Chapter 44
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
My phone buzzed as I was pullin' out of the Birmingham driveway.
CALVIN
Be home late. Don't wait up.
I read it at the stop sign at the end of their gravel road. Read it again. Dropped the phone in the cup holder and sighed through my nose.
Three days of these texts.
Long day.
Back late.
Don't wait up.
I turned onto 89 and pointed the truck toward Larkspur with the windows down and the evenin' slantin' gold across the hills.
Gas gauge was pushin' a quarter tank. Figured I'd fill up before I went home.
Figured I'd take the long way. Figured I'd find somethin' to do that wasn't sittin' in an empty kitchen waitin' on a woman who wasn't comin'.
Pulled into The Bar about twenty minutes later.
Gas station hadn't changed a bit in the decades I'd been fillin' up there.
Same two pumps, same cracked concrete under 'em, same hand-lettered sign above the door that said THE BAR in big red paint because the owner had been a drunk named Ed who thought it was funny.
When Ed died a few years back, not a soul in this town—includin' its new owner—considered changin' the name.
The little store inside sold Slim Jims and motor oil and very little in between.
I eased up to the pump closest to the building, got out, swiped my card, and started the fill.
"Lancaster, ain't it?"
I startled at the voice that came from behind me.
When I spun around, Wyatt Cole was leanin' against the hood of his white dually. Hat sittin' low. Hands in the pockets of his jeans. He hadn't been there when I got here. Or maybe he had. Maybe I was so far in my own head, I hadn't even noticed.
"Funny thing," Wyatt said, "runnin' into you out here."
I kept my eyes on the pump. Numbers rollin'. "Yeah," I drawled. "Funny how that works in a town with one gas station."
He didn't respond to that. Just pushed off the hood of his truck and moved a few feet closer. Not close enough to be a thing yet. Just closer. Like he had all the time in the world and intended to use it.
"You been keepin' her busy," he said. Not a question. Not quite an accusation. Just a statement of fact, the way you'd note the weather.
I didn't answer.
"She work for you? On your place?" Another drift. Still casual. "Or is it the other way around."
"You got a point somewhere in there?"
"Just makin' conversation." The smile was in his voice, but I still hadn't looked at him. "Man sees somethin' of his showin' up in a town he don't recognize, he gets curious."
Something of his.
The pump ticked.
I kept my hand on the nozzle and took a very quick, very private inventory of what I actually knew about this man.
His size. Whether he was the kind to swing first or talk until he didn't have to.
Whether the easy voice meant anything or was just the surface of somethin' I hadn't seen the bottom of yet.
Not enough.
That was the honest answer.
I didn't know nearly enough.
I looked up. He'd drifted again while I was thinking. Close now. Close enough that steppin' back would mean somethin' and steppin' forward would mean somethin' else entirely, and neither option was one I was prepared to take.
"She ain't yours," I said. Kept my voice even. "Ain't been for a long time. Might be time you figured that out."
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he laughed. Low and unhurried, like I'd said somethin' genuinely amusing.
"That's real sweet," he said. "You believe that?"
"I know it."
"Huh." He tilted his head, those flat black eyes movin' over me with the patience of a man takin' a measurement. "See, thing is—don't matter much what you know. Don't matter what she told you, or what she thinks." A pause. Just long enough. "Some things don't get to be renegotiated."
The words landed and sat there.
I looked at him straight then. Took him in full. The smile. The eyes that had nothin' behind them that resembled warmth. The absolute, unhurried certainty of a man who had never once in his life considered that he might not get what he came for.
"I'd think real careful," I said, "about what you're insinuatin'."
He smiled wider. "I ain't insinuatin' a thing."
A set of headlights swung into the lot.
Wyatt's gaze tracked it—just a flick, quick and automatic—and I caught him reset. The way a horse sets its feet when somethin' new walks up—not givin' ground, just figurin' what it's dealin' with.
An old truck groaned to a stop behind Wyatt's dually. Door swung open.
"Well, hell." Hank squinted his cloudy eye against the overhead light, toothpick workin' the corner of his mouth. He looked at me. Looked at Wyatt. Back at me. "Drive-in's two towns over if you boys are lookin' for somewhere to stare at each other. Some of us got places to be."
He planted himself with his hands on his hips, ready and willin' to wait this shitstorm out.
Wyatt held my eyes one beat longer than comfortable. Then he stepped back, smooth and unbothered, like the last five minutes had been a perfectly pleasant exchange.
"Appreciate the talk." He turned toward his truck. Got the door open. One boot on the running board.
Didn't look back.
"I'll be seein' you tomorrow."
He got in. Rolled out slow. One lazy hand on the wheel, taillights bleedin' red down the highway until they disappeared.
Hank inched up to the pump just as mine came to a stop.
"Friend of yours?" Hank said behind me, already feedin' his card into the machine.
I pulled the nozzle free. Hung it back on the pump. My hand wasn't shaking. I made a note of that.
"Not even close."
Hank grunted. Glanced toward the road. His eyes narrowed before he schooled his features and turned back to the pump. "Drive safe," he said. Like maybe he meant it.
I got in my truck.
I didn't drive toward the house. Not yet.
I drove the back roads for a while. Windows down.
The summer air movin' through the cab and Wyatt's voice tryin' to loop—don't matter what she told you—and me lettin' it loop because the trick was the same as handlin' a green horse.
You didn't fight it. You didn't argue with it. You just outlasted it.
Calvin had been doin' it for years.
I could do it for one night.
The drive was empty when I got home. Her truck wasn't there. Just the porch light flickerin' the way it always did and the boarded window on the upstairs bedroom and Cat's little silhouette in the kitchen window where she liked to sit when she was waitin' on somebody to come home.
I let myself in through the back.
Cat was on the floor.
Not in the kitchen window anymore. On the floor, in the middle of the room, sittin' up like she'd been expectin' me. She looked at me when the door closed behind me. One meow, short and pointed. Then she walked over and wound around my ankles.
I didn't move.
After a while, I slid down the cabinets and sat on the floor.
Cat climbed into my lap.
She was warm and small and she purred like a beat-up engine. I put my hand on her back and closed my eyes and tried not to hear his voice.
Don't matter what she told you.
Some things don't get renegotiated.
I let 'em loop.
Let 'em run the length of whatever rope they had until they reached the end of it. They wore themselves out eventually. Everythin' did, given enough time and a surface to beat itself against.
I sat on the kitchen floor with Cat in my lap until I couldn't tell if it was twenty minutes or two hours.
At some point I heard tires on gravel.
The porch boards creaked. The back door opened. Her boots on the floor—tired steps, the kind that came at the end of a long day. She stopped in the kitchen doorway.
The overhead light didn't come on. She didn't flip it.
"Brody."
I looked up.
She was a silhouette in the doorway with the hall light behind her. Couldn't see her face.
"Hey."
"Why are you on the floor?"
"Cat was lonely."
She crossed the kitchen and lowered herself to a crouch in front of me—close enough that her knees bumped mine. Cat didn't move. Just watched her from my lap with that unbothered expression.
Calvin reached out and scratched behind Cat's ear.
She didn't look at me.
"Long day?" she asked.
"Yeah. You?"
"Yeah."
We sat there.
I didn't tell her.
Didn't tell her about The Bar. Didn't tell her what he'd said. Didn't tell her about the loop or the trick of outlastin' it.
Didn't tell her any of it.
Just sat there and let her scratch behind Cat's ear in the dark.
A few heartbeats later, her hand moved—slow, careful, like she was approachin' a spooked horse—and settled on top of mine where it was restin' on Cat's back.
Just that.
She didn't say anything.
I didn't either.
But her hand stayed on mine, and Cat purred, and the fridge hummed, and outside the cicadas did what cicadas do, and eventually Calvin said, "Come to bed."
"Yeah."
She stood up. Held her hand out.
I took it.
Cat protested, spilled out of my lap onto the floor, stalked off toward the living room with her tail in the air.
Calvin led me upstairs without lettin' go of my hand.
We got in bed.
She curled against my chest, her head under my chin.
First time she'd touched me in days.
I closed my eyes and held on.
Didn't sleep for a long time.
But I held on.