Chapter 7 #2
My heart's doing something it hasn't done in a long time. I notice it about halfway across. The kind of pounding that lets a man know he's about to do a thing that matters, and that the thing could go either way.
The closer I get to her porch the louder I can hear it.
Forty feet shouldn't take this long to cross. Tonight it's taking the whole length of my life.
I've spent a decade being careful with this woman before I even knew she existed.
I've spent two months being careful with her since she got here.
And now I'm walking up to her porch in the dark to find out if all that patience was worth a damn—or if I'm about to push her one step too far and watch her step back.
I don't know which it is yet.
I know that if it's the second one—if she takes that step back from me tonight—I'm not going to get a second chance at this. She'll lock that door inside her she just barely opened today, and a man like me doesn't get to knock on it twice.
I climb her porch steps slowly.
She doesn't move. She stays right where she is at the rail with her hand on the wood and her eyes on my face.
I stop two feet in front of her.
The light from her kitchen window is gold and low and lands on her shoulder. Her hair smells like the lavender soap she keeps by her sink.
"What're you doin', Hadley?"
Her eyes don't leave mine. "I don't know. You tell me."
"That's not how this works."
She tilts her chin up half an inch—the same small defiance I saw her give Todd on the porch yesterday morning, only this one isn't for him. This one's for me.
"Then how does it work?"
I take half a step closer. Not enough to crowd her. Enough that she has to feel the heat of me.
"You tell me, and I do."
Her breath catches.
I hear it more than I see it—a small hitch in the space between us.
She holds my eyes for a long moment. I can see her pulse going at her throat where the chain disappears under her t-shirt.
Her hand comes off the rail. She doesn't put it on my arm this time.
She puts it on the front of my shirt, flat against my chest, just over the place where my pulse is doing things I haven't felt it do since I was about twenty-five years old.
She says, low, "I'm tired of being polite, Rogue."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
I look down at her hand on my chest. I look back at her face.
She's not blinking. She's not breathing right.
She's standing on her porch barefoot at near midnight with her hand on a man she's known for two months, and her eyes are telling me the rest of the sentence she didn't finish out loud.
I put my hand under her jaw.
Just my fingers. Light. The pad of my thumb finds the spot beneath her ear where her pulse is going.
“Hadley?”
She lifts her chin so her eyes meet mine. The light from her kitchen window catches in them. Green. Bright. Wider than they were a second ago.
"Yeah?"
The word is barely a word. It comes out like she's been holding her breath for it.
"You sure."
I keep my voice low. I keep my thumb where it is, just below her jaw, the pad of it resting against the pulse beneath her ear. I can feel her heart going under my hand. It's going fast.
"I'm sure."
"Say it."
I need to hear it twice. I need her to hear herself say it twice. If she takes this back tomorrow morning, it's not gonna be because I didn't give her the room to.
Her hand on my chest tightens. Not much. Just enough that I feel her grip change. Her fingers gather a fistful of my shirt. "I'm sure, Rogue."
I close my eyes for a half second. I let myself feel the words land before I move.
Then I take my hat off slowly.
I set it on the porch rail beside her hand. The brim of it rests against her knuckles. Her fingers don't move away from it.
She knows what the hat means. Texas-raised. She knows.
A man doesn't kiss a woman the first time with his hat on. Not where I come from.
I bring my free hand up to the side of her face.
The other one I keep where it is, under her jaw. I'm holding her with both hands now and she's still got her grip on my shirt, and her breath is unsteady under my palm.
The chain at her throat is rising and falling against the cotton of her t-shirt.
I bend down slowly.
I take a long second to look at her face this close—closer than I've ever been to it.
The freckles I didn't know she had across the bridge of her nose. The way her lips part because she's not breathing right. The way her eyes are still on mine until they're not, until they drop to my mouth and stay there.
That's the part that finishes me.
I kiss her.
It's not a hard kiss.
It's not the kind of kiss a man gives a woman when he's been waiting to give it to her.
That's the kiss I'd give her if I were a different kind of man.
This one is slow.
She makes a small sound against my mouth that isn't a word.
I feel it more than I hear it.
It does something to me I'm going think about every night for the rest of my life.
I kiss her gently, steady, and I don't press.
I let her come into the kiss at her own speed, and she does, slow and uncertain at first and then less uncertain, and then her hand on my chest goes up and around the back of my neck.
The kiss changes when her hand changes.
Her fingers find the hair at the base of my skull and grip there, not hard, just steady.
The small sound she made earlier becomes a longer one against my mouth.
I lift my head before she can change her mind about it.
I rest my forehead against hers.
Both of us are breathing harder than we ought to be.
She says, low, "Rogue."
"Yeah."
"That's the first time I've kissed a man who wasn't my dead husband."
I close my eyes and keep my forehead against hers.
I don't say anything for a long second because the only thing I could say right now is the wrong thing—how I feel about her.
She has too much on her mind for me to offload my feelings on her.
In time, I’ll tell her.
I say, "Thank you, Hadley."
She lets out a breath. Half a laugh. Her thumb moves against the back of my neck.
"For what?"
"For trustin' me with that."
"Mmhm."
"You did good."
"You did better."
I almost laugh. I almost don't. I straighten enough that I can look at her face.
Her eyes are bright but she's not crying. Her hair is loose around her shoulders. She's the most beautiful thing I've ever stood this close to.
I tell her so.
She looks at me for a second like I just said something in a language she has to translate.
Then she says, "Don't say that unless you mean it, Rogue."
"I don't say things I don't mean, Hadley. Not to you."
She nods.
She lets her hand drop off the back of my neck slowly. The way she let her hand drop off my forearm this afternoon. The same speed.
She steps back half a step. "I oughta let you go."
"Yeah."
"Nash is asleep."
"Yeah."
"It's late."
"Yeah, it is."
We look at each other a heartbeat longer.
She says, quiet, "Goodnight, Rogue."
"Goodnight, Hadley."
I go down her porch steps, cross her gravel, and I don't look back until I'm at my own door, and when I do look back her porch is empty and her kitchen light is off.
The screen door closes softly behind her somewhere inside.
I let myself into my own cabin.
I sit down at my desk because I don't trust my hands to do anything else.
I sit there for a long time until the right monitor pings.
It's a call alert on the watcher number—the burner I set up two months ago that forwards from Hadley's old Garrison cell to a voicemail she doesn't know exists.
The incoming caller ID says Todd Whitley.
He's calling her at this hour.
I let it ring out.
The voicemail comes through a minute later.
I open the file. I put on the headphones and wait.
His voice is soft. He's been drinking. The bar was open at the Hampton until eleven and he was in it both nights and I’m certain tonight is no different.
He says, "Hey, honey. I just—I want you to know I'm not goin' anywhere.
Not until you and I have had a real conversation.
The kind we should've had on your porch yesterday before that man interrupted us.
Garrett would've wanted you to talk to me.
You know that. I know you know that. Call me when you're ready, honey. I'll wait."
The line goes dead.
I listen to it twice.
Then a third time, because I want to be sure.
Garrett would've wanted you to talk to me. You know that. I know you know that.
I close the file. Encrypt it. Save it to the folder labeled ‘Whitley’.
I sit at the desk with my elbows on the cypress and my hands together in front of my mouth, and I think about a man weaponizing a dead husband's memory to lever a widow off her own porch and into a conversation she didn't ask for.
About that man driving five hours from Garrison to do it. About him still sitting at the Hampton bar two nights running, waiting for her to call.
I think about her hand on my chest forty minutes ago.
About her mouth.
About the small sound she made.
Garrett would've wanted you to talk to me.
No, Todd. He wouldn't have, because I’m sure deep down he knew you were a fucking snake the same way I do.
I look across the yard at her cabin.
Her bedroom light is off. She's sleeping. Probably the best sleep she's had in two days.
I'm not gonna tell her about the voicemail.
Some things a man takes care of without making the woman carry it.
This is my job, to protect her and Nash.