Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hadley
The bacon is on the third batch when I realize I've been thinking about a man's hat on a porch rail for the last forty minutes.
I flip the strips with the long fork. Press them flat. Move them around the cast iron so they crisp without burning. My hands know what they're doing without me. That's lucky, because the rest of me is somewhere else entirely.
I touch my fingers to my lips for a moment.
They're tender. Not sore. Tender like a place that reminds my body it did something last night it hasn't done in a long time.
That's what's been happening to my body all morning. Quiet little reminders I can't quite ignore.
The heaviness in my chest that isn't grief—I know what grief feels like in there, and this isn't grief.
The warm hum sitting low under my ribs every time I let my mind wander.
The way my breath catches without warning when I think about his hand under my jaw and his thumb against the place beneath my ear where my pulse was going so hard I thought he could feel my whole body inside it.
I expected to wake up regretting last night. I didn't.
I expected to wake up panicked. I didn't do that either.
What I woke up doing was wanting to do it again, and that's the thing that's making my heart race over a pan of bacon at the bunkhouse stove.
I'm done being scared of wanting this.
I think it’s as plain as a sentence I'd say to my own face in the bathroom mirror. Then I pull the bacon off and start the eggs.
"Sweetheart."
I jump. The spatula clatters against the side of the pan.
Marlena is in the doorway with Cal on her hip. She's smiling like she's been watching me for longer than she wants to admit.
"Mornin'," I say, smoothing my apron down.
"Mornin'." She comes in. Sets Cal on the kitchen island where he can grab at the canister of sugar. "You doin' all right this mornin', sweetheart?"
"I'm doin' all right."
Marlena looks at me.
The look lasts about two heartbeats longer than is comfortable. I feel the back of my neck warm. My hand on the spatula tightens.
"Hadley."
"Yeah?"
Her mouth has the smallest knowing curve in the corner of it. "Honey, you got the look."
I stop moving. The egg pan is hot under my hand. "What look?"
"The one I had the mornin' after Phantom kissed me the first time."
My face goes hot all the way to my ears. "Marlena."
"I'm not askin' for details." She pulls Cal back into her arms before he can get the sugar canister open. "I'm tellin' you I saw your face from my kitchen window when you crossed the gravel last night, and I'm tellin' you it's about damn time."
I turn back to the eggs because if I look at her I'm going to either laugh or cry, and I can’t trust myself right now to pick one.
She lets me have the moment and busies herself with Cal.
When I have my face back under control, she says, "Two days, Hadley."
I look up. "What?"
"Two days till Phantom and I leave for College Station. Presley's graduation. We'll be gone for five days, give or take."
"Okay."
She kisses the top of Cal's head and looks at me over his hair. "Whatever you and Rogue are figurin' out, you might as well figure it out while my husband isn't around to make a face about it."
She winks and walks out before I can think of a single thing to say.
I stand at the stove with a spatula in my hand and my chest doing something I don't understand.
Then the screen door bangs open at the front of the bunkhouse and Banshee's voice carries down the hall, and all of a sudden I have brothers to feed.
They come in over the next ten minutes the way they always do.
Banshee first, pouring his own coffee.
Spur smelling like the sweat he worked up in the round pen.
Blight with his hat low. Thunder with a slow nod for me that's the same nod he gave me the night he carried Nash's stuffed Stitch in from the kennel after Diesel almost got hold of it.
The prospect whose name I can't keep in my head, who sits at the end of the table and doesn't speak.
I move through service. Plate the eggs. Set the biscuit basket on the table. Bring the gravy boat. The brothers serve themselves and the room fills with the sound of forks against ceramic.
Rogue comes in last.
White hat. Sleeves rolled to the elbow.
He doesn't look at me when he comes in—he scans the room first, the way he scans every room, and only after he's read it do his eyes find me at the kitchen pass-through.
The look lasts about a second longer than it needs to.
My pulse goes up in my throat. I feel it pressing against the chain.
He sits in his seat at the head of the table, hangs the hat on the back of the chair the way he always does and I bring him his plate last.
When I set it down in front of him, I bend over slightly and speak under the sound of the brothers' forks. "Mornin', Rogue."
He looks up at me. "You sleep, Hadley?"
"Some."
He nods. "Me too."
Two seats down, Banshee doesn't look up from his plate. "Y'all sound like a couple of insomniacs."
The laugh that comes out of me is the first easy thing my chest has done all morning.
I straighten and head back to the kitchen and Banshee gives me a wink without ever lifting his head, and I realize it.
They know. Every man in this room knows. And nobody is going to say a word about it. That’s the kind of room Phantom built.
I love them all a little bit more than I did yesterday.
* * *
Back at my cabin, I go to Nash’s room and he’s still asleep. I wake him up and within ten minutes he’s dressed and ready.
He sits at the kitchen table in his pajamas with Stitch in his lap and asks if we can have pancakes.
I tell him yes.
While I'm at the stove pouring batter, he says, "Mama?"
"Yeah, baby."
"Is Rogue gonna stay our friend forever?"
I freeze with the ladle over the pan.
My chest pulls tight in a way I wasn't ready for. My eyes burn for a half second. I don't turn around. I keep my voice steady and I keep the batter moving.
"What makes you ask, baby?"
"I just wanna know. I really like him. He doesn't talk to me like I'm little."
I flip the first pancake, put it on his plate and set the plate in front of him.
When I can trust my voice, I sit down across from him at the table and I put my hand on top of his. His hand is small and a little sticky and I love it.
"He's not goin' anywhere, baby. I'm sure of that."
Nash nods like I just confirmed something he already knew. "Okay."
Then he reaches for the syrup and squirts a crazy amount of it on top of his pancakes. I want to cringe, thinking about all the sugar he’s having, but my boy is happy and that’s the only thing that matters.
We go through the late morning together. I do dishes. He plays with Stitch on the porch. I sweep the kitchen and start a load of laundry.
We have lunch—grilled cheese for him, leftover chicken salad for me. By the time I'm wiping down the counter for the second time today, the morning has slid into the afternoon and Nash has migrated to the couch with his Nintendo Switch.
That's when my phone rings.w
It’s an unknown number, so I let it ring.
It rings twice more and goes to voicemail. Ten seconds later the phone rings again.
Same number.
I let that one ring out too.
This time the caller leaves a message.
I dry my hands and open the voicemail.
"Hadley, honey. I tried your old number last night but you must've changed it. Garrett's mama gave me this one. I'd really like to talk to you. I'm in Marble Falls for a couple more days. Just call me back, all right?"
My stomach drops.
It drops the way a stomach drops when you miss a step you didn't know was there.
My hands go cold. My knuckles go white around the phone.
Garrett's mama gave him this number.
I stand at the kitchen counter with the phone in my hand and I press my free palm flat against the laminate and I breathe.
In and out. Ten full breaths. I count them.
When I get to ten, I set the phone down on the counter as carefully as if it were full of water.
Then I tell Nash I'm running over to Rogue's for a minute, kiss the top of his head, and walk across the gravel.
He’s busy on his Nintendo Switch anyway, so I know he’ll be occupied for however long I need.
The gravel between my cabin and Rogue's has never felt this long.
My boots are barely keeping up with my legs.
My heart's doing that pounding thing again, but it's the bad version this time—not the fluttering nervous one I had at the bunkhouse this morning.
This one's sharp and high in my chest and my hands are still cold from holding the phone.
I clutch the phone in my hand like it might fight me.
The voicemail is still on the screen.
Garrett's mama gave me this one.
The words keep playing on a loop in my head and every time they hit the line about his mama, my stomach turns over.
I don't know what I'm going to ask him to do. I don't know what he can do. I just know I can't be the woman standing in her kitchen alone with that voicemail in her hand, and Rogue is the man across the gravel.
I don't slow down until I'm on his porch.
He opens the door before I knock twice.
He takes one look at my face and his own face changes. "What happened?"
I hold the phone out. He takes it. He listens to the voicemail. His jaw sets. He listens to it a second time. Hands the phone back to me. "You wanna come inside, or you wanna talk on the porch?"
"Inside, if that’s okay."
He steps back.
I walk into his cabin for the second time. The chair by the window. The three monitors. The closed bedroom door. The same room as yesterday and a different room because I know what his mouth tastes like now.
He sits on the edge of his desk, while I sit on the leather chair.
He says, "Tell me what you want me to do, Hadley."
"What can you do?"
"A lot." He doesn't blink. "None of it on the books. All of it I want you to be okay with before I do it."
I look at him for a long moment.
I think about Todd standing on my porch calling me honey.