Banshee
I wake before she does.
Early light. The kind that comes through the window of my room on the ranch like it's asking permission—thin, warm, gold at the edges.
Mornings in Texas have this quality, this pause between the dark and the heat, where the world holds still long enough for a man to hear himself think.
Bex is beside me.
On her stomach, face turned toward me, one arm underneath the pillow and the other stretched across the mattress into the space where my body was.
Her black hair is loose—out of its braid for once, spilling across the white pillowcase in a dark wave.
Her back rises and falls with her breathing.
Slow. Even.
The breathing of a woman who feels safe enough to sleep deeply in someone else's bed.
I'm propped on one elbow, watching her. I've been watching her for a while.
Not in a way that's creepy—in a way that's necessary.
Like looking at something long enough to convince yourself it's real.
That the warmth next to you isn't a dream.
That the woman breathing in your bed will still be there when the light finishes crossing the floor.
My left hand is on the sheet between us. The ring catches the light.
I've been twisting it. Not the unconscious fidget I've been doing for years—the habitual rotation that means nothing and everything, the way a man checks for his wallet or his keys, confirming the constant.
This is different. This is deliberate.
My thumb on the band, turning it slowly, feeling the weight of it, the groove it's worn into my finger over years of never taking it off.
Not even to shower. Not even to sleep. Not even when my hands were in another woman's hair and my mouth was on her skin and the metal pressed against her body like a reminder neither of us asked for.
I'm not fidgeting. I'm deciding.
The ring is a plain gold band. Nothing fancy.
Rose picked it out—laughed at the bigger ones, the ones with engravings and diamonds and fancy settings. "You're going to be banging your hands on motorcycles and fence posts," she'd said. "Get something that can take a beating."
So I did. A band that's survived everything I've survived.
I twist it again.
The groove underneath is pale—a tan line, a ghost ring, the permanent impression of a promise made in Earl's barn on a Sunday afternoon when Rose wore boots under her dress and I couldn't say my vows without my voice cracking.
Bex stirs.
Her fingers flex against the sheet.
Her eyes open—slow, unfocused, the soft confusion of waking in an unfamiliar place.
Then she sees me and her focus sharpens.
