42. “It’s about as bad as it sounds.”
“IT’S ABOUT AS BAD AS IT SOUNDS.”
HALE
Ihad my half of it worked out before I hit the county line.
Yasmine would come in hot. She’d tell me I was reckless, and she’d be right, so I’d let her get all the way to the end without interrupting.
I ran it three or four different ways on that road and had an answer for every version of it I could think up, but it all boiled down to the one thing that mattered.
I’d do it again tomorrow.
Dolores was on the porch rail when I pulled in. She’d given up on the coop back in the spring and taken to sleeping out there like she had appointments. She watched me climb the steps.
“Don’t start,” I told her.
Inside, I ran cold water over my right hand. The skin was split across the middle two knuckles, gravel ground into the cuts, but it was nothing that wouldn’t close on its own.
I wasn’t sorry.
My daddy raised me a certain way. A man puts his hands on a woman in front of me, I put my hands on him. It was simple math. He taught it to me in a driveway when I was nine years old, and it stuck.
I ran the water until my knuckles went numb, then a while past that.
The front door opened, then shut again softly.
I shut off the faucet and waited for it to start.
Yasmine came into the kitchen in leggings and an old sweatshirt with somebody else’s college across the chest. The satin bonnet she slept in was still on her head. No purse.
“Morning.” I reached for a dish towel and wrapped it around my hand.
Her gaze dropped to my knuckles. “So it’s true.”
“Depends what you heard.”
“You and Annie stole Shaun’s truck, lured him to a biker bar, and jumped him.”
“We didn’t jump him.”
“Oh, good. Not as batshit as I thought then.” She lifted a brow. “You want to tell me it’s not as bad as it sounds?”
I had about nine things lined up and ready, but I picked the honest one. “It’s about as bad as it sounds.”
She nodded, like she’d expected that answer.
Then she crossed the kitchen.
I braced for it.
She took hold of my wrist and turned my hand beneath the light.
“Sit down.”
“Yaz.”
“Sit down, Hale.”
I sat.
She ran the tap until the water warmed, wet a clean rag, and started working the gravel from beneath the split skin.
She did it carefully, without saying a word.
Somewhere in there, I realized I was sitting in my own kitchen with my heart going like I’d run up on something in the dark.
I couldn’t have said why. Except I’d built the whole drive home around a fight, and she wouldn’t give me one.
“You’re not yelling,” I said.
“Not your mother, Hale. Why would I yell.”
“I’d take it if you did.”
“I know you would.” She turned my hand toward the window. “Also know you’re smart enough to know it was reckless as hell.”
She worked another minute before speaking again.
“I got in the car ready to scream at you. All the way ready.” Her fingers moved along the outside of my hand. “Somewhere around the Dollar General, I was picking my opening line.”
“What’d you come up with?”
“Nothing.” The rag moved over my knuckles. “I kept turning over what you did, and it kept coming out the same way.”
A piece of her hair had come loose under the bonnet. I wanted to push it back and didn’t.
She kept her eyes on my hand. “You took my side.”
“That’s not a hard thing to do,” I said.
“Hale.” Her voice softened. “You know damn well that hasn’t been my experience.”
I covered her hand with mine before she could go back to cleaning the cut.
She looked up then.
“You didn’t ask anybody anything,” she said. “You didn’t check with one soul. You just went.”
“Baby.”
“And I liked it.” Her mouth twitched, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “A part of me has been walking around since four this morning pleased as hell. Shaun has had that coming since he was seventeen, and somebody finally handed it to him. I’d be lying if I said I was sorry about that.”
She looked down at our joined hands and brushed her thumb carefully beside the cut. “But he’s not worth you.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t say okay yet.” She met my gaze. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Who sits with your daddy on Tuesday?”
I went still.
“If that deputy had decided differently last night,” she said. “Or if Shaun had come at you sideways with a gun or a knife, who drives out to that park?”
I’d planned an answer for every argument.
But not that one.
“Nobody,” she said. “He just sits out there. And he wouldn’t even know what he was waiting for.”
“Fuck,” I said.
I hadn’t thought about Harry. Not once. I’d gotten in that car and driven straight toward trouble without him crossing my mind.
“Fuck,” I said again.
“Hey.” She moved before I could sink any deeper into it, pushing herself into my lap. “You got distracted for one night in eleven years. That’s not the sin you’re about to make it. I’m not saying this to make you feel bad. I’m saying this because I need you to come home.”
My arms went around her. Her hands came up to my face.
“Just…don’t do it again.”
She said it softly, not even asking, really. And Lord, I wanted to hand it to her. Sitting there in my own kitchen, holding her close with two weeks left on the clock, I wanted to give her that more than I’d wanted most things in my life.
“I won’t do that again.”
Her hands softened against my face. I kept going before the relief could settle. “I won’t be reckless again. I’ll be careful with myself. I can promise you that.”
“What—”
“I’ll think about my dad and I’ll think about you. I’ll think about what happens after.”
Her eyes searched mine.
“But I’m not going to promise I’ll look the other way if somebody hurts you. And I’m still not sorry I chose you.”
Her mouth trembled. She didn’t say it was okay. She didn’t say it wasn’t. She just nodded once and put her face in my neck.
Morning grayed the window over the sink.
In two weeks, Yasmine would be gone.
But for now, she stayed.
I didn’t let go.