“How many months?” Lee’s voice is steady. His hand on my knee is not.
“They don’t like to put numbers on it.” Earl sips his coffee. “I told Dr. Reeves I’ve been planning around numbers my whole life—rainfall, cattle weight, market prices—and I’d appreciate the courtesy of a straight answer.”
“What did he say?”
“Six to twelve. Could be more. Could be less.” Earl looks out at the pasture.
The bay is out there—Lee’s rescue, sound and strong now, running the fence line with his head up and his stride even.
A rescued thing finding a home. “I’m not afraid of dying, Lee. I’m afraid of leaving loose ends.”
Lee’s jaw works.
I can feel the effort of his control—the muscles in his leg tense under my hand, the held breath, the practiced stillness of a man who has lost people before and knows that falling apart in front of them isn’t useful.
“There are no loose ends,” Lee says. Quiet. Certain. “The ranch is protected. The legal work is done. Brothers rotate through every week. And Bex is here.”
Earl looks at us.
At Lee’s bare left hand on my knee.
At the way I’m leaning into Lee’s shoulder without thinking about it, the way two people lean into each other when leaning has become as natural as breathing.
“Rose would have liked this,” he says. Not sadly. Warmly. The smile of a man looking at two people his daughter loved and seeing them love each other.
Earl starts to cough, and the cough goes on too long, and I watch the strongest man I’ve ever known press a handkerchief to his mouth and wait for his body to stop betraying him.
When it passes, his eyes are watery but his spine is straight.
The next couple of days are pretty uneventful, until Lee and I are in Sharp’s only tattoo shop—a concrete block building on the edge of town with a neon sign that’s missing the second T so it reads “TAT OOS” and a bearded artist named Cowboy who’s been inking the Shotgun Saints for years.
Lee goes first.
He sits in the chair and rolls up his left sleeve and tells Cowboy what he wants.
Black ink. Clean lines. Over the inside of his left forearm, where the skin is pale and soft and rarely sees the sun.
Property of Bex.
I watch Cowboy lay the stencil.
Watch the needle touch skin.
Watch Lee’s face—not flinching, not from the pain but from the weight of the act.
This is a man who wore a wedding ring for five and a half years after his wife died.
He doesn’t mark himself lightly.
Every piece of ink on his body means something, and this one means me.
When it’s done, he flexes his arm. Looks at it. The letters are stark against his skin—permanent, indelible, a declaration written in a language that the MC world understands on sight.
In this world, property doesn’t mean ownership.
It means belonging to someone. It means I chose this. I claim this. This is mine and I am hers.
My turn.
