They got in the truck.
They took Highway 550 north, back the way they’d come.
The mountains were on their left, the valley floor stretching out to their right, and the road unwound ahead in long, familiar curves. Dustin drove with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on his thigh.
Greg sat in the passenger seat with his bandaged hands in his lap, looking out the window with open attention, as if the world were showing him something new even when it was the same stretch of highway they’d driven last week.
They didn’t talk.
Not because there was nothing to say. There was enough to say to fill every mile between here and Montrose and then some.
But the silence was comfortable.
Dustin moved his hand from his thigh to the center console. Then farther, finding Greg’s knee.
He left it there.
Greg looked down at the hand. Then up at Dustin. His expression shifted into something warm and surprised, as if affection were still a novelty he hadn’t gotten used to.
“What’s your apartment like?” he asked.
Dustin chuckled. “A disaster. I haven’t been there in weeks. There’s probably mail up to the door handle and a dead houseplant.”
“Oh.” Greg considered this. “I could organize it.”
“Absolutely not.”
“But I would enjoy it.”
“You’re not cataloguing my apartment.”
“I could just clean up a little.”
“Maybe,” Dustin allowed.
Greg’s face lit up.
“It’ll be your place too, after all,” Dustin added.
“Oh,” Greg said softly.
His hand settled over Dustin’s.
The road straightened. The canyon opened into the broader valley, the mountains falling back as the sky went wide and blue above them.
Dustin drove north.
Toward the apartment with the dead houseplant and the piled mail and the disaster that was about to become something else.
Home.
EPILOGUE
Three Weeks Later
It was a Tuesday.
Dustin had gone out for a run, and Greg was alone in the apartment with his new phone, a cup of coffee, and Valerie’s relentless curiosity.
