She takes my hand, laces her fingers through mine and pulls my arm tighter around her.
My ring presses against her knuckle.
She feels it. I feel her feel it—the small hesitation, the faint tension in her fingers.
But she doesn’t let go. And neither do I.
The ring is there. It’s always there.
But tonight, against Bex’s hand, it feels less like a shackle and more like an artifact.
Something from before. A relic of a man I was, carried by the man I’m becoming.
“Stay,” I say. Into her hair. Against the back of her neck. A word I haven’t said to anyone in five and a half years because saying it means wanting someone to be there in the morning, and wanting someone to be there in the morning means admitting you can’t do this alone anymore. “Stay with me tonight.”
She turns in my arms. Looks at me. Searches my face for the thing she’s been looking for since she walked into that feed store—the proof that I’m here, that I mean it, that the man holding her isn’t going to disappear into the silence when the sun comes up.
Whatever she finds is enough.
“Okay.” She presses her mouth to my jaw. Soft. Sure. The kiss of a woman who has decided to trust. “I’ll stay.”
We get dressed and walk to my quarters, fall into my bed tangled together, too tired and too wrung out for anything except the simple, staggering intimacy of sleeping next to someone.
Her head on my chest. My hand on her hip.
The barn outside, the horses settled, the Texas night wide and dark and full of stars I haven’t looked at in years.
She falls asleep first.
Her breathing evens out, slow and deep, and the weight of her body against mine is the heaviest and lightest thing I’ve ever held. I lie awake in the dark and feel her heartbeat under my hand and I don’t think about the past.
I think about Sunday.
About Earl’s east fence.
About the bay’s hooves and Lockhart’s paper trail and the way Bex takes her coffee and the sound she makes when she laughs.
I think about the future.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Bex
The man is waiting by my truck when I come out of Earl's barn.
The light is going copper and long, the way it does when the sun drops fast and the shadows stretch like something reaching.
I've been trimming Earl's last two horses—the old sorrel and the gray broodmare who's been retired so long she's mostly a lawn ornament with opinions.
My back aches, my hands are stiff, and I'm thinking about a hot shower and the leftovers in Earl's fridge and the drive back to the compound where Lee will be waiting, because that’s what he does now.
He waits for me.
I don't register the truck at first.
Silver Dodge, clean, parked behind mine in the drive like it belongs there.
Then the man steps away from the tailgate and I stop.
