CHAPTER 10 #3
The fan slid under the feed-store loading gate and caught against the bottom rail.
The gate was closed for the night, a tall metal frame between the public square and the shadowed dock where feed sacks were unloaded before dawn.
Wren bent for the fan, then stood with it in her hand as the music behind them started up again, faster this time.
Here, the square became sound instead of spectacle. Fiddle, clapping, the caller's voice, laughter softened by the corner of the building. Oak leaves scraped along the alley pavement. The latch on the loading gate gleamed dull under one bulb.
Colt reached past Wren and tested the latch because habit touched everything before thought did. The metal was cool under his palm, solid and night-slick. Closed. Holding.
Wren watched his hand. "Checking gates at a dance."
"Gate's a gate."
"And you are you."
He turned, closer than he'd meant to be. "What does that mean?"
"It means you look for the thing that could swing open and hurt someone."
The truth of it settled between them. A good answer stayed out of reach.
He thought of Beau's sleeping face, the star quilt, Harlow's name kept tender in his house.
He thought of Bennet's voicemail and the wealth he would not touch, paper that could change the ranch and make him feel like less of the man he had built from work.
He thought of Wren asking him with her eyes to open a gate neither of them knew how to close.
"Some things do," he said.
"I know."
"Do you?"
She flinched. Just a little. Enough to make him hate the question and need it answered anyway.
"Yes," she said. "More than I did."
The fan crumpled softly in her grip. Colt looked at it, then at her.
The light from the square caught the edge of her cheek and left the rest of her in shadow.
No audience here, or close enough to claim one.
No Della needing peace. No Cressie waiting to twist a look into a sermon.
Only oak leaves, rosin fading on the air, the feed store gate closed beneath his hand, and Wren close enough that he could see her courage failing and returning by breaths.
"Tell me," he said.
Her eyes closed.
For one second he thought she would. Her lips parted. The old world leaned hard on the new one.
Then she whispered, "If I start wrong, I might lose the only chance to say it right."
That should have cooled him. It did the opposite. Because he wanted the truth spoken carefully. Because she was trying. Because she was standing there with the truth in her hands and not asking him to pretend it weighed nothing.
He lifted his hand from the latch. "Wren."
She looked at him then, and every careful part of him went quiet.
Which of them moved first blurred in the dark. Maybe both. Maybe the space had been closing since the first square dance step, since the auction rail, since the creek, since the letter he had written and never seen answered.
His mouth met hers softly at first.
Wren went still against him. Then her hand came to his shirt, fingers curling near Beau's sticker without touching it, and the kiss changed.
It was still sweet, still only a kiss, but hunger moved through it, old and new and shaken loose from years of being buried under pride.
Colt slid one hand to the gate beside her head, not pinning, only holding himself steady because the whole world seemed to have lost its rails.
She tasted like lemonade and courage. She made a small sound into his mouth, and it went through him with enough force that he broke the kiss before wanting could start making promises his life had not approved.
Wren's forehead rested near his chin. Her breath shook. His did too.
Behind them the dance went on, bright and public and unaware. From the truck's direction came Junie's low voice, too distant to make out. Beau slept under the star quilt. Colt made himself remember that with both feet on the ground.
"We stop here," he said, rough.
Wren nodded before lifting her head. "I know."
"Not because I don't want -"
"I know that too."
He dragged in air that smelled of oak leaves and metal. "Beau is in that truck."
"Safe with Junie," Wren said. "And still yours to think of first."
The answer cut him open in a clean place. She understood. Maybe not enough. Maybe more than he had allowed.
"And there is something between us I do not understand," he said. "Something you nearly told me."
Her hand loosened from his shirt, but she did not step away. "Yes."
"I can't let a kiss stand in for that."
Her eyes filled, and this time she let him see it. "Neither can I."
The metal latch was cold when he touched it again, grounding himself in the ordinary fact of a closed gate. He could fix a latch. He could wake before dawn and check water. He could carry his daughter from a truck to her bed without jostling her dreams.
Holding Wren and the past and Beau's future in the same set of hands was beyond any skill he had learned.
Wren smoothed the crumpled paper fan once, then gave up. "Colt."
He looked at her.
"There is something you deserve to know."
From the truck, small and sleepy, Beau called, "Daddy?"