Prologue #2
The ceiling fan turns. The cicadas are loud outside. Somewhere on the property, a dog barks once and stops.
Rogue looks at me for a long time before he speaks.
When he does, his voice is lower than it was a minute ago. "You've got the job, Hadley."
I close my eyes for one second. When I open them, he hasn’t moved.
"I wasn't testing you," he says. "I was making sure you knew what you were walking into. You weren't going to drive a U-Haul this far if you weren't already sure. I needed to hear you say it."
"Okay."
"You're going to live in a cabin behind the bunkhouse.
You're going to cook three meals a day for the men who live and work here.
You're going to keep the kitchen the way you'd keep it if it was your own.
You're going to be paid every two weeks.
Your boy is gonna have everything he needs here.
You're even going to have medical care for both of you through this job, and you're going to have Sundays off and one weekend a month. "
He pauses. "And nobody on this property is going to lay a finger on you without your say-so."
I look at him.
He is not blinking.
"I want you to hear that part," he says.
"Because I'm going to say it once and I'm not going to say it again. You’re not here for any man on this ranch to touch.
Not the prospects. Not the patched members.
Not the men passing through from other charters or clubs.
You are here to cook, to live in that cabin, and to raise your son.
If any man on this property forgets that, you come to me personally before you go to Phantom, and I promise you I will handle it. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Say it back."
I have to swallow before I can. "Nobody touches me without my say-so."
He picks up the hat and sets it back on his head. "Welcome to Sharp Shooter Ranch, Hadley Cross."
Rogue walks me over to the cabin, boots on gravel, hat pulled low against the late afternoon sun.
Nash is on my hip because he woke up halfway across the yard and refused to be put down, looking at this man in the white cowboy hat with the wide, slow, unblinking stare.
Rogue doesn’t try to charm my son. He nods at him once and says, "How you doing, partner?" while he keeps walking.
Nash watches him the whole way.
The cabin is small, clean, and the porch has a swing on it.
Inside there are sheets on the beds, towels in the bathroom, and a cast-iron skillet on the stove that isn’t mine but might as well be, and on the kitchen table there’s a mason jar with a bunch of wildflowers in it that somebody cut from somewhere on this property and put there.
I don’t let myself cry in front of him. I’ll cry later, when the reality of all this settles in.
He walks me through the breaker box, the propane tank, and the water shut-off in the voice of a man who has done this before.
He tells me dinner is at six. He tells me he’ll send a prospect to unhook my trailer in an hour, and if I need anything between now and then, I should come find him at the clubhouse.
With that, he tips his hat and steps off the porch.
He walks back toward the clubhouse and I stand in the doorway with my son on my hip and I watch the white hat get smaller against the late gold light.
Nash watches him too.
"Mama," my son says, quiet, in the slow voice he uses when he is working a thing out. "Is he gonna be nice to us?"
I keep watching the man in the white hat until he reaches the clubhouse porch.
He climbs the steps. He turns, at the top of the steps, and he looks back at the cabin.
At me.
He’s too far away for me to see his face clearly, but I can see the white hat tilted in my direction, and I can feel the weight of his eyes on me from across the yard.
He stands there for a second longer than a man who would check on a new hire would stand there.
Then he disappears inside.
I’m still holding my son. The screen door of the cabin is cool against my shoulder. The cicadas are loud. Somewhere out past the bunkhouse a horse stamps in a stall.
"Yeah, baby," I say. "I think he's gonna be nice to us."
Nash buries his face in my neck. "Mama," he says. "I don't want to be in another motel."
I close my eyes.
I press my mouth to the top of his head where his hair smells like cheap motel shampoo.
"We're not," I tell him. "We're not in a motel anymore."
* * *
That night, after Nash is asleep in the smaller bedroom with Stitch tucked under his chin, I sit on the porch swing of the cabin with the mason jar of sweet tea I never finished and look out at the dark yard.
The cicadas are loud.
A floodlight is buzzing somewhere over by the barn.
The bunkhouse windows are lit up gold, and I can hear the low rumble of men's voices from the porch over there, the occasional laugh, glass on wood, the kind of sounds a woman alone with a sleeping child learns to listen to without breathing.
I think about Garrett. I always think about Garrett at night.
About the way he used to come home dirty and tired and play with Nash before he showered.
The hospital bed in our living room. The night he died with my hand around his and Nash asleep in the next room.
The morning after, I walked into the kitchen and made coffee for one person for the first time in nine years.
I'm twisting the gold band on my left ring finger when I look up.
The clubhouse is about two hundred feet away across the dark yard.
There’s a man standing on the porch, and he’s not on the bunkhouse porch with the others.
He’s on the clubhouse porch, alone, and the floodlight is behind him so I can only see his outline, but I can see the shape of the cowboy hat against the dark, and I can see the cherry of a cigarette glowing once and going dark again.
He’s not looking at the bunkhouse. He’s looking at my cabin.
I’m going to make a new life here for us, cook for these men until my hands give out.
Whatever this place is, whatever he is, whatever those eyes mean—I am going to make this work.
Garrett's been dead for nearly two years.
I'm out of money.
I’m out of options.
But I’m not out of the fight, and the man in the white cowboy hat is about to find out exactly how much of it I have left.
He takes a long drag of the cigarette.
The cherry glows.
He doesn’t look away and neither do I.