Chapter Two
Pain came first, arriving before breath, thought, or memory.
It waited for Flint Callahan in the dark, already buried deep in his ribs, and when he tried to move, it shook him until the world split open.
He tried to curse. Only a rasp came out.
A hand pressed hard against his side. Firm hands held him down while fire threaded through his ribs. A man’s hands, holding him down while fire threaded through his ribs and belly.
“Stay still,” a voice ordered.
Flint knew that voice. Or thought he did.
Voices could lie when fever had a man by the throat.
His mind dragged sounds out of old places and placed them in the dark around him. Samuel calling him in from the north pasture. Ruth humming over bread dough. Wyatt laughing when Flint’s colt threw him into the creek.
Daisy's whisper of his name lingered longer than the others.
He fought toward it anyway.
“Daisy,” he tried to say.
The dark folded over him.
He was eight years old again, barefoot in the mud behind a livery stable, his stomach gnawing at itself and his hands blue with cold.
“Boy.”
He'd learned not to answer too quickly. A boy alone had to know whether a voice meant bread or a beating.
Samuel Callahan stood beside a wagon, broad hat low over his brow, rain dripping from the brim. Flint remembered the man’s boots first. Good leather. Muddy from work. Not polished like a banker’s, not cracked and mean like the men who kicked stray dogs from saloon steps.
“You got a name?” Samuel asked.
Flint had almost lied. Names could be used to drag a man’s body back to where he'd run from.
“Flint,” he said at last.
“Flint what?”
He had no answer worth giving.
Samuel had studied him for a long moment, then looked toward the wagon where Ruth sat with a shawl pulled close around her shoulders. She didn't look frightened of him. That had puzzled him. Women usually clutched their purses or children when they saw a dirty orphan too close.
Ruth had held out a wrapped biscuit. “Come here, Flint,” she said softly.
He'd gone because hunger was stronger than pride.
At first, he had only intended to eat the biscuit, thank them if he could manage it, and disappear before anyone thought too hard about keeping him. He certainly hadn't expected Samuel and Ruth Callahan to become the closest thing he would ever have to parents.
Another bolt of pain tore through him.
Flint’s eyes opened, or he thought they did. The world swam gold and black. A lamp somewhere. A ceiling he didn't know. A man bent over him with shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows.
Nathan Whitmore.
Flint’s body went rigid. Panic hit him all at once. He was in the wrong place.
He'd been in an alley. No, behind the freight shed. Amos’s men had caught him near the stock pens. Three of them. Maybe four. Boots and fists and the dull flash of a knife. He remembered one of them laughing when he had gone down.
Should’ve kept your mouth shut, Callahan.
Then mud. Blood in his mouth. The smell of coal smoke. Hooves passing somewhere far away.
He'd tried to rise at least once. Perhaps twice. The details were blurred. He only remembered the agony that followed and the helpless certainty that his body was no longer capable of obeying him.
Nathan Whitmore was stitching him beneath the lamplight with brutal efficiency.
Flint tried to lift his head. Agony slammed him flat.
Nathan’s hand struck his shoulder. “Move again, and you’ll tear open what little I’ve managed to close.”
Flint dragged air through his teeth. “Where...”
“Quiet.”
He hated the command. Hated the weakness that made obedience his only choice. Then he heard cloth rustle nearby. A woman.
His heart lurched so hard, pain answered from every broken place inside him.
No.
No, not here.
Beneath the blood and carbolic, he caught lavender and beeswax, with just enough rose oil to remind him of Daisy. Flint tried again to turn his head.
“Nathan,” a woman said, low and strained, “he's awake.”
The voice was older than in his dreams. Softer in some ways. Guarded in others. It carved him open.
For three years, he'd taught himself not to hear that voice in every quiet room.
Not to turn when a woman laughed behind him in the street.
Not to remember Daisy Whitmore as she'd been at twenty-three, golden hair coming loose in the Wyoming wind, smile bright enough to make a fool believe he could have a future.
He'd nearly managed it.
“Daisy,” he whispered.
She didn’t move toward him. Didn’t touch him.
Nathan leaned over him again. “Drink.”
Something bitter touched Flint’s mouth. He turned away, but Nathan pinched his jaw with ruthless efficiency.
“Laudanum,” Nathan said. “Unless you prefer to feel every stitch.”
Flint swallowed because he'd no strength left to refuse. The room drifted sideways.
Daisy didn't speak.
That silence followed him down.
***
He was fifteen, standing in the Callahan barn with a currycomb in one hand and blood on his knuckles. Wyatt was beside him, breathing hard, one eye swelling shut.
“You hit first,” Wyatt said.
“You called me stray.”
“I was angry.” Wyatt spat to one side.
“So was I.”
Wyatt grinned despite the split in his lip. “You fight mean.”
“You talk mean.”
Samuel had found them that way. Flint remembered waiting for the order to pack his few things, waiting for proof that chosen sons could be unchosen when they caused enough trouble.
Instead, Samuel looked at Wyatt. “You call your brother stray again, you’ll muck every stall alone for a month.”
Brother.
The word hit Flint harder than the fight had.
Wyatt’s grin faded. “Yes, sir.”
Then Samuel looked at Flint. “And you. Family doesn’t mean you throw punches every time hurt gets ahead of your common sense.”
Flint had stared at the dirt.
Family.
He wanted it so badly he couldn't bear to trust it.
Years later, Daisy had looked at him under a cottonwood tree and made him want something even more dangerous.
Daisy had made him want a home of his own.
***
He surfaced to voices.
“…fever’s rising,” Nathan said.
“Is there anything more we can do?”
Daisy.
Flint kept his eyes closed.
Keeping his eyes closed felt cowardly, but he did it anyway. He wasn't ready to see Daisy again, not after three years of believing she had chosen a life without him. For a few stolen moments, he could pretend she wasn't standing only a few feet away.
He wanted to see her. He wanted to ask why. He wanted to demand how a woman could let a man plan a whole life around her, then vanish like a candle blown out in the dark.
He wanted to beg her to say his name as if it still meant something.
“Bring more water,” Nathan said.
Her steps moved carefully enough to catch his attention.
Careful steps. Measured. A hand brushing furniture as she passed. Too deliberate for a woman who knew her own parlor.
Nathan’s hand pressed against his brow.
Flint forced his eyes open.
The doctor’s face sharpened, then swam. Nathan Whitmore still looked at him the same way he had years ago, carefully, as though weighing him for flaws.
Lying battered on Nathan's sofa, carrying the scars of too many bad choices, he felt exposed beneath that scrutiny in a way Amos's fists had never could.
Now Nathan looked older. Harder.
“You shouldn't have brought me here,” Flint rasped.
“I didn't have the luxury of asking your preference.”
“Where's here?” Flint asked.
Nathan’s mouth clenched.
Flint already knew.
Fear moved through him, colder than pain. He uttered a single word. “No.”
Nathan said nothing.
Flint tried to sit up.
The room exploded white.
When he came back to himself, Nathan was swearing, and Daisy was in the room. She was near him. Too near. Her breath caught as if his pain had hurt her, too.
It was a lie, his bitterness whispered. If she could hurt for you, she wouldn't have left.
“I cannot stay here,” Flint forced out.
Nathan shoved him back against the pillows. “You are not in a position to give orders.”
Flint looked toward the blur of Daisy’s shape. “Tell him.”
She went still.
“Tell him I can’t stay here.”
Her voice came after a pause. “You cannot even lift your head.”
The words were sensible. They were also cool enough to flay him.
Flint let out something almost like a laugh. “Still practical, Daisy?”
Nathan’s hand tightened on the bandage at his side. Warning.
Flint ignored it. “I remember that about you.”
No answer.
He turned his face away because he could bear Nathan’s contempt, and Amos’s fists, and the knife wound burning along his ribs, but he couldn't bear Daisy’s silence.
He couldn’t endure her silence again.
The fever took him before pride could hold him up.
This time, memory came sweet.
Daisy, in a blue dress at the Callahan spring dance, her hand in his, her laughter startled when he spun her too fast.
“I’ll fall,” she'd said.
“No, you won’t.”
“You sound mighty sure of yourself, Mr. Callahan.”
“I am when it comes to you.”
She had blushed in the lantern light.
Later, she'd stood with him outside the barn, music spilling faintly behind them. He'd been twenty-eight and foolish with hope. She'd touched the scar near his jaw, the one he'd earned breaking a green horse when he was seventeen.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Not anymore.”
“And this one?” Her fingers found the old mark near his temple.
“No.”
“This one?” Daisy asked.
“That’s not a scar. That’s just my face.”
She'd laughed, then leaned close enough that her breath touched his mouth.
He'd kissed her that night.
After that kiss, he’d spent weeks believing nothing could touch them.
A month later, she was gone.
No proper goodbye. No explanation. Only word that she'd left town after an illness and didn't wish to see him.
He'd gone to Nathan. He remembered that, too. Standing on the porch with his hat in his hands, asking where Daisy was.
“She doesn't want you here,” Nathan had said.
Flint hadn't believed him.
Then Daisy herself had sent no word.
Belief had come slowly after that, and with it the old lesson from childhood: wanting made a man weak. Loving gave others a knife and showed them where to cut…
***
He woke to morning light he couldn't welcome. His mouth tasted of medicine and blood. Every breath pulled sharp through his ribs. His body was a ruin, heavy, hot, bound in linen. He lay on a sofa too short for his frame, covered with a quilt that smelled faintly of lavender and smoke.
For a moment, he stared at the ceiling. He wasn’t in the alley, or Amos’s back room… but this might have been just as bad.
Then he heard someone moving across the parlor.
Daisy.
Flint watched through narrowed eyes. Her hair was pinned back, though a few pale strands had slipped loose near her cheek.
She wore a plain morning dress, no frills, no vanity, only soft fabric and an apron tied neatly at her waist. She looked older than the girl he'd loved. Time had quieted her, but it hadn’t diminished her beauty.
As if life had folded itself around her and pressed.
She stopped beside the table and reached out.
Flint watched her hand miss the cup by an inch. “Daisy.”
Her hand froze. She didn't look at him. She merely turned toward him, but her face was angled a little past his shoulder.
“You’re awake,” she said.
His chest ached. “Seems so.”
“I will fetch Nathan.”
She started away.
“Don’t.”
She stopped.
He hated how much that small obedience hurt.
“Look at me,” he said.
Her fingers curled against her skirt. “I need to tell Nathan you’re awake.”
“I said, look at me.” The words came harsher than he intended, but fear had gotten its teeth into him now. Fear, and suspicion, and something too fragile to name.
Daisy lifted her chin. Her eyes met the space near his face. They were still blue. Pale, clear blue, though something about them seemed clouded in a way he didn't remember. Beautiful eyes. Distant eyes.
Her eyes were fixed somewhere just beyond him.
Flint forgot to breathe. He saw, all at once, the measured steps. Her hand on the wall. The missed cup. The way Nathan had said she didn't need to see this. The way Daisy had laughed bitterly and answered, I will never see this.
The words had floated through fever. He'd thought them part of a dream.
They were not.
“Daisy,” he said, and this time her name broke. His heart began to pound, each beat striking pain through his ribs.
“When?” he asked.
She said nothing.
“When did it happen?”
Her face changed. Not much. Daisy had learned control, it seemed. But he saw her swallow. “I’ll get Nathan.”
“Daisy.”
“I’ll get Nathan,” she repeated, and this time there was iron beneath the softness.
She left before he could stop her.
Flint lay rigid, staring after her.
Blind.
Daisy was blind.
The word didn't fit inside him. It tore through every memory and altered it. Daisy laughing beneath the cottonwoods. Daisy riding across the pasture with her hair streaming behind her. Daisy reading aloud by Ruth’s kitchen stove while rain tapped the windows. Daisy leaving.
His stomach turned.
Had that been why? Had she been ill? Hurt? Had she lost her sight and shut him out while he stood outside her door like a fool, believing she no longer wanted him?
No.
Anger pushed back against the sympathy rising in him. Instead, she'd let him think he was nothing to her.
Nathan entered a moment later, carrying his black medical bag. Daisy followed, but she remained near the archway.
Too far away.
Nathan looked between them once and sighed. “Don't start.”
Flint’s gaze cut to him. “You knew.”
Nathan set the bag down. “I'm her brother.”
“You knew, and you let me...”
“I let you what?” Nathan’s voice lowered. “Bleed on my sofa? Nearly die in my parlor? You’re welcome.”
Flint tried to push himself up. Pain crushed him. Daisy made a small sound before she stopped herself.
He heard it.
So did Nathan.
“Lie still,” Nathan ordered.
Flint sank back, shaking with rage and weakness. “How long?”
Nathan looked toward Daisy.
She didn't move.
“How long?” Flint demanded.
“Three years,” she said.
The same three years since she'd vanished from his life. Flint shut his eyes. He didn't want the pieces to fit. He didn’t want to think too hard about what those lost years meant. Pride had wasted them. Fear had wasted them. And beneath all of that waited a question he couldn't bear.
Why was he not worth the truth?