13. Something Happened Somewhere Else #2
He looked younger there, with shorter hair, but the walk was the same.
Harris let the film run.
New York. Argentina. Iceland. Festivals in cities Harris had never visited and airports Jay probably moved through without thinking about them.
A slight unease that had begun developing the night before returned, less easy to dismiss.
Harris didn’t want Jay’s life. That part was simple. He liked waking up knowing what the day required. He liked understanding the land beneath his boots and being useful to people whose names he knew.
What he didn’t know was how any of that looked from the other direction.
How he looked from the other direction.
The thought irritated him. Harris had never needed a visiting filmmaker’s opinion to establish whether his life mattered, and he did not intend to start now.
Five minutes later, an Icelandic fisherman told Jay that everyone from the city assumed staying meant he had never considered leaving.
Jay asked, “Did you?”
The man laughed and told him to mind his own business.
Jay laughed too, and the film moved on without explaining the answer or turning it into a lesson about courage or fear or roots.
Harris watched the next several minutes with his arms folded over his chest.
If Jay thought people who stayed in one place were simple, he hid it remarkably well.
That put Harris more at ease.
Not entirely.
Enough.
His phone buzzed on the table just as the credits began.
Navarro: I can confirm the motel bed is worse than the line cabin bunk
Harris couldn’t help the tingle of excitement at seeing Jay’s name light up his phone screen.
Harris: Bullshit.
The reply appeared almost immediately.
Navarro: you’re welcome to come verify…
Harris stared at that one long enough for the screen to dim.
Harris: You wish.
Navarro: missed opportunity
A laugh almost escaped. Harris caught it, put the phone down, and carried his empty bottle toward the sink.
It buzzed again before he reached it.
Navarro: tell Red i said hi
Harris leaned one hip against the counter and typed with his thumb.
Harris: Tell him yourself Sunday.
* * *
Saturday passed slowly enough that Harris stopped pretending he wasn’t counting the time. He worked, ate dinner with the family, went back to the cabin, and discovered that four days felt considerably longer when he knew exactly who wasn’t there.
By Sunday afternoon, the crew’s return had become a fact he knew without admitting he’d tracked it.
Evan mentioned at breakfast that they’d finished the final interview before noon, and Harris knew the drive took a little over three hours because he had driven those roads often enough. That was all.
Sometime after four, he replaced a stretch of western-boundary wire that could easily have waited another week. The job happened to keep him within sight of the ranch road, and Harris saw no reason to examine that coincidence too closely.
At five twenty-three, he recognized the sound of the production SUV before it appeared through the cottonwoods. Relief loosened something beneath his ribs before the vehicle had even reached the yard, so sudden and physical that he stopped with the coil of old wire still hanging from one hand.
Then the passenger door opened and Jay climbed out.
Dust marked the knees of his jeans, his hair was half falling out of its tie, and he looked tired enough that Harris could see it from across the yard.
None of that stopped Harris’s body from remembering, with humiliating efficiency, exactly what Jay’s mouth felt like or the sounds he had made with Harris’s hands on him.
Jesus Christ.
Jay stretched both arms over his head while Priya said something over the roof, exposing a narrow strip of skin above his waistband that Harris had no business noticing from this distance. Then Jay dropped his arms, turned toward the shed, and caught him looking.
His expression changed immediately. Some of the fatigue left his face, and the corner of his mouth lifted in a small smile that was unmistakably for Harris.
Harris wanted to go straight over to him.
He nearly did. Then the rest of the yard seemed to snap back into focus around Jay: Walt beside the barn talking to Noah, Eli unloading equipment, Priya only a few feet away, one of the lodge staff already crossing toward the SUV to help.
Anyone could look over and see him standing there.
Worse, they could see how he was looking at Navarro—like Harris had spent four days waiting for him to come back, like he knew exactly what was under those clothes now and was thinking about it in the middle of the goddamn yard.
His hand tightened around the wire as Jay started toward him.
Harris’s first instinct was still to meet him halfway. His second was the considerably more familiar urge to make sure nobody could tell that.
He forced his expression back under control, probably too hard, because Jay slowed after only a few steps. The smile faded from his face, replaced by the slightest crease between his brows.
Shit.
Harris had been trying not to give himself away and had managed to make Jay wonder whether he wanted him there at all.
Priya called Jay’s name from behind the SUV. He glanced back, then looked at Harris once more as if waiting for something Harris had no idea how to give him with half the ranch standing nearby.
Before Harris could figure it out, Jay turned toward the equipment cases.
Harris bent to gather the rest of the wire and kept his attention on the ground, annoyed with himself now for an entirely different reason.
Four days wanting Jay back, and within thirty seconds of getting him there, Harris had already made it complicated.