Chapter 19
LUKE
Lucy's position is that we are going to Duke's anyway. Her exact words are: "I need to still be fun, damn it."
She delivers this to me, to Colt, and to Mason's texts at six-fifteen on a Friday evening, which is how all three of us end up at Duke's Bar by eight. We have a collective agreement that Lucy McAllister gets what Lucy McAllister wants, especially when she says damn it.
I drive myself. That's all I'll say about that.
Duke's on a Friday is its own ecosystem. Loud, packed, the jukebox missing three letters and working anyway. A mechanical bull nobody rides anymore presides over the corner like a mascot. Cedar and spilled beer and the energy of a town that knows how to cut loose when the week finally lets go.
I find out Mags is coming when Lucy mentions it to Colt while we're waiting on the first round.
Casual. Offhand. Like it's already settled.
I look at the bar top for a beat, then pick up my beer.
Nobody says anything about it. Cal takes a long pull from his bottle and examines the jukebox with great interest.
She comes in at eight-twenty with Gina and Willa.
I look.
She's in a very short, blue summer dress that does not leave much to the imagination and does not appear to be trying to. It moves when she moves.
Her hair is down, loose waves she put work into, red under the bar lights in a way that makes the back of my throat tight.
Boots, real ones, worn in, the kind that say she belongs here without having to announce it.
She's laughing at something Gina said before she's even through the door, and the laugh lands on her whole face, and she hasn't seen me yet.
I have approximately four seconds before she does.
I use them.
Then she turns, finds me across the room the way she finds a collar signal on a map. Direct, no wasted motion, and her eyes go once, fast, to my jaw. I shaved. She clocks it and something moves at the corner of her mouth that she doesn't let become a smile.
Cal says nothing and Lucy is already smiling into her drink. Colt looks at me, looks at the door, looks back. Picks up his beer. The McAllister siblings have a long history of saying everything without saying a word.
The night has its own shape from there. Lucy commandeers the good table near the jukebox.
Shane arrives looking like a man who has accepted his fate with reasonable grace.
Mason and Viv slide in, and Mason has the expression of a man who has been thoroughly handled by his fiancée and has no complaints whatsoever.
Mags ends up across the table from me. The table is not large.
Then the kid in the green shirt asks Mags to dance.
He's twenty-three, maybe. Wide shoulders he hasn't grown into yet.
He asks in a way that assumes the answer, hand already half-extended, smile doing the work his words haven't finished.
I watch Mags look at him. I watch her look at me, one beat, fast, green eyes that are a flat-out challenge, and then she goes.
I watch every move she makes for thirty seconds. Then I'm out of the chair.
The kid sees me coming. To his credit, his hand adjusts before I reach them. Mags turns around with the expression of a woman who placed a bet with herself and is watching it pay out.
Color rises in her cheeks. Fast, involuntary, the kind she can't talk her way out of.
My eyes drop to her mouth. I bring them back up. She saw it.
"McAllister," she says.
"Kelly." I look at the kid. He is a perfectly decent human being, and I want him on the other side of the county. "I'll take it from here."
He takes the out. Smart.
I get my hand on her waist and pull her in, closer than dancing requires, and the dress is thin enough that I can feel the warmth of her through my palm. The song is something slow out of the jukebox, steel guitar and bad decisions, and she lets me pull her that extra inch without comment.
"You cut in," she says.
"I did."
"On a man who was doing nothing wrong."
"He had his hands on you."
"People dance with hands, Luke. It's considered standard technique." Her chin is up. The waves fall over her shoulder, and I want to wrap them around my fist.
She tips her head, which puts her mouth close to my jaw, and I feel her breath and do not move. "You shaved," she says, quiet enough that it belongs only to the two of us.
"Noticed that, did you?"
"I notice things. It's my job." A beat. "You never shave on a Friday."
"Trying something new."
She pulls back just enough to look at me, and whatever she finds on my face makes her look away first. That still gets me every time. Mags Kelly, who will stare down Dale Cutter in front of thirty ranchers without blinking, looks away first.
"Were you watching the whole time?"
"Every second." I pull her in until there's no space left between us, close enough that nobody in this bar is getting another look. "That dress." My mouth finds her ear, low and deliberate. "Every man in this place has been looking at what's mine all night. I am done with it."
Her breath catches.
She meets my eyes for one second and then her gaze drops. First.
"You're jealous," she says. Not cruel. Just Mags entering a conclusion into the record.
"The song's almost over."
"That's not a no."
"I went for the dance anyway, for the record. I wanted to see what you'd do."
"And?"
"You stood up in thirty seconds."
"Forty-five."
The corner of her mouth. "I counted."
My mouth drops back to her ear. "You want to keep running that experiment, Red?" My voice drops to the register that's only ever been hers. "Tell me how wet you are right now."
Her cheek goes hot against my jaw.
"That's what I thought," I say.
Across the room, Mason peels off the wall. He has been waiting for this moment. I can see it from fifteen feet out, the patience of a man who has been holding a card since last summer and has finally found the table.
"Hey." He arrives at our elbow with the timing of a surgeon. "Funny question. You remember that conversation, oh, last summer, where you told me, very clearly, I believe the word professionally was involved, to keep it professional?"
"Drink your beer, Mason."
"I distinctly remember professionally."
Viv materializes at his shoulder, warm as summer and twice as unhelpful. "He really did say it. I have it from two sources." She looks at me with the serene expression of a woman who has been waiting to deploy this for weeks. "Both reliable."
Mags makes a sound against my shoulder that she is trying very hard not to make.
"I hate this family," I tell Mason.
"No you don't." He's already walking away, beer raised. "Looking good out there, by the way."
The song changes.
"Let's go," I say.
I get my hand on the small of her back and keep it there all the way through the crowd, past the bar, past Cal who is still studying the jukebox, past Lucy who is absolutely not watching us leave. The whole town knows now.
The parking lot stops me before we reach her truck.
On the far side, half-hidden behind a stock trailer, a truck idles with its headlights off. I clock it in one second. Run the short list in two. Land on one name.
My jaw sets. One breath in, held, released. Then I look at Mags.
She's watching me, head tilted, reading whatever just moved across my face with the same attention she gives boot prints and collar data.
"You want to talk about what that was," she says.
"Not particularly."
"Then I will." She crosses her arms, loose, the posture of a woman organizing an argument she's already won. "You cut in. You haven't let go of me since. You looked at that kid like he'd walked onto your south pasture, and he was just dancing."
"He had his hands on you."
"You said that already."
"Still true."
Her hair moves in the gentle breeze off the river and I watch it without meaning to.
"You don't get to be jealous," she says, "unless you admit you want me."
The air is very still. I have been counting since June, every morning on the south pasture, every text under three minutes, every night I drove back to my cabin instead of staying, and she is standing in front of me in that dress that is painted on with her boots planted like she will wait as long as it takes.
Behind me, the truck idles in the dark. Whatever Cutter is collecting tonight, whatever use he plans to make of it, he already has enough. I can't take back the hand on her back through a crowd of forty people. I can't take back the cut-in or the dance or my mouth at her ear.
I don't want to.
"I want you," I say.
No pause.
Something moves across her face, not surprise, more like a woman watching a number come up on a bet she has been carrying since June. She uncrosses her arms.
"Good," she says. "That wasn't so hard."
"It was, actually."
"I know." Her hand finds the front of my shirt. Doesn't pull. Just holds. "I know it was."
I pull her back in, one hand at her jaw, my mouth at her ear. "You never answered my question, Red."
She goes pink. Not just her cheeks, down her throat, into the neckline of that dress. She shifts against me, just slightly, and I feel it and file every bit of it.
"Get in the truck," I say.
She does.