Chapter 6 #2
"Inside. Doing dishes for me, but I'd bet he'd let himself be interrupted."
She is gone through my screen door before I finish the sentence, and a second later I hear Nash whoop from the kitchen.
Mama Lou shakes her head and smiles. "She's a force of nature, that one."
"Sounds like Nash."
"Lord help us both."
Two minutes later the kids are out of the cabin and headed for the kennel hand-in-hand to go see Diesel, who Nash has been telling her about over the phone according to Mama Lou.
Spur sees them from the round pen and tips his hat.
Thunder is already at the kennel, working with the dogs, and I watch him lift Raine onto his shoulder when she gets there and walk her toward the chain link with Nash skipping beside them.
I watch them until they're past the barn.
Mama Lou is still on my porch, looking at me. "Rogue's a good man, you know."
I look at her. "I know."
"I've known him for nearly a decade. The first night Phantom brought him to the ranch, my boy was the one helpin' carry him from the truck to the main house.
Rogue's been somethin' close to family since.
He doesn't make a fuss about it. He's not the fuss-makin' kind.
But he's a good man, and I want you to hear me say it before you decide what you're gonna do about the way I’ve heard he looks at ‘ya. "
She pats my arm, climbs back into her old Ford, and rumbles down the gravel drive with a wave.
* * *
I'm hanging laundry behind my cabin at two in the afternoon when I see the black Explorer.
Todd’s vehicle.
What the fuck is he doing?
It's parked on the county road about a quarter mile down the cedar break.
Not at the ranch gate. Not close enough to see the bunkhouse.
Just parked there, on a public road, where Todd's got every right to sit and where I can't do a damn thing about it.
He's still here.
I take the clothespin out of my mouth and I press it into the line so hard the wood creaks.
I finish hanging the laundry with steady hands because Nash and Raine are at the kennel and I'm not going to be the kind of mother they look across the yard and see in a panic.
I pick up my empty basket, walk it back into my cabin and set it on the kitchen counter.
I take off my apron, hang it on the hook and head straight over to Rogue’s cabin.
I've stood at the bottom of his porch steps before. But, I haven't been inside.
I knock once.
He opens the door before my hand drops. "Hadley."
"Todd's still in town."
"I know."
"He's parked on the county road right now. About a quarter mile down from the gate."
"I know that too."
"Are you watching him?"
"Yes, ma'am."
I look up at him on the porch. White hat off, auburn hair finger-mussed, sleeves rolled to the elbow.
I know he hasn't slept and it shows in the set of his jaw, and he's still standing in his doorway like he's been waiting for me to come over since the second I started across the gravel.
"Can I come in?"
He steps back and I walk inside for the first time.
The front room is smaller than I expected.
Plain plank floors, a leather chair by the window that has been sat in for a decade, a desk along the back wall with three monitors and a closed metal cabinet I don't know the name for.
A row of books on the windowsill that surprises me—I'd have lost money on Rogue keeping books on a windowsill.
A coffee maker on a small counter by the bedroom door. The white hat on a hook by the front door.
The bedroom door is closed. I don't look at it.
He doesn't sit and I don't sit either. "Hadley."
"I want to know two things, Rogue."
"All right."
"First. The photograph on my porch rail yesterday afternoon. Did you take it?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Where is it?"
"Doesn't exist anymore."
I nod, slow. I’m not surprised in the least bit.
That's the answer I came over here to confirm, and getting it makes the anger settle another degree.
"Second."
"Yeah."
"I'm furious, Rogue."
He doesn't say anything. He waits.
"I’m so angry I could break a window with my hand."
He doesn't move.
"I'm angry at him. I'm angry that I stood there and let him stand that close to me. I'm angry that I thanked him for stopping by, when I should have told him to get his ass off my porch."
I'm pacing his front room. I didn't realize I'd started pacing.
"I'm angry that I'm the kind of woman who got raised that polite. And I'm angry that I'm thirty years old and I still don't know how to throw a man off my own land."
"Twenty-eight."
"What?"
"You're twenty-eight."
It takes me a half second to understand what he just did.
He's been listening. He's heard me say my age once in two months, in passing, and he's stored it.
He's offering it to me as a small steady fact in the middle of my anger because he can see I don’t have my shit together.
I almost laugh, but I don't.
"I'm twenty-eight," I say. "And I still don't know how to throw a man off my own land. I'm angry that you had to take the photo because I couldn't bring myself to, and I'm angry — "
I stop.
My voice is shaking. I’m not going to cry. I refuse to cry about Todd Whitley.
Rogue takes one step toward me. Not into my space. Just close enough that I can feel the heat of him in the small room. "Hadley."
"What."
"You did the right thing yesterday."
"I let him stand on my porch and talk to me about Garrett's mama."
"You got him off your porch without giving him a reason to come back the same way."
"He came back anyway."
"That's not on you. That's on him."
I look up at him.
He says, "You were polite because that's how your mama raised you to handle men whose intentions you weren't sure of. You don't need to apologize for that. You used the tools you had. Next time, you'll use different ones."
"What ones?"
"Mine."
I stare at him.
He stares back.
I close the distance between us by one step and I put my hand flat on his forearm.
I put it right above the Shotgun Saints patch, where the dark ink ends and the bare skin starts.
His skin is warm and the patch is fine against my palm. I keep my hand there for a long second while he doesn't move.
"Thank you, Rogue."
"You don't have to thank me."
"I do."
He looks down at my hand on his arm. He looks back at my face.
"You can thank me," he says, low, "by telling me when something scares you. Even if it's small. Even if you think you're making it up."
"I wasn't scared yesterday. I was furious."
"That works too."
I almost smile. I don't quite. I pull my hand back slow, and the warmth of his skin stays on my palm long after I do.
"Thanks, Rogue."
"You’re more than welcome, Hadley."
I leave and I don't look back.
I don’t know what’s happening between me and Rogue, but something is.
Am I ready to move on?
Am I ready to give love another shot after losing Garrett? Hell if I know, but I think I’m going to.
Before I know it, it’s sundown and I'm on my porch with a glass of water that I'm not really drinking.
Nash is inside watching Lilo and Stitch for what I'd guess is the four-hundredth millionth time.
Raine went home with Mama Lou around four with a promise to come back tomorrow if her daddy says so, and Nash has been singing about a four-wheeler and a peach pie ever since.
The county road is empty. The Explorer is gone.
I sit on the porch swing and I look across the yard at Rogue's cabin, where the front room light is on as it has been all day.
He hasn't slept and he might not sleep until sometime late tonight.
I don’t know a lot about Rogue, but what I do know is that he's going to sit at those three monitors and watch the county road until Todd's back across the Garrison line, and probably for a long time after that.
I touched him on purpose today. The first time in twenty-two months I've put my hand on a man's bare skin who isn't my son.
I don't know what's coming. What Todd's going to do next, what Rogue's going to do about it, who that black sedan from two days ago belongs to, what the men I'm building a life around are about to be pulled into—none of it.
What I do know is this. I touched him because I wanted to… because even if I don’t know how to admit it to myself, I crave Rogue.
I want him, and I know he will keep us safe.
The next time Todd shows up on my porch, that's the man who's standing between him and my boy.