Chapter 5 #2
He turns back toward the counter and sees me standing by the door.
"Hey," he says. He didn't expect me. It shows for a second before he pulls it back.
Then the side door opens behind me, and an older woman comes through with a canvas bag over one arm.
He steps forward and catches the door before it swings back, which puts him close enough that I take a half step to the side.
He holds it for her, and she pats his arm on the way past.
"You're a good boy," she says.
"Don't tell anybody," he says.
She's already halfway to the counter, but she's smiling.
He's easy here. Not just with Donnie, with all of it, the space, the people, the town. Like he belongs to it and it belongs to him.
"Hey," I say, and move toward the counter to wait for Donnie.
Levi glances toward the back. "I'll give you a hand out there, Donnie." He heads out the side door.
Donnie comes around the counter a minute later. "You're out at Whispering Creek?"
"Yes, sir, I'm Cassie Holt. Sawyer sent me for the supply order."
"Nice to meet you, Cassie. I'm Donnie Keller." He nods toward the back. "Order's already pulled. Bring your truck around to the dock, and we'll get you loaded up."
"Thanks," I say, and head back to the truck.
I pull the truck around to the dock. Levi's already there, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets.
Donnie comes through the back door, and the three of us load the bags, Donnie pulling from the pallet, Levi and me stacking them in the bed.
I'm reaching for the last bag when Levi gets there first.
"I've got it," Levi says.
He lifts it before I can answer and sets it on the stack.
He straightens up. We're standing closer than I planned for, maybe two feet between us, the truck at my back.
He's been working this morning. I can tell by the way he smells, hay and sweat, and something underneath it I don't have a name for.
I stay where I am.
"Didn't know you were coming in," he says.
"Sawyer asked me to come in for the supply run."
"I came in for the fence post order." He glances at Donnie. "Which is a whole situation."
"Came in wrong," Donnie says from behind us, unbothered. "Like I told you. Tuesday."
"You said maybe Tuesday."
"Same thing."
I take the receipt from Donnie and fold it into my pocket. I should take a step back from the truck. I stay where I am for a beat longer, aware of the warmth of him. Then I step clear.
"Try not to miss me on the drive," he says, grinning.
I get in the truck. "I'll manage."
***
The Silver Creek Diner is three blocks down. I park in front of it and go inside because I need ten minutes before I'm fit to drive back.
A woman behind the counter looks up. She's in her fifties, warm, the kind of woman who takes one look at you and decides whether you need coffee or food. She looks at me and reaches for the coffee pot.
"Sit anywhere," she says.
I take a stool at the counter, and she sets a cup down without asking. I wrap both hands around it.
The diner smells like bacon grease, coffee, and something baked that came out of the oven not long ago. Two men in the corner booth are deep in a conversation about a fence line. A woman by the window is reading something on her phone. Nobody's paying attention to me, which is exactly what I need.
I drink half the cup.
He was already there. Already easy with everyone in the room before I walked through the door, already in the middle of something that had nothing to do with me. I stood inside the entrance and watched him for three full seconds before I moved. Not because I was hiding. I just didn't move.
That's the part I keep coming back to. I've been noticing him all week and managing it fine. But watching him when he didn't know I was there, when he wasn't pointed at me, he was exactly the same. Laughing at something Donnie said like it was the funniest thing he'd heard all week.
That's the part I don't have an easy answer for.
The woman comes back down the counter and refills my cup. She looks at me the way she probably looks at everyone who sits here long enough.
"You want something to eat, hon, or are you just working something out?" She sets the pot down. "I'm Mattie, by the way."
"Cassie." I look up. "Is it that obvious?"
"A little bit." She leans on the counter. "You from around here?"
"No. I'm working out at Whispering Creek Ranch."
"Sawyer's place." She nods as if that tells her something. "She's a good woman. Built that operation herself from nothing." She picks the pot back up. "You like it out there?"
"Yeah," I say. "I really do."
"That's good, real good. You need anything else, you just holler."
"I'm good," I say.
She moves off to refill someone else's coffee.
I sit with the second cup until it's gone. The thing I keep coming back to is the two feet of space I didn't close and didn't put more distance into either. That's the part I can name now. I leave a tip and go get in the truck.
***
The ranch road climbs the last mile in a wide curve, and I drive it not thinking about it, which is how I've been driving since I left town. Present somewhere else entirely.
I count without meaning to. It just starts, somewhere around the second bend, and I don't let myself look too closely at what I'm counting.
I get to six before I'm through the ranch gate.
I park in the gravel lot and sit for a second with the engine off, hand still on the wheel, looking at the barn roof and the mountains sitting blue-gray above it.
I've been deflecting all week. Every meal, every fire pit, every time he aimed something in my direction, and I let it land nowhere. I've been good at it.
I didn't deflect once today.
I get out of the truck and find Kade to help unload.