That's when the movement catches my eye.
Through the clinic window. Across the street.
The man. The same man. Dark hair, broad shoulders, that uneven stride that pulls something tight behind my ribs. The German Shepherd at his side, ears forward, tail low and steady. He's carrying an axe handle over one shoulder, and his jaw is set against whatever his leg is doing to him today.
I watch him cross the street and disappear around the corner of the hardware store.
I watch him for too long.
When I turn back, Nora is looking at me.
Not at the window. At me. And there's something in her expression I can't quite read. Something warm and knowing and entirely too satisfied.
"That's Rhett Hawthorne," she says. Casual. Like she's mentioning the weather. "Lives up in the mountains. Keeps to himself."
She picks an invisible piece of lint off her sleeve.
"Good man," she adds. Quieter. "Very good man."
My face is hot. My neck is hot. I am a full-body thermometer of embarrassment, and I have no reason to be because I was just looking out the window, and people look out windows all the time.
"I wasn't—" I start.
Nora smiles.
It’s the most knowing smile I’ve ever seen on a human face, containing entire volumes of information I’m not ready to process. It says I saw everything, sweetheart, and this is going to be fun.
"The soup," she says, standing and smoothing her skirt. "Don't forget the soup."
She pats my shoulder on the way out, leaving the scent of cinnamon in her wake.
I stare at the sandwich in my hands.
Rhett Hawthorne.
I take a bite and pretend my pulse isn't doing something reckless.
Through the window, the street is empty. Just mountains and sky and the faint sound of wind moving through pine trees.
I wasn't staring.
I wasn't.
Chapter 2
Rhett
The leg wakes up before I do. That's how the bad days start. Not with the alarm, not with the cold pressing through the cabin walls, but with a deep, grinding ache in my left thigh that drags me out of sleep and drops me into the dark with my teeth already clenched. I lie there for a while, staring at the ceiling beams my grandfather put up forty years ago, and I wait for the muscles to stop seizing.
Chief is on the floor beside the bed in one of his many beds around the cabin. He lifts his head when I move, ears forward, watching. He knows the difference between a good morning and a bad one. On good mornings, I swing my legs out, and he stretches and follows me to the kitchen. On bad mornings he stays close and doesn't take his eyes off me until I'm upright and moving.
Today he stays close.
I get up in pieces. Sit on the edge of the bed. Wait. Press both hands into the mattress and push to standing. The left legbuckles for half a second, and I catch myself on the nightstand, the wood biting into my palm. Chief is on his feet now, pressed against my good leg, steady. I drop a hand to his head.
“I’m all right.”
He doesn’t believe me. He’s smart enough not to.
