My father calls out, “Quinn?” as I pass his study, and I pretend not to hear him. “Quinn, where do you think you’re going?”

He reaches the front yard as I’m backing my Jeep out of the driveway. In my rearview mirror, he looks even more pissed off when my tires skid in the melted snow before gripping the road. He has already ordered me to lock myself away. What else can he threaten me with? The brig?

I need to forget Carey. My house/prison disappears, but the desire to escape hangs in air with the frost puffing from my mouth. The heater takes forever to kick in, but when it does I am wrapped in a cocoon of warmth. I need to remember Carey.

Every thought I have wraps around Carey. Just like it has since I first fell for him.

*   *   *

Fifteen, mouth girded in a dental chastity belt, a black nest of hair even a rat wouldn’t sleep in, and gawky as hell—that’s how I looked the first time Carey Breen kissed me. Me, Sophie Topper Quinn. A goody-two-shoes NOBODY of epic proportions. Forehead stamped: LONER, LOSER, LEFT BEHIND.

I’d loved Carey forever. Even before his body lengthened into muscles that would fly him right out of Sweethaven and on to grander things. At fifteen, any backwoods idiot could see he was meant for more than this tiny town. A damned fool hero. That’s what some people called him when Carey stood up to that drunken bastard, Jim Winterburn, for beating the crap out of his little girl.

Everyone in the Sweethaven Café had seen Jim backhand Jamie, punishing her for her clumsiness when she tripped and fell into him. Jamie had grown faster than the other girls in my ninth-grade class, and she teetered around on her spindly limbs like she was walking around in her mom’s glittery, four-inch high heels. Every day was Roulette Day with Jim Winterburn. That day, the wheel stopped, the ball dropped into the Preteen Clumsiness slot, and Jamie’s cheek lit up from her father’s hand.

People say Carey was lucky to have walked away from that fight. Jamie’s dad had fifty pounds of muscle and a decade of pissed-off on a fifteen-year-old boy. Jim had fed on bitter hatred so long that the blood pulsing through his veins had hardened to petrified liquor. Hate for the government, hate for the war, hate for the town he’d returned home to, shy one arm and a chunk of his intestines.

“Jim never really came home from Desert Storm,” I overheard my father once say to one of his Marine buddies. I’d bet Jamie and her red, white, and blue body would have begged to differ.

Jim struck Jamie, but it was like he flicked a match on embers that glowed inside Carey. He called Jim a “yellow-bellied coward,” the worst insult you can toss at an ex-Marine, aside from calling him a traitor outright.

Twenty adults watched in shock as Jim tried to pound Carey into the diner’s cheap linoleum floor. My dad and the sheriff were among the first to jump in to put a stop to things. Blood had turned Carey’s brown hair black, and one of his eyes had already threatened to swell shut. He’d never raised a hand to defend himself, but a triumphant Carey laughed in Jim’s face as the police hauled him away.

Years later, Carey confessed he’d done it on purpose, letting Jim swing away. The Sweethaven townsfolk might not step into the middle of a domestic-violence situation, but they couldn’t ignore a public attack on him. That’s the kind of guy he was. He couldn’t stand seeing Jamie hurt, so he’d done what he had to. Nobody could take a hit like Carey.

Damned-fool hero Carey. SOMEBODY Carey.

So, a year later, when he caught me behind the gazebo at the town’s Fourth of July picnic and kissed me crazy, I thought it must have been on a bet, and punched him in the stomach. For crushing the sweet new feelings I had for him.

Of course, my scrawny fist didn’t have the impact I’d hoped. Carey just laughed and hugged me and whispered that he loved me and asked would I be his girl?

Would I be his girl? Stupid, lonely, ugly me be his girl?

He saw my disbelief like he saw everything else about me. To Carey, my guts had been sliced open and turned inside out so no secrets remained. His fingers trembled in mine, and he brushed his lips against my knotted fist. He knew my fear like it was his, as if the same monster lived and breathed in him.

“I won’t ever let you down,” he promised, his voice cracking a little.

And I believed him.

*   *   *

I don’t want to be alone, but I don’t really have anywhere to go.

Eventually, I end up at Bob’s Creperie. Sitting at Bob’s sounds better than driving and thinking in circles. At least the restaurant has coffee and a heater that doesn’t quit.

Despite their name, crepes aren’t on the menu at Bob’s, but every kind of pancake is. Banana pancakes, whole-grain pancakes, maple-bacon pancakes, whatever-you-want pancakes for the regulars like me.

Longing to go unnoticed, I slide into a booth toward the back, away from judgmental eyes. Denise Scarpelli, who sometimes used to play poker with my mom, comes over, unhurried now that the Saturday morning rush is over. Obviously she hasn’t heard about Carey yet because she doesn’t spit in my water before handing me the glass. Instead, she takes my order for pecan praline pancakes and walks away.

Nothing matches in Bob’s. It’s decorated with tag-sale tables and chairs of every style and size. The place reminds me of better times, when Carey, Blake, and I used to come here on weekends before Carey went off to basic. Blake and I haven’t bothered to keep up the tradition since Carey left. Too much water under that bridge.