Chapter 14
Owen
Joss found me on the west bench at midmorning with his jaw already set.
I had walked the cut at gray in boots that were still damp from the river.
Melanie had looked at the water on me and not asked.
She didn’t need to. The whole company could smell Reilly if they stood downwind.
River. Cunt. My spend. I had washed in the cabin basin and put on a dry shirt and it had not mattered.
I was still half-hard from the shallows.
I had come on her back and in her mouth and pulled out of a knot that wanted in, and my body had not filed it as done.
Joss didn’t start with that.
“They still tell it wrong here,” he said.
I knew which it. Tillson Ford. Fire. My name on the report Hillsford liked. Landers wolves used the short version when they thought I couldn’t hear: Tillson let it burn. Tillson ran. Tillson sold his own.
“I know what they tell,” I said.
“Then tell it right. On this ground. In front of Huntington and the old woman and anyone who shut a door in your face yesterday.” Joss’s voice stayed low.
The eight were close enough to work and far enough not to own this.
“You put us on their cut. You sleep in their cabin. You smell like their Luna. If Hillsford writes the fire again, Landers will believe Hillsford, because you wouldn’t open your mouth. ”
“Truth used early is a match.”
“Truth used never is a grave.”
I looked at him. Joss had gotten civilians out with me. He had carried a boy who didn’t make it to the tree line. He had the right to want the story clean. He did not have the right to strike it on Reilly’s dirt while Gareth Hills was looking for a reason.
“No,” I said. “Not here. Not this week. They just put two of Hillsford’s scouts in the ground. Alexander will want blood or a wedding. I am not giving him a confession he can turn into both.”
“It isn’t a confession. It’s what happened.”
“On Hillsford paper it’s a confession.” I picked up the water skin. “You want to talk Ford, we talk it on the bench to our own. You walk it into Landers hall and you hand them a choice between me and their grain. I already know which one they pick. I watched her pick it in a yard.”
Joss’s mouth went thin. “You’re not refusing for the pack. You’re refusing because you’re in her and you don’t want the week you have.”
“Get back on the line.”
He went. He was angry enough to be useful. Angry enough to do it anyway if I didn’t watch him.
Melanie waited until he was gone. Then she stepped into the space he had left and breathed in like she wanted to spit.
“She was in the river,” she said.
“Yes.”
“She’s on your sheets. She’s on your shirt. She’s in your skin. Don’t tell me it was a patrol.”
“I’m not telling you it was a patrol.”
Melanie laughed once, no humor. “You don’t deny it. You also don’t stop. That is not a watch, Owen. That is you letting a woman use a cabin and a river so she can keep a rite and a cunt at the same time.”
“Watch your mouth.”
“Why. You won’t watch yours. You won’t watch your cock.
Huntington is one more wet boot away from putting a guard on her path.
If he does that, I am not fighting Landers wolves to get you a night in a storage room.
” She stepped closer. “Joss is not wrong about the story. He is wrong about the timing. You are wrong about everything else. If you keep opening the door and the water, Hillsford does not have to invent a scandal. They can smell it off the ridge.”
I had nothing clean to say. I went back to the cut.
Hillsford lights had shifted south. Not a crossing.
A look, longer than yesterday. I walked posts.
I did not think about Reilly’s mouth in the current.
I thought about it anyway. The cold stones under her knees.
Her hand locked around the swell so I couldn’t push it into her throat.
The way she had swallowed and stood up and called it the bond.
My cock thickened in my pants on an empty stretch of line and I had to stop behind a fir and grit my teeth until it passed.
It didn’t pass. I opened my belt and pulled myself out and came in three angry strokes onto the needles with her name in my teeth, looking at nothing, furious that a conversation about fire and grain had not killed it.
I wiped my hand. I fastened the belt. I walked.
At noon the bond spiked from the hall. Not a lie this time.
Heat. The shape of her behind a door. She was touching herself thinking about the river.
I felt the circle of her fingers and the clench that didn’t satisfy her.
My spent cock tried to rise again. I kept my hands on a fence post until the wood creaked.
Joss found me there. He looked at my face and at the post and shook his head.
“You’re going to get us killed for a woman who already threw you out.”
“I said no to the story. I didn’t say no to the job.”
“The job is not why your hand smells like that.”
I sent him west with two wolves and a line to walk that was not mine.
Evening pulled the company to the bench. Meat. Thin. Landers payment, not hall food. I ate standing. Melanie sat across the fire and watched me like I might walk toward the cabin in the middle of a sentence.
“I’m going to the cabin,” I said.
“I know.”
“Bar the path if you want. I’m still going.”
“I’m not barring the path. I’m telling you if she knocks, the answer is no until Hillsford sends whatever they’re going to send about those scouts. You can hate me for it.”
“I don’t hate you for it.”
“Then act like it.”
I went to the cabin.
The room still held river if I wanted it to. I barred the door. I sat on the bench and took my boots off and the bond sat down with me, uphill, Reilly in dry clothes that would not stay dry. I took my cock out because I was tired of pretending the fire talk had been the main event of the day.
I stroked slow. I thought about telling the Ford story in her hall.
I thought about Idony’s face. I thought about the widow shutting the door.
I thought about Reilly hearing the truth and still not taking the rite back, which was the version that scared Joss less than it scared me.
I twisted my fist over the head and spat and worked the swell and I felt her pause up the hill like she knew what I was doing.
A knock.
Not her weight. Melanie again. I shoved myself into my pants half-hard and cracked the door.
She looked at my belt. “Joss is talking to two of the eight about Ford. Not the hall. Our fire. You should be there if you want the story to stay ours.”
“I’ll come.”
“After you finish, or now.”
“Now.”
I went back to the bench fire. Joss had a stick in the coals and the younger ones listening. He shut up when he saw me.
“You want Ford,” I said, to the eight, not to the ridge.
“Here it is, and it stays here. Hillsford set the back wall. I pulled who I could. The report used my name because I was alive and the hall was not. Anyone who repeats the short version on Landers ground without my word is done with this company. We are not lighting that on someone else’s river this week. Clear.”
A few nods. Joss’s mouth stayed tight. He had wanted the bigger room. He had gotten the fire and a muzzle. It would hold for now.
Melanie walked me back as far as the cabin path.
“That was the right no,” she said. “The river was the wrong yes. I can smell her on your sheets from here. I am not washing them for you.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Owen.” She stopped. “Do not tell her the Ford story with your cock in her. Do not tell Landers in a council while you’re still wet from her. Pick a time that isn’t this. If there is a time.”
She left.
I barred the cabin. I stripped the shirt.
I lay on the bench in the dark and took myself in hand again because the talk had not done what work was supposed to do.
I thought of the river. I thought of pulling out.
I thought of her saying don’t and my body almost not doing it.
I came on my own stomach with my jaw locked and cleaned it with the dirty shirt I was going to burn in the morning.
I did not open the door when the bond tugged toward the path.
She didn’t knock. She wanted to. I felt that too. I stayed on my side of the bar with Tillson Ford in my mouth and Reilly Landers on my skin and Joss’s match unstruck, and I did not go up the hill to lay either story on her table.
No to the hall.
Yes to the river, already spent.
I was not stopping. Melanie had that right. I was only choosing which fire I would not start tonight.