Chapter 7 Kane
I pull into the Iron Vault lot at five forty-five, before the sky has any color. I'm here this early because I haven't slept since she came out of the bathroom in that absurdly short robe with wet hair, getting me hard on the spot. Resisting the temptation is becoming a daily struggle.
I unlock the side door and let myself in ahead of the alarm reset.
The bay is cold, and my breath shows in front of my face.
I walk all six bays before I do anything else, the same circuit I've done every morning since we opened the doors.
The crew turns the wrenches. I'm the one who signs off, and to sign off on a job here you have to know it by the inch.
Toby comes in at eight, drops his bag at the workbench, and sees me at the office desk.
"Morning, Kane. How you—"
"Get to work, Toby."
His mouth closes around the rest of the sentence. He nods fast, knocks the empty mug off the workbench corner heading back to the bay, catches it before it hits the floor, and keeps going.
I skip lunch. I get the chain hoist set up in bay three and pull the small-block out of the second customer's car so the team can run the heads in the morning. I don't have to be the one running the hoist. I'm running it because sitting still isn't an option today.
Killian's people have flagged three things this week.
Killian runs the intel side for the crew, and when his sources twitch, mine do.
The first two pings were noise. The third was a name surfacing near her old address, a man Thorne has hired before for the kind of work you don't bring home.
We pulled what we could from his record, which buys us a week, maybe two, before he finds another route in.
I haven't told her any of this yet because I'm still working out the words. I'm running out of time to find them.
At three Jaxson comes by with two cups of coffee from Lou's and sets one on the workbench next to me.
"You forgot to eat."
"I'll eat tonight."
"You said that yesterday too."
I take the coffee but don't drink it.
"You all right?"
"Mmh... I will be."
"Anything you need me on?"
"No, thanks for asking."
He stays there for another beat without saying anything. Jaxson is good at silences and I'm usually his match, but tonight I break. She's too present in my mind.
"Sunday she's helping Lou with the pies," I tell him.
"Lou already told me. Said to tell you she'll have a plate waiting for you when you bring her in."
"All right."
He waits a moment more. Then: "She's Danny's sister, Kane, but she's also a grown woman. There's nothing wrong with feeling something for her."
I don't answer. He reads it on my face, nods once, and walks back to the bay he came from.
I leave the Iron Vault early. The crew stays on. I take the twelve miles home faster than I should, lying to myself about why.
***
She's on the couch with the textbook open when I come in. She looks up.
"You're early."
"By ten minutes. There's chicken in the fridge, if that works for you."
"Oh yes, it works!"
She sets the textbook on the coffee table and follows me into the kitchen, takes the stool at the counter without asking. I get the chicken out, the pan on, the onion under the knife.
"How was your day?" I ask while keeping my eyes on the task at hand.
"Productive. Finished the chapter I was on. The advisor call went better than I'd been bracing for. Yours?"
"Long."
"That isn't an answer, Kane."
"It's the one I have." I work the onion for a beat. "In before sunup. Work's stacking up faster than the crew can clear it."
"You guys are good. People notice."
I look up from the onion long enough to let her see I heard it. It's the only thanks I have in me, and she takes it for what it is. She rests her chin on her hand and watches me work.
"Can I ask you something about Danny?"
I scrape the onion off the board into the pan. "You can ask."
"What was he like as a soldier?"
I take my time with it. Nobody has asked me about Danny in years, and his name still grips my chest every time. I don't let it show.
"The best of us. He kept the whole unit upright on the days that should have broken us. If a man was down, Danny got there before anybody had to ask. He made the worst rooms lighter just by walking into them."
"That's him." Her voice catches on it. "That's exactly him."
"Yeah. That was him."
We let the good version of him sit there between us. It's the first time in years I've talked about Danny without it ending at how he died, and I don't tell her what that's worth to me.
I cook, and we eat at the table. She tells me about Danny teaching her to bait a hook when she was eight, a whole summer of it at a lake I never heard him name. I can't picture it without seeing him at twenty in fatigues, because that's the only Danny I have. She catches whatever crosses my face.
"Where'd you go just now?"
"I never knew the boy. I only got the man."
So she gives me the rest of the story, the worm she refused to touch and Danny baiting the hook for her ten times over before she'd do it herself, until I can picture the patient kid she's drawing, a version of him I never got to meet.
When she's done I ask her about her grandmother. She tells me the whole story straight, the long sickness, the toll on both of them, no edges sanded off for me. I listen and keep my mouth shut. The easy things people say are the last thing she needs.
She gets through half her chicken before she puts her fork down.
"Can I ask you a real question without it being a problem?"
"You can ask. I'll tell you whether it's a problem after."
"Are you sleeping at all?"
"Some."
"Liar."
"Some, Callie. Not enough."
"Mmh... Thank you for not bullshitting me."
"You'd have caught it."
"I would have." She picks her fork up, and a glint comes into her eye. "You know, if you ever want help wearing yourself out before bed, I've got ideas."
She holds my eyes while she says it, and she doesn't pretend it's an innocent sentence.
I keep my voice flat. "I'll manage."
"I'm sure you will." She's enjoying herself now. "Offer's open. Anytime."
I don't answer that. Answering it takes me straight to the one place I'm not allowed to go.
There's a familiarity at this table tonight that two people who've known each other a week shouldn't have. I don't know when we got it.
She's following the rule though. She carries her own plate to the sink, keeps the careful distance she's been keeping for two days, rinses, dries her hands. Walking past the table she stops at arm's reach plus six inches.
"Good night, Kane."
"Good night, Callie."
She goes.
I sit at the table for another twenty minutes after her door closes.
I think about her face when she made the offer. The fork still in her hand, her gaze that didn't waver, the small smile that came with help wearing yourself out before bed. Nothing innocent in any of it.
I see what she was offering. Her on her knees on the rug in front of the chair I sit in by the stove, my hand at the back of her neck, her mouth open under mine and then around me. Her hand on me, careful at first, then less careful when she figures out what I want. Her eyes coming up to mine.
Christ.
I think about the other smile too, the one she let me see the morning after the bathroom. The corner of her mouth. The small bend of it. How she didn't try to hide it from me.
Both said the same thing. They said what her body has been telling me for days, what she meant me to know with the neckline she let slip two mornings ago, what she dropped onto my plate tonight without bothering to pretend it wasn't an offer.
She wants me. She wants me to know it. She wants me to choose her.
But I can't choose her.
That's the line. It's the only line I have left.
Danny put her in my house. Danny didn't put her in my bed.
There's a piece I haven't told her. The order I followed.
The order Danny was carrying when he went down.
Until she knows it, I don't get to reach for her.
When she does know, I don't think that smile will survive it.
I lock the front door, check the back, and go to bed at eleven. Fuck. I can't close my eyes without putting her in front of me on her knees again. Another sleepless night is waiting for me.
***
Sunday morning comes bright and cold, and by the time she steps out in jeans, a long-sleeve shirt, her hair pulled up off her neck and her tote on her shoulder, I've got the truck warm in the drive.
"I figured I'd study if there's a break."
"Lou will keep you busy. There won't be one long enough for studying."
She gives me the small smile, gets into the truck without taking my hand, and I shut the door behind her.
I drive the twelve miles into town with both hands on the wheel and the heat low. She watches the road from her side, letting the silence sit for five minutes before she breaks it.
"Has Mama Lou always been here?"
"Long before I got to town. Longer than anybody I've asked can remember."
"How long have you been in town?"
"Bought the house when I came out of the service. Five years."
"Did you come here on purpose?"
"I came here because Danny told me about it before he died. Said it was the quietest place he knew."
She doesn't turn her head, but I see her hand tighten on the strap of her bag.
"He was right," she says, after a beat.
"He usually was."
Neither of us adds to it for the last few miles into town.
***
I park across from the Rusty Anchor. The pickup her brother-in-law owns is in the lot, and a wagon I don't recognize next to it.
The bell over the door jingles when we come in.
Lou is behind the counter with flour on the front of her apron, her steel-gray braid down her back, the faded anchor on her left forearm visible to the elbow where her sleeves are rolled.
"There she is. Honey, you came." She comes around the counter and pulls Callie into a hug, flour and all. "Kane, you brought her. Sit at the booth by the window. I have coffee for you and a plate is coming."