Logan's hands tightened on my hips. A single pulse of pressure that communicated everything his voice didn't. Then he released me. Leaned back. His eyes opening, the blue carrying a heat that the dark kitchen couldn't cool.
"When?"
"Soon."
"Soon is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, Diego."
"Soon is all I've got right now."
He looked at me. His patience meeting my containment, the two forces pressing against each other in the space between our bodies. Then he nodded. Stood. His height bringing his face level with mine.
"Goodnight, Diego."
"Goodnight, Logan."
He walked out of the kitchen. His bare feet on the concrete, the sound fading down the corridor. The guest room door opened. Closed.
I stood in the dark kitchen with the ghost of his hands on my hips and the taste of the kiss I hadn't taken still burning on my lips.
Thirty feet. A corridor. A wall.
Soon.
I went to my room. Closed the door. Sat on the bed in the dark.
Something I'd kept locked for six years was coming loose. And for the first time, I didn't reach for the tools to hold it together.
Soon.
7
WHITFIELD
LOGAN
Iwoke at five because the ranch was still inside me.
Four years of predawn alarms had wired the rhythm so deep that even a concrete room in a Nevada compound couldn't override it. My eyes opened to a ceiling I didn't recognize, in a bed that smelled like detergent instead of cedar, and for three disoriented seconds I reached for the nightstand where my phone should have been before I remembered: the phone had been off since the bar. Nolan—the one with the glasses and the laptop—had asked me for it yesterday, said he'd see if he could strip the tracking, but warned me I'd probably need a new one altogether. The nightstand was in Montana, and the bed I was lying in belonged to a motorcycle club that had taken me in because the man down the corridor had told them to.
The man thirty feet down the corridor.
Last night came back in a slow wave. The dark kitchen. His hand on my face, the palm rough and warm, the thumb restingagainst my cheekbone. The breath I'd felt on my lips before he stopped. The wordsooncarrying more weight than any promise I'd ever been given, because promises that cost something to make were the only ones worth believing.
I got up. Dressed in the same borrowed clothes—jeans that fit, a shirt that didn't quite. Splashed water on my face from the small sink in the corner. The mirror showed shadows under my eyes, stubble thicker than I usually let it get. I thought about Compass, alone on the ranch porch with her one ear up, waiting for a truck that wasn't coming. I thought about Tomás in his long sleeves, the fear in his face when I'd offered to let him push them up. I thought about Miguel's question in the doorway of the bunkhouse, in Spanish, the disbelief in his voice when he asked if the beds were really for them.
The guilt sat heavy in my chest. Every morning it was there.
I made my way to the kitchen.
The space in the early morning was a different animal than it had been at midnight. Last night it had been dark and private. This morning it was chaos.
Irish was at the center of it. He'd commandeered the stove with the energy of someone who'd decided that breakfast was happening on his terms, his grin wide and constant, three burners going. Bacon on one, eggs on another, something involving peppers and onions on the third that was producing more smoke than seemed advisable. Two younger guys flanked him, following instructions he delivered with the cheerful authority of a general in a stained apron.
"More butter. No, more than that. Did I stutter? The pan needs to swim, gentlemen, not wade." Irish gestured with a spatula that still had egg on it. "And someone get the toast before it turns into a monument to our collective failure as human beings."
One of the prospects lunged for the toaster. Irish caught my eye from across the kitchen and the grin widened.
"Morning, ranch man. Coffee's on the counter. Eggs in five. Don't touch the peppers, those are Declan's, and he will end you."
