She disappears down the hall. I hear the bathroom cabinet open and close.
She comes back with two aspirin and a glass of water. Sets them down on the counter in front of me without a word. Then her hand comes to cup my jaw. Light. Easy.
“Poor baby,” she murmurs, smiling. “This'll take the edge off all that whiskey.”
I keep my eyes on the aspirin. If I look up at her right now, from this distance, with her hand on me and her body this close, I'm going to kiss her. It's that simple and that catastrophic.
She straightens. Takes her hand away. Turns back to thecoffee pot, robe slipping off one shoulder, like nothing happened.
I take the aspirin.
It'll take the edge off the whiskey, sure enough.
Two aspirin won't do a damn thing for the ache of wanting her.
Chapter 17
Colors
WALKER
The evening is the kind that makes you understand why people never leave Montana. Why I was so stupid to ever leave myself.
The sun is gilding the fields and fence posts and mountain peaks. The lupine along the fence row has gone that deep June purple. Above the mountains the sky is fading from cobalt to pink to something closer to copper.
I think of blue eyes. Rosy cheeks. Copper hair.
Sadie’s colors.
Like my whole world is painted with shades of her.
Jonah is already in the yard when Sadie comes down the porch steps, crouched at the edge of the fence row in his boots and his battered cowboy hat, very serious about the ladybugs crawling along the grass. He’s decided to abandon paleontology in favor of being a bug scientist instead.
I'm leaning against the hood of the truck and I see her before he does.
She's in a cornflower-blue sundress, simple and lovely. Embroidered cowboy boots underneath it. Her red hair flowing down her back. Nothing complicated about it, but I’m still transfixed.
Sadie hasn't seen me looking. She's facing out toward the mountains, one hand shading her eyes, and the late afternoon light catches the line of her collarbone, the bare curve of her shoulder.
For one moment, I let myself imagine it. Her living here, for real. Forever.
Not as the nanny.
As the mother to my child.
As my wife.
Ridiculous fucking fantasy. She’s made it clear she’s leaving at summer’s end.
I make myself look away before she catches me at it.
The days since that midnight in the pool have looked exactly like the days before. Coffee waiting when she comes downstairs. Dinner at six. Jonah between us like a buffer and a blessing both. Careful distance that neither of us is acknowledging.
Normal. Fine. Absolutely fine.
“Absolutely fine,” of course, being my biggest lie since I told Carter Caldwell I was working on new material.
Jonah spots her then. He straightens up, turns around, and presents her with a single stem of purple lupine, slightly bent from his fist.
