Chapter 10 #2
Mama Cross' voice is shaking now. "I thought he was just talkin', honey. He was on so much medication. I didn't know it was real. I didn't know it was real, Hadley. I didn't take it seriously."
"I… I was wondering if he knew."
"He told me twice more. The last time was the day before he passed."
I can't speak.
My free hand goes to my chest.
To the chain. To Garrett's ring.
He knew.
He knew, and he tried to protect me from his deathbed.
I close my eyes and press the palm of my hand flat against my sternum.
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I thought he was talkin' out of the medication, baby. I thought it was the morphine. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I should've told you years ago, and I shouldn’t have given that Todd boy your number. My mind just hasn’t been right since Garrett died. I get things confused, and everything started comin’ back to me as of late. "
I feel bad for even bringing it up. "You're tellin' me now, it’s okay."
"Hadley. I should've—"
"Don’t overthink it. Everything is fine."
We breathe together on the line for a long moment. Diesel's head is heavy against my thigh.
Outside on the porch, I can hear Nash talking to himself about something—probably to Stitch, who travels with him everywhere.
Things between Mama Cross and I are good, but I need to make something clear. "I'm gonna need to ask you to do somethin'."
"Anything, baby. Anything."
"Don't give Todd any more access to me. None. Not my number. Not my address. Not anything. If he asks, you tell him I got spooked and the last you heard I was moving, and I haven’t spoken to you since. I want him to leave me and Nash alone."
"Of course." Mama Cross's voice steadies on that one. Like she's been waiting two years to be told what to do, and now somebody is finally telling her, and she can stand up straight again.
"Thank you." I close my eyes against the kitchen cabinets and let my head rest back against the wood.
"Hadley." Her voice goes softer, smaller.
"Yeah?"
I open my eyes. Diesel's head is heavy against my thigh. The afternoon light is moving across the linoleum.
"I want to come see you. Not now. Not while this is goin' on. But after. When it's done. Whatever's goin' on out there. I want to come hug my grandson and I want to look you in the eye and tell you I'm sorry to your face."
I press my hand harder against the ring. "I'd like that. I'd like that a lot."
"I love you, baby."
"I love you too, Mama Cross."
The call ends.
I stay on the kitchen floor for another couple of minutes with Diesel's head on my thigh and the phone in my lap.
I don't cry. I absorb everything I just learned.
Garrett knew Todd was a snake, and if I know anything about my husband, he wouldn’t have wanted me to deal with this alone.
My hand stays on the ring. After a while, I get up off the floor. I splash water on my face at the kitchen sink.
I'm splashing water on my face at the kitchen sink when I hear the soft knock at the front door.
I'm not surprised by it the way I would've been a week ago.
I open the door.
Thunder is on my porch in his black hat and his cut, hands in his back pockets, looking down at his boots the way he does when he's about to ask for something. "Cross."
"Thunder. Hey."
"I told that boy of yours yesterday I'd take him to the feed store with me this afternoon. To pick up a new lead for Diesel and a bag of jerky from the Phillips 66. I'm headin' out in about ten minutes. Thought I'd see if he still wanted to come."
I didn’t even know Nash wanted to go to the feed store, but I’m not surprised in the least bit. "I’m sure he'd love to, Thunder. Let me get him ready."
Thunder nods once, looks at my face for a few moments, and stares.
He doesn't ask what's wrong. He knows if I want to talk to him about it, I will. "Take your time, Cross. I'll be at my truck."
He tips his hat at me and walks back across the gravel.
Nash, when I tell him, lights up the way he does and goes to put his boots on.
He comes out with Stitch under one arm and his Switch in his free hand. I kiss the top of his head and tell him to listen to Uncle Thunder. He says yes, ma'am, and runs across the gravel to Thunder's truck.
Thunder lifts him up into the cab one-handed and buckles him in.
He waves at me from across the gravel.
I wave back. They pull down the drive. The second they’re out of sight, I walk to Rogue's cabin.
He opens the door before I get to his porch.
He saw me coming on the camera, I bet.
One look at my face and his own face changes. "What happened, baby?"
Calling me baby is new. I like it.
I tell him everything. Every bit and detail that Mama Cross gave me. Todd's call to her this morning. Garrett knowing Todd wanted me. Garrett warning her from the hospital bed. Mama Cross apologizing. All of it.
Rogue listens and doesn't interrupt.
When I'm done, he's quiet. "Garrett saw it before anyone did. He sounds like he was a good man, Hadley."
My eyes go hot.
I nod. I can't speak for a moment, because if I do, I’ll cry.
Rogue steps forward, pulls me into his chest, and just holds me.
His hand goes to the back of my head. The other to the small of my back. He doesn't say anything else for a long time.
I press my face against his sternum. His heartbeat is slow. Garrett's ring is warm between us.
They would have liked each other.
When I pull back, Rogue keeps one hand at my waist. "Mama Cross is closed off to Todd now. That was his last clean way to come at you."
His thumb brushes the corner of my jaw while he says it. Slow. Deliberate. Like he's checking that I'm still here.
"Yeah."
He doesn't take his hand off me. "He's gonna do somethin' stupid soon."
The heat of his palm shifts to the side of my neck. I can feel my own pulse going against his fingertips. "How soon?"
"Soon enough that I want you and Nash sleepin' at my cabin tonight. Not yours."
I look up at his face.
His pale blue-green eyes are steady on mine. There's no give in them. He's not asking permission. He's telling me what he needs.
"Rogue…"
His hand tightens just a little at the side of my neck. Not hard. Just present.
"I know it's fast. I know. But I want you under my roof tonight."
I don't speak right away.
My eyes drop to the patch on the inside of his left forearm, then to the dots on his knuckles, then back to his face.
Nash in Rogue's spare room. My toothbrush on Rogue's bathroom counter. Waking up next to him tomorrow without having to walk across the gravel in his t-shirt afterward.
Being his.
That's what this is.
That's what he's offering.
My hand comes up and presses flat against his chest, right over his heart. I can feel it under my palm—steady, slower than mine. "All right. We’ll stay with you tonight."
The breath that leaves him is small but I feel it move through his ribcage under my hand.
"Good."
He bends down and kisses my forehead. His beard scrapes against my skin and his hand stays at the back of my neck while he does it, holding me there for the kiss like he's not done with me yet.
When he pulls back, he doesn't fully step away. "Go pack a bag for both of you. Bring Diesel. I'll come help you carry everything."
* * *
We eat dinner at Rogue's cabin.
The three of us.
I brought leftovers from the bunkhouse— beef stew, biscuits, and of course, sweet tea.
I heat the stew on Rogue's stove and Nash sits at Rogue's small kitchen table with a glass of milk in front of him and looks around like he's looking at a whole new world.
His eyes move from the cypress beams in the ceiling to the bookshelves by the front window to the rug under Diesel's belly. "Rogue, this is where you live?"
Rogue is leaning against the counter with his glass of sweet tea.
He sets the glass down on the counter and meets Nash's eyes across the room. "This is where I live, partner."
Nash takes another slow look around. His brow furrows the way it does when he's working something out. "It's nice."
The corner of Rogue's mouth moves up just a little. "Thank you, partner."
Nash taps the rim of his milk glass with one finger. His eyes are still moving over the cabin. "It needs a couch, though. You only got one chair."
Rogue looks at the one chair like he hasn't really seen it in a while. Then he looks back at Nash, and the dry smile shows up—the slow one, the one that takes its time. "You're right. I'll get a couch big enough for us."
I laugh from the stove and have to grip the wooden spoon to keep my hand steady.
Nash takes a sip of his milk, sets the glass down carefully so he doesn’t spill it. Then he looks at Rogue again with a question already forming. "Can you read to me?"
Rogue pushes off the counter and walks to the kitchen table.
He pulls out the second chair and sits down across from my son.
He folds his hands on the table the way he does when he's about to give something his full attention.
"What book, partner?"
Nash's face lights up. He shifts forward in his chair until his elbows are on the table. "The Captain Underpants one."
Rogue nods once. Like Nash has just made a perfectly reasonable request that he is glad to accommodate. "Get it out of your pack after dinner. We'll read it together."
Something in my chest splits clean open.
I turn back to the stove because my eyes are doing things I don't want either of them to see, and I stir the stew that doesn't need stirring.
I listen to my son ask the man who I’m falling for to read to him.
I listen to that man pull out a chair and sit down across from him to answer him.
I press my free hand against my sternum where the ring rests against my skin, close my eyes, and let the moment go through me without trying to name it.
Garrett. I think you'd like him.
The wooden spoon is steady against the side of the pot.
I can hear Rogue saying something quiet to Nash behind me and Nash laughing.
This man is good, Garrett.
Diesel sighs from the rug.
I open my eyes, blink hard, and ladle stew into three bowls.
I carry them to the table and set Nash's in front of him first, kissing the top of his head while I do.
I set Rogue's down second. His hand finds the small of my back as I do—light, brief, there.
I sit down in the third spot with my own bowl. The third spot at a table that until tonight had two chairs.
We eat.
Nash chatters between bites about the dummy steer Spur is going to teach him to rope on.
Rogue answers him in the same patient way he used at breakfast—slow, specific, treating my son's questions like they matter.
Because they do. Because Nash has been hungry for somebody to treat his questions like they matter for two years now, and tonight that hunger is being fed.
I watch Rogue listen to him.
I watch the way his eyes don't leave my son's face when Nash is talking, the way he sets his spoon down between sentences so Nash can see he has the man's full attention.
My throat is full, my chest is loud, and my hand keeps finding the chain at my throat.
Outside, the cicadas are starting up for the evening. The light through the front windows is going gold. Diesel is asleep on the rug with his chin on his paws.