“For the family reunion? Maybe that’s how the Bigfoots show they’re successful? Whoever can steal the biggest light wins?”
I chuckled. “He’s never said anything about that kind of thing, and Myra’s looked through all the records. Stealing traffic signals—for any reason—isn’t in them.”
“Yeah, well, people can surprise you. The kinds of things they don’t want to talk about.”
I held my breath for a minute, then lowered my binoculars. “I… should apologize. For avoiding you and avoiding talking about our vacation.”
He rested his binoculars on the dashboard. “You’ve talked about it. I seem to recall a lot of ‘Later,’ and ‘I don’t like that one,’ and ‘It’s so busy this time of year.’”
I winced. “Yeah, that’s basically what I need to talk about. All my excuses.”
I rubbed my sweaty palms on my jeans and licked my lips. I wanted to get this right. I wanted him to know this wasn’t about us. Well, it was, but it wasn’t about me loving him, because that was solid. I was solid with that. Unshakable.
It was more about me trying to figure out how to let go of my responsibilities. Just for a few days.
“Hey.” Ryder’s hand landed on the back of my neck, sliding under my long ponytail and gently squeezing the tight muscles there and sending a trickle of heat down my spine. “I love you, you know that, right?” he asked.
I blew out a breath. “I know. I love you too.” It came out wooden, like I’d never said it before, like someone else was using my mouth without my consent.
I groaned. “This is not going how I wanted it to go.”
His hand stilled. After a heartbeat, two, his palm flexed again, kneading muscle. “Us?” he asked.
I twisted so quickly, his hand dislodged. “No! Not us. We—” I pointed between us, “—we’re good. We’re going where we want us to go. Right?” I asked, trying and failing to hold his steady gaze. “We’re still good?”
His fingertips were back, stroking across my neck, calloused from the build he’d just completed. He’d remodeled a little Tudor-style home that had suffered through a parade of owners who all thought bigger and more modern was better. They had ‘trend-chased the original design right off a cliff.’
He was an architect, yes, but here in Ordinary, hands-on builds were the bread and butter of his business. Plus, he couldn’t keep his mitts off a tool belt if he tried.
“We’re good,” he said soft and low, enough burr in his voice for me to feel it under my skin, warming me. “But you’re still not telling me where you want to go on vacation.”
This was it, my chance to tell him how I was really feeling. We were going to be married. I needed to be up front with how I felt and what I needed from him. Just like I expected him to be up front with me.
“I want to go on vacation tomorrow,” I said, as evenly as I could. “But I don’t know if I can.”
He drew his fingertips away. I immediately missed their warmth. “Okay.”
I waited for him to say more, for him to ask why. Instead, he just picked up his binoculars and trained them back on the store.
I was sitting right next to him. There couldn’t be more than a foot between us. The darkness of night—hastened by the storm, but always early at this time of year—closed us in. Gave us this intimate space.
And yet, I had never felt farther away from him. I hesitated, then picked up my binoculars and pointed them in Bigfoot’s general direction.
“So what’s our play?” Ryder asked.
“I think we need to sneak out in the middle of the night before anyone can find me and try to give me some new situation only I can handle.”
“With Bigfoot,” Ryder said. “What’s our play with Bigfoot? He’s checking out.”
I felt the blood rise to heat my cheeks and adjusted the binoculars. “Okay,” I said. “It just looks like groceries in his cart.”
“You expected something else?”
“Not really, but then again, I didn’t expect to be trailing Bigfoot with my fiancé in the middle of a storm.”
“It’s an exciting life you live, Delaney Reed.”
“Maybe… maybe too exciting,” I said quietly.
Instead of answering, his hand slid across the console to rest, warm and heavy, on my thigh.
“No. Exciting’s good. What do we do with our possible suspect, Chief?”
“I say we just go ask him if he stole the lights. Flip has a bit of a language barrier with English, but he is honest and tends to interpret things literally. So we should get a straight answer out of him.”
The wind shoveled rain across the parking lot. Huge, fat drops bounced off concrete like a million glass marbles.
We were going to have flooding for sure. The rivers couldn’t take this much rain all at one go this late into the rainy season. I made a mental checklist to be sure we had eyes on the main highway and people ready to respond to downed trees, mud slides, and flooded roads.
“You think he’ll tell you the truth?” Ryder asked.
I popped my hood up and latched the neck closure into place. “Let’s find out.”
Ryder had his hood up too. We got out and made quick work of intercepting Flip at his truck.
Bigfoot drove a beat-up Ford that blended right in with the cars in town. He’d parked under a tree where the streetlamp above threw more shadows than light. I scanned the open truck bed. Other than a toolbox bungeed down in the corner, it was empty.
Flip pushed the cart across the parking lot at speed, those long legs giving his lumbering gait a kind of grace one wouldn’t expect from a cryptid his size.
Somehow his hat stayed jammed on his head despite the wind, but his trench coat was absolutely soaked by the time he reached us.
“Oh, hello,” he said, his voice always a surprisingly soft singsong. As if he were more used to conversing with the sky or the wind or the small growing things below the trees than with people. With how reclusive he was, that was a pretty fair assessment.
“Hi, Flip,” I said. “Let me introduce you to Ryder Bailey.” I lined up my thoughts, wanting to get the order right for Flip: outward from the heart. “He is my love, my fiancé, a builder, and a reserve officer.”
“Hi there, Ryder,” Flip said.
“Nice to meet you,” Ryder said. I could hear the excitement in his voice. For all that Ryder liked to play it cool about the magic and supernaturals in town, he was still new enough to it to be surprised and delighted when he met a new supernatural.
And let’s face it, what person in the Pacific Northwest wouldn’t want to meet the real Bigfoot?
Or at least one of them.
“This is business,” I said, framing the conversation for Flip. My family had learned early on that details and, sometimes even subjects, got lost between Bigfoot’s language and English.
“Business, is this?” he asked.
I nodded. “Someone stole a traffic light. Red, yellow, green.” I held my hands so I could show him the approximate size of the thing. “Did you steal the traffic light?”
Flip frowned, which was a weird mashing of the spell-created human face, and his natural features which I could see beneath the spell.