, just inches away. The Austin lurched as two wheels skidded off the road.
“No!” Holly rammed her hands against the dashboard.
“Brace yourself,” Lachlan grunted as they spun off the motorway.
They were clear of the truck, but a field of boulders loomed ahead, any of which would be just as effective at ending his life — or Holly’s.
“Hang on,” he grunted, steering into the spin as years of training kicked in.
The car rattled and bounced, then skidded to a stop just inches from a tractor-sized boulder. Still bracing his arms hard, Lachlan looked back, making sure the truck was gone. Then he closed his eyes and puffed out his cheeks.
“Whoa.” Holly twisted in her seat and touched his arm. “Are you okay?”
He took three slow breaths before nodding. Bloody hell, that had been close.
Without thinking, he put his hand over hers. As soon as he did, his pounding heart slowed a little bit. That edge-of-a-cliff adrenaline rush faded away, and his hands relaxed around the wheel. It was as if they hadn’t spun into a field but into a nirvana made just for him and his mate.