A frigid clamp closed over her heart. Stupid, stupid boy.

Seated behind the wheel, he turned the truck around and drove toward town and I-35. When the bars appeared on her phone, he held up his. “I need to text my folks and let them know I’ll be late. Would you mind?”

As expected, his law-abiding refusal to text and drive put his phone in her hands. She accepted it and tapped on the call log. Last call was to his mom prior to the game. “Of course. Is it under—”

“Mom. Should be right—” He cut his eyes at her finger on the screen. “Yeah, that’s it. Just tell her I’m giving a friend a lift to Temple and I’ll be home by eleven-thirty.”

It was remarkable how unabashed he was about living with his parents. He didn’t know she knew the reasons. That they depended on him to work the struggling farm morning and night. That staying in his childhood bedroom saved them on-campus housing expenses despite some of the offset his scholarship awarded them.

He let her imagine whatever she wanted about a twenty-one-year-old checking in with Mom on a Friday night. His confidence wasn’t boy-like at all. It was admirably mature. And problematic. It would require breaking, likely through physical humiliation.

The pang from that thought hit her stomach, and she calmed it with the reminder that to succeed in an important aim, it was acceptable to do something bad. Or lots of somethings bad.

A discreet glance confirmed his eyes were on the road. As she typed out the text, she worked the cover off the back of the phone, let the battery drop between her legs—thank God it wasn’t an iPhone—and closed it up. The screen went black, the text unsent.

She placed it face down in the cup holder. “Sent.”

“Thanks. Do you need a number for a tow service?”

“I’ll call in the morning.”

His thumbs drummed on the steering wheel and stopped. “Name’s Josh. What’s yours?”

She always used her real name. No reason not to. “Liv.”

“Liv.” He pursed his lips. “L-I-V.”

“L-I-V.”

Shove it between DE and ERER, and she had a job title. Mr. E had a jolly cruel laugh about it when he promoted her to a deliverer by way of blackmail.

His face creased in a smile. “Do you believe in meaningful coincidence?”

Absolutely not. “Why?”

“I play football and my jersey number is fifty-four. Your name is L-I-V.”

What was his deal with the spelling? “And?”

He shrugged. “The Roman Numeral LIV is number fifty-four.”

Weird. Would she know these things if she’d had the freedom to earn her diploma or attend college? “I take it you believe coincidence is meaningful?”

“I think it’s plausible. There’s comfort in believing there are things in the universe that defy the odds, that something beyond common sense can pivot into place and fill an inner need.” He angled his head to glance at her, eyebrows bunching curiously, perhaps studying her face. He wouldn’t find anything meaningful there. He returned his attention to the road. “What do you think?”

The focus of conversation was expected for a boy pursuing a career in ministry. Still, she scrambled for an answer and settled on the truth. “Coincidence is nothing more than cause and effect. You jump. You fall.” He’d unwittingly jumped from his path and fallen onto someone else’s. What she had planned for him would challenge his notions of coincidence—and every other damned thing in his life.

Chapter 4

Josh sensed Liv’s huge brown eyes making furtive sweeps in his direction. Addictive eyes, the kind that tunneled through his outer shell and scrambled his mind until he forgot where he was going. There were moments in his life when he wanted to bypass the road chosen for him. He was staring at one now. The most attractive woman he’d ever seen. In his truck. Watching him.

The scar dividing her cheek flickered beneath a passing streetlight. It didn’t distract from her beauty, but it was a delicate emblem of her life, of whatever had happened to her. He burned with curiosity to know her story.

“Take 35 south. I’ll tell you where to go when we reach Temple.” She shifted her gaze to the speedometer. “Watch your speed.”

No please or thank you. Just a quiet authority that stroked his ears and urged him to test her limits. “How ’bout you just sit there, look pretty, and let me drive?”

“The cops are all over, shooting radar. I can’t afford more delays tonight.”

This girl seemed a lot less vulnerable than the one trembling on the road. Her voice was soft, musical even, but clipped at the edges as if repressing something beneath her scarred exterior, something beyond the hurt. Outside of her fleeting glances, there was a peculiar apathy in her stillness. Like a dormant animal, resting, waiting.

His discomfort swelled, feeding on all the unsaid things about her family. He merged onto the interstate. “Do you want to talk about your sister?”

“No.”

He scratched his stubble and grappled with her reserve. “It’s a good thing I came along when I did. I’m the only one who passes through there at this hour.”

The wind rustled against the windows as the truck gathered speed.

This was when a normal person would pick up the thread of friendly chitchat. Her silence challenged what he knew about girls and their self-involved monologues. He wasn’t usually a nervous talker, but seriously, her lack of conversation was growing more awkward and irritating by the second. “I live just down the road a piece from where I found you.”

She stared out the windshield, her fingers seemingly dead on her slender thighs. “Mm.”

Pity she didn’t want to talk. He had thirty minutes with this gorgeous girl, thirty minutes to speak openly, to be himself in the company of a stranger. “I’m majoring in religion at Baylor.”

A sigh whispered past her lips. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why the Jesus career?” Her lips rolled as if constraining judgment.

“I promise you, the reason is completely and wholeheartedly…absurd.”

She glanced at him. Not just a flick of her scrutinizing eyes. He’d won a full-on head turn. A tousle of chestnut curls clung to her face and spilled around her… Sweet Lord, he shouldn’t have been gawking, but her chest was very, very mature. He was certainly not immune to feminine attributes, but watching her mouth part, tipping up at the corners and stretching her scar, was hell on his focus. Confusion looked seductively X-rated on her.

A low-burning fire stirred in his groin, a sensation he’d never tried to sate with a girl. He could’ve blamed his abstinence on Christian principles and a demanding workload. Truth was, he derived pleasure from the exertion that hard work put on his mind and body. The girls hanging around his practices didn’t arouse him like the bruise of a tackle, the pains of farm labor, or the mental strain that accompanied religious stringency. He’d accepted his unconventional urges long ago and locked the darkest ones deep inside. If his parents knew the kind of thoughts he entertained, it would destroy them. His chest tightened.

He moved out of the passing lane and merged into an opening between two slower cars. He’d admitted to her the reason for his career choice was absurd. Might as well tell her why. “My folks tried to get pregnant for years. When they reached their mid-forties and found God, they prayed, made promises, and nine-months later…” He gave her a raised eyebrow.

“And you are…”

“Fulfilling their promise. They’d made a deal with God. If He gave them a child, they vowed to raise their miracle to be a servant of His church in Baptist ministry.”

She laughed, a sweet sound for such a glaring expression. “Absurd.”

“Told you.” And telling her seemed to dislodge it just a little from his chest. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in God. He just wasn’t fanatical like some of his classmates. Like his parents.