"Rampage." Irish looked at him. "Your jaw absolutely does a thing."
He drank his coffee.
"She should go into town," he said finally. "She might be here a while. She should know it."
Irish nodded. Didn't smile, to his credit. "I'll tell Makenzie."
Emily came down a few minutes later and had changed into dark jeans and a soft shirt and she looked more settled than she hadsince she'd arrived. The tightness around her eyes had eased. She sat at the kitchen island and opened her kindle.
He watched her find her place in whatever she was reading, watched the expression on her face go soft and absorbed, and thought about the stack of dog-eared paperbacks the girls kept laying around. Some of them preferred their e-readers but many seemed to enjoy paperbacks more. He was constantly picking up and putting away books with bare chested men and Daddy in the title.
"What are you reading?" he asked.
She looked up. Pulled the kindle slightly toward her chest and then stopped. Lowered it.
"Romance," she said. Direct. Daring him to make something of it.
"What kind?"
"The specific kind, you know." Her face flushed red.
He held her gaze. "Is it a good Daddy book, baby?"
Something moved across her face. "Yes."
"Okay." He turned to see what was left, if anything, from that night’s dinner. If not, he’d make her a grilled cheese. Can’t go wrong with toasted bread and a good cheese pull.
After a moment, he glanced back and saw she’d gone back to reading. But her shoulders had dropped. The guarded thing around the book was gone.
Small things.
After dinner, he sent her away while he cleaned up. Rampage found her on the back porch.
She was in the chair at the far end with her blanket over her legs and her kindle in her lap, not reading. Just looking out at the back property, the tree line, dark against the early stars.
He pulled up the other chair. Sat.
"I was wondering,” she asked. “Is there a version of me, in your head, that sneaks off and never comes back?"
He thought about it. "There's a version of you," he said carefully, "that decides her own discomfort isn't worth mentioning. That handles things quietly rather than asking for help because asking feels like becoming too much of a hassle."
She was very still.
"That version," he continued, "might decide that getting her own things was a small enough task that the rules didn't need to apply to it."
"That's—" She stopped. "That's a very specific version."
"It's the version you showed me the first night. Sitting in that car, hands shaking, waiting until you absolutely couldn't before you called Chloe. Why, you came to Grand Ridge twice alone because you didn’t want to bother anyone. Which, you are damn lucky you weren’t mine when you did that foolishness."
She looked out at the tree line. A long moment.
"I don't like needing things," she said. "From people."
"I know."
"It feels like handing someone something they can drop."
"I know that too."
