Page 47 of Final Drive

“Know what she needs.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You know better than I do.”

There’s something under that I don’t get a chance to ask about. Cameron turns toward the house, helmet hanging from two fingers, and Jackson follows him inside.

I stay beside the truck for another minute.

Reese doesn’t need somebody with the right answer. She’s had eight men throwing answers at her since the reporter walked into the boathouse.

Maybe she needs somebody who isn’t trying to fix anything.

Inside, everybody scatters the way we do after a bad day. Gray takes the study and starts making calls. Tyler sets up at the dining table, with Eli reading over his shoulder while Zane walks the length of the living room with nowhere to put himself. Beckett is on the phone with Bennett in the kitchen. Cameron disappears somewhere downstairs.

Jackson lasts about three minutes.

I watch him go up after her and get a closed door for his trouble. He stands in the hall with his hand up to knock, then lowers it and comes back down.

“She okay?” Zane asks.

Jackson gives him a look.

“Right. Stupid question.”

Jackson drops onto the end of the couch and leans forward with his elbows on his knees. His leg starts bouncing almost immediately.

Nobody else goes up.

That’s the part that gets me. Every man in this house wants to. I can see it every time somebody glances toward the stairs. But Gray told her in the boathouse that nothing happens unless she wants it, and apparently we’re all taking that seriously enough to sit down here and hate it.

I give her twenty minutes.

Long enough to breathe, not long enough to get anywhere bad.

Then I go to the kitchen and make sweet tea.

Zane watches me dump sugar into the pitcher. “That’s obscene.”

“You’re from New Jersey. Your opinion doesn’t count.”

“I’m from Pennsylvania.”

“Somehow worse.”

He opens his mouth, thinks better of it and looks toward the stairs instead.

“You going up?”

“Eventually.”

“Tell her I’m not freaking out.”

“You’ve walked about three miles without leaving the living room.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t freaking out. I said tell her.”

“I’ll pass it along.”