27. Levi

God, I missed driving.

Nothing makes me feel quite as free.

The wind whips through the open windows of the cab of the truck as Hunter whoops and throws her head back in delight. I can't help but grin as we cruise down the road. Her laugh is contagious.

I've only been behind the wheel a couple of times since I got rid of the walking boot last week.

The freedom to go where I want, when I want, with whomever I please is liberating.

I didn't have a car out in California, and even if I could have driven it, I wasn't keen on driving my dad's old pickup when I got back to South Chapel.

Dr. Ferguson's got a garage full of vehicles, though, and Greedy insisted I drive his Silverado 1500 as long as I'm staying with them.

Hunter has dubbed it the Beast, and rightfully so. She has to use the footrail to get in and out, and the cab is bigger and cushier than any truck I've ever driven.

The Beast has amazing pickup, too. Every little bit I give it is returned tenfold.

The tires grip the road as I take the turns on the familiar two-lane highway.

Some of my best memories were made on these back roads with Greedy, going to and from football practice.

I steal another glance at Hunter, grinning even wider as I take her in. Just looking at her takes away any lingering pain.

She's got the passenger seat reclined and her feet tucked under her as she watches the world whizz by out the window.

She's beautiful. Effortlessly so. That's nothing new, but there's a lightness to her today that I especially love. A lightness I've missed. She looks truly happy for the first time since I moved in.

She had a rough go of it last week while she finished her final exams.

Then she holed up in her room all weekend.

After she hadn't emerged for an entire day, I texted to make sure she was okay.

I even brought up food on Sunday night.

For reasons unknown, she made herself scarce, and I was genuinely worried about her.

She emerged on Tuesday and acted as if she hadn't completely disappeared.

According to Greedy, it happens sometimes. She'll hide away and go quiet for a few days. He didn't seem concerned, so I tried not to be either.

Maybe she needed the time to decompress after exams. I suppose that makes sense.

Even so, worry eats at me. I know what it feels like to be low. I've experienced those dips. What could she be hiding from or running from that would make her feel like she needs a reprieve from it all?

For now, I'm just hoping she'll open up about it eventually. Understand that she can tell me anything. There's nothing she could do or say that would change my perspective.

She's one of my very best friends, and she's gone to amazing lengths to make the last few months tolerable for me. Not only tolerable, but possible. Sometimes even downright enjoyable.

At the moment, I'm pretty pleased with myself. I got her out of the house today, even if we have no destination in mind. We're just out for a joy ride, but having her sitting shotgun, listening to one of our favorite country stations, fills me with a joy I'd almost forgotten exists.

Greedy always teased us. He doesn't care for country music.

I'm not sure it's Hunter's first choice either, but she knows the words to a lot of the songs.

Damn, it's hard to keep my eyes off her, and every time I glance her way, I can't help but smile.

Is there anything better than driving a big truck with a pretty girl in the passenger seat?

"You look good, Daisy," I tell her. She does, and I'm honored to be the one who gets to see her like this.

"Ya think so?" she retorts, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

"Yeah, I do."

Hunter's gorgeous. She knows it, even if she's humble about it. She's quite possibly the prettiest girl I've ever met.

Hell, she's prettier than most models and actresses after they've been airbrushed and altered by whatever they do to people out in Hollywood.

Thinking about California doesn't hurt the way it did all those weeks ago. It's strange, but I feel at home in North Carolina. After everything I've been through with my parents, I never expected to feel this way. Hell, I never expected to return.

I love this place.

I love this state.

I love the way the wind makes the hair peeking out from under my ball cap tickle my neck.

The way the air cools in the winter but never really gets cold.

The way the sun shines down like it's shining just for us.

I especially love that I'm a car ride away from the mountains or the ocean at any given time.

North Carolina's home.

Sometimes, it still hurts when I think about what I left behind. It took a while, but eventually I realized that the ache was for what could have been, not what actually was.

Trey hasn't reached out since a few days after surgery. It's how I expected things would go down. At least I had the physical pain of recovery plus rehab to distract me.

It wasn't hard to move on, because we hadn't gotten very far.

There was an attraction between us, sure, and a level of care, but Trey and I were really just getting to know each other.

It'd be foolish to call it anything close to love. Our relationship didn't have time to simmer or fizzle. It just… was.

It was, and now it's not. And that's okay.

A new song starts on the radio, one about spinning around on a dance floor.

"Oh, I love this song." Hunter perks up and clasps her hands at her chest. "Can I turn it up?"

"Be my guest." I readjust my grip on the steering wheel and settle back in my seat.

She turns the volume knob until the music is so loud I can't hear my own thoughts.

I brace myself. I know what's coming next.

Hunter belts out the lyrics at the top of her lungs. It takes all my energy to fight back a grimace and keep my expression neutral.

She's an awful singer. She's pitchy and loud, but that doesn't stop her from going for every note, her voice cracking half the time.

I swear I've never seen anything more beautiful than her sitting in this truck belting out a song she loves.

She must listen to more country than I thought.

I'm easing around a bend, compressing the brake, thinking I'll have to ask her if she's still a country music fan, when a twinge of pain shoots through my right quadricep.

Fuck.

Once I'm on a straightaway, I ease off the brake and flex my ankle to stretch it out. Dammit. That only makes it worse.

"Shit," I mutter, gritting my teeth as that twinge transforms into a full muscle spasm. With my hands gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles have gone white, I breathe through the pain.

"What's wrong?" Hunter asks, angling my way and turning down the radio.

A drop of sweat rolls down the center of my back as my upper thigh continues to seize. It's a white-hot, fiery pain. Each time it crests and I think it might be over, it builds all over again.

Out of all the moments… out of everything that could go wrong…

I glance over to find Hunter watching me, wide-eyed, with her lip caught between her teeth.

I want to erase the concern etched on her face. I want to rewind and take us back to ten seconds ago when she was laughing and singing, and we didn't have a care in the world.

Instead, all I can do is grit my teeth, hold the steering wheel tighter, and fight back tears as the pain ratchets up again.

"Charlie horse," I grunt out.

My right leg, my supposed good leg, is cramping so badly I can't even form full sentences.

We're on a straightaway now, coasting downhill.

Which is damn lucky, because there's no way I could hit the brake if I needed to.

The bend up ahead is going to be a problem. That curve will absolutely require us to slow down.

I know these roads like the back of my hand. So I have no doubt that it would be impossible to maneuver the truck around the next bend at our current speed.

My right leg hurts too fucking bad to be of any use.

My left leg is still healing and pretty numb.

There's a chance I can shift it over enough and put enough pressure on it with my hands to bring the truck to a stop.

The pain, though, might be too much to bear.

That only leaves one choice.

"Hunter," I say, keeping my tone level, "I'm gonna need you to get over here and help me stop the truck."