Chapter 5
Chapter Five
HARRISON
Four in the morning. Dark ceiling.
Same dream. Same table at the barbecue joint outside Nacogdoches, sitting across from a woman I was gonna marry, my grandmother's ring in my jacket pocket.
My brother beside her, laughing at something she said, and his hand on her knee under the table where I wasn't looking because I was too damn happy to think I'd need to.
That's the part that wakes me up every time. Not the betrayal. The happiness right before it. How good it felt. How sure I was.
I roll over and stare at the woodstove. Coals gone gray. The cabin's cold. Outside, the creek keeps going without asking anybody's permission.
Three days since the rain.
Three days since I put my hand on a woman's face and damn near kissed her in the dark, and then pulled back like a coward and told her to drive safe while my voice cracked in half.
I've been hauling loads at dawn. Leaving the mill records in the box before the sun's up.
Working the far quadrant where I can't see the east field or the orange tractor cutting its lines.
Grown man hiding in his own timber because a woman with green eyes and a slipping stirrup is doing something to him he swore he'd never let happen again.
The stirrup.
I fixed her goddamn stirrup. Stood there in the rain fussing with leather I had no business touching, adjusting a strap on a saddle that isn't mine, for a woman who isn't mine, while every part of me screamed to pull her off that horse and finish what I started.
The chisel's on the nightstand. The piece of walnut is supposed to be a spoon. It isn't a spoon. It's three nights of not sleeping, carved into wood.
Delaney Briggs. That was her name before she took mine. Before she was Delaney Harrison. Before she was Wyatt's wife with my family name in her mouth and my brother's kid in her belly, probably by now, knowing the two of them.
Twenty-eight, I was. Building something. Had the mill running clean, had a house half-framed on granddad's back acreage, had a ring I'd saved eleven months for. Had a woman who curled into my chest at night and told me she wanted all of it. The house. The babies. The porch swing.
She wanted all of it. Just not from me.
Wyatt's three years younger. Charming where I'm quiet.
Easy where I'm hard. Got our mother's smile and our daddy's talent for making people feel like the center of the room.
I've never blamed him for being likable.
I blamed him for being likable with his hand on my woman's thigh for over a year while I was framing walls for a future he was already living in secret.
When I found them, I went to my mother. That's the part I don't tell. Not the finding. The after. I went to the kitchen where she hummed and cut me the corner piece of pound cake every Sunday, and I stood there with my heart in my throat, and she said she knew.
Eight months, she knew.
Forgive, Aiden. Family's family. Don't you pull this apart over something like this.
Something like this.
I sat in my truck in her driveway for two hours. Then I drove north. Didn't stop till the pines changed species. Been out here since.
The walnut spoon has a crack in it now. Pressed too hard with the gouge last night, split the handle. Scrap.
I get up. Pull my boots on. Start the stove.
The coffee I make isn't as good as hers. I drink it anyway.
The ranch yard at seven thirty is busier than I've been giving it credit for, since I've been dropping loads before six to avoid exactly this.
Today I'm late. Overslept, if you can call it that. Dozed off around five with the chisel still in my hand, woke at six forty with a crick in my neck and the spoon handle in two pieces on the floor.
I back the trailer through the gate. The load's chained right, sixteen footers, clean pine from the northeast quadrant. Gabe wants this batch for the new fence posts along the distillery road.
I'm unclipping the chains when I hear boots on gravel. My body knows before I turn.
Paige is on the fence rail by the equipment barn. Clipboard on her knee. Pencil in her teeth. Hat tipped back. She's been here a while, I can tell. She watches me swing the trailer without waving, without calling out, without a thermos.
The thermos. She hasn't come to the block in three days. No hoofbeats at seven fifteen. No coffee. No banter. She heard the door shut and she backed off.
Because I taught her to. Because she reads people like she reads horses, careful and patient, and when I flinched, she gave me room.
And I hate it.
She hops off the rail and walks over. Professional. Even stride.
"Morning."
"Morning."
"Fifth load this month." She flips a page. Pencil out of her teeth. "Six hundred board feet, give or take. Sign here."
I sign. The clipboard passes between us. Our hands don't touch. That's on purpose. Hers, not mine.
"Arm," I say.
"Healing."
"Let me see."
"It's fine, Harrison."
Harrison. Not Aiden. Three days ago it was Aiden in the rain with her jaw under my thumb.
She takes the clipboard and turns for the barn.
"Paige."
"Yep." Over her shoulder. Still walking.
"You didn't come out to the block."
She stops.
Turns slow. The sun's behind her, coming over the equipment shed, so I'm squinting to read her face. I don't care for what I see when I do. No grin. No half-smile tucked in the corner. Just steady green eyes looking right at me.
"No," she says. "I didn't."
"Your job's to oversee my work."
"And you've been dropping loads before dawn, leaving your records in the box, working the far quadrant where I can't see you." Her chin comes up. "You made yourself real easy to manage from a distance, Harrison."
My jaw locks.
"You told me no with a screen door," she says. "I heard you. So I backed off. That's what adults do."
"I didn't tell you no."
"Aiden."
There it is. Quiet. Not a weapon.
"You pulled your hand off my face and went inside. That's a no. It's fine. But don't stand in this yard looking confused about where I went."
Something goes through me that I can't name. Can't defend against, either. Forty years old and a woman half a foot shorter has me standing in gravel with nothing to say.
She waits. Gives me every second.
I waste them all.
Her mouth does something small. Then she taps the clipboard on her thigh.
"Six hundred board feet. I'll get your ticket."
She's three steps gone when the car comes through the gate.
Silver rental sedan. Riding low on the gravel, tires popping on the wash rock. Nobody drives a rental into this yard. Guests go to the distillery parking. Everyone else has a truck older than my career.
The door opens.
My whole body goes cold.
Blonde hair, done up. White jeans. Sunglasses pushed on top of her head. A face I could draw from memory in the dark, because I have, more times than I'll admit.
"Aiden." Delaney smiles as she comes across the gravel. "Lord, you've gotten big."
The yard tilts. My vision narrows to a point.
Twelve years. I'm standing in a ranch yard in Oregon with sawdust in my beard, and Nacogdoches just climbed out of a Hertz rental.
"Do you know what it took to find you?" She's coming at me with her arms half open, still smiling, and there's nothing behind it. Never was. That's what took me too long to learn. "Nobody had a thing. No phone, no address. You've got a business with no address, Aiden. That's not normal."
She stops in front of me.
I don't move.
"Well." Her arms drop. She gives me the once-over, head to boots, settles her weight on one hip. "Your mama's dying."
The creek. The wind. The saws running up in the timber. Everything goes far away.
"Cancer. Pancreas. They gave her four months back in March, so." She glances at her nails. "Do the math. Wyatt's a mess. She keeps asking for you. She told him it's the only thing she wants, so he sent me to come find you."
My throat is cement.
"You'll come home." Not a question. "Whatever happened, Aiden, that was twelve years ago. People move on. You've had your space. Time to come back."
Space. My mother’s dying, my brother's ‘wife’ standing in front of me calling twelve years of exile space.
"There's the house," she keeps going. "And there's the hospital bills. Wyatt hasn't been sleeping. He's not in a good place financially, and you've been up here for over a decade with nobody to spend your money on, so."
There it is. Under two minutes, and she's at the money. I should be surprised. I'm not. Some things about people don't change. The ones who take from you always come back for the same thing.
I still can't speak. My body's locked from the jaw down, hands at my sides doing nothing, twelve years of things I wanted to say jammed behind a wall I built myself.
"Aiden? You hearing me?"
Boots sound on gravel behind me. Close. Closer than professional.
Then a hand slides down my forearm. Finds my wrist. Threads fingers through mine.
Squeezes.
"Sorry, I only caught the tail end." Paige's voice is warm as a Sunday. Easy as breathing. "I'm Paige."
Delaney looks at our hands.
"Delaney Harrison," she says.
Harrison. My last name. My brother gave her my name.
My grip goes tight enough it should hurt. Paige doesn't flinch. Just holds on.
"Harrison," Paige repeats. "Now, forgive me, I'm terrible with family trees. You're his?"
"His brother's wife."
"Ah." A nod. Casual. Warm. Absolutely deadly. "Long way to come."
"I'm here for his mother."
"Course you are." Paige's thumb moves across the back of my hand. Once. Small. Nobody sees it but me. "Only this is a working yard, and he's got a trailer to drop, so I'd rather not do this over a load of pine."
"And you are?" Delaney's voice sharpens.
"I told you. I'm Paige." She leans into my arm. Settles her weight against me. "And I'm his. So whatever you've got to say about his mama and his brother and his money, you can say it in front of me."
Delaney's eyes go from Paige's hat down to her boots and back. Her mouth thins.
"You're joking."
"About what part?"
"He doesn't do this." The laugh that comes out of Delaney is genuine, which makes it worse. "Honey, I hate to be the one, but Aiden doesn't keep people. Twelve years and he hasn't picked up a phone once."
"Twelve years he's never been asked a question worth answering." Paige doesn't miss a beat. "That's a different thing."
I turn my head.
She's not looking at me. She's looking straight at Delaney, chin level, braid over her shoulder, bandage still on that forearm, holding the entire line by herself while I stand here mute as a stump.
Something in my chest breaks loose from wherever I nailed it down and starts moving.
"Aiden." Delaney's voice gets an edge. "Are you going to stand there and let her speak for you?"
"He's not letting me do anything," Paige says. "I'm doing it."
"This is family business."
"Then he'll handle it as family. In his time. On his land. When he's had a night to sit with it." Paige's grip tightens on my hand. "Not in a gravel lot at seven thirty in the morning because you drove out here on somebody else's schedule."
Color comes up Delaney's throat.
"Four months, they said. In March."
"I heard you the first time," Paige says. "So did he. He heard every word. Including the ones about the bills."
The color deepens.
And then my voice comes back. Low. Steady. Nothing like what's happening inside.
"Go back to town," I tell Delaney. "Get a room. I'll call when I've got something to say."
"Aiden."
"That's what you're getting."
She looks at me. Looks at Paige. Something recalculates behind her eyes, and she gives a smile that's all teeth.
"Sure," she says. "You call me."
The rental turns too fast and throws gravel on the way out.
We stand there.
Dust settles. Behind the barn, a horse blows its nose. Kidd's truck door slams down by the bunkhouse. The ranch keeps being a ranch.
Paige doesn't let go of my hand.
"Breathe," she says.
"Paige."
"Later." Her hands tighten on my arm. "You've got a trailer to drop and I've got a ticket to write. Then you go up the mountain. And I'll be there around six with something hot, and you can throw me out then if you want."
"You told her you were mine."
She goes still.
Then her chin comes up, and there's the grin, small and crooked and shaking at one corner.
"Yeah," she says. "I did."