Page 83 of Dirty Fighter

29

Rowan

“Forget about your mom, I wouldn’t want to get on his bad side,” Ron announces as we leave the cabin and head toward the path. “Must have been weird being stuck with him. How’d he end up here, anyway?”

“There was a miscommunication. And… he’s not my brother.” I keep walking.

Ron is commenting on the damage from the storm. At the fallen limb, he lets out one of those airy whistles.

The house is behind us, windows open. Still too close.

Jason is somewhere beyond the billowing sheers. I don’t want him to have to listen. And the man who just flew halfway around the world and then spent two days cooped up in a town without power or phone service trying to get to me deserves to have a conversation in private.

Carefully, I say, “Ron, did something happen at the clinic? I just⁠—”

His hands come up in a double stop signal. “No, no. I’m sorry. I’m just sliding back into being ‘us.’ Skipping ahead when we still need to talk… and I’m guessing you didn’t get my messages since Friday.”

“No. I didn’t.”

Ron squints out at the water. “So, kind of a blindside.”

We come to the point where the path leads into the woods. If we kept walking, we’d arrive at a rock that overlooks the water and is perfectly, just barely big enough for two people to sit there thinking.

Instead, I put my hand on Ron’s arm, gently suggesting, “Here’s good, okay?”

Taking a tight breath, he nods. “Yeah, this is good.”

“Did my mother have something to do with you coming back?”

The wince says it all.

“So that’s what ‘you’re welcome’ was about.” At least, now I know there isn’t some other shoe ready to drop.

“I guess I should have led with that. But Ro, she’s not the reason I came. I told you, I couldn’t get past the feeling I made a mistake. She reached out, explained you were out here alone, packing the place up. Hinted around about how much good the funds from the sale of a property like this could do for the clinic.” He shrugs. “But that was her. Not me. I mean, I’ve met your mom. Can’t really see her parting with a single dollar of Ed’s estate, no matter what the cause.”

I sigh, shaking my head with a smile. “She always thought she had you snowed.”

He makes a noncommittal sound then meets my eyes. And I’m startled by what I see in them. Because he’s not, by nature, an overly emotional man.

Practical. Pragmatic. Polite. Yes.

There’s nothing volatile in his makeup. He’s always existed in a space of moderation as far from the polar extremes as one could get. It wasn’t indifference, exactly. He cared. He was just a man so deeply absorbed in his own priorities, I never had to worry about him watching me too closely… Picking apart my every reaction and response in search of a vulnerability to be exploited at some later point.

He was safe. He let me be. He let me breathe.

It’s the reason I was drawn to him. The reason I stayed with him.

I loved him for it.

Then Ed died. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the last conversation we had. He’d been fishing around for details about when Ron was going to be back from his year abroad, if we’d talked about wedding plans.

He must have seen something in my face, heard it in my voice when I sort of stammered about not having the chance to talk often and us probably figuring it out once we got to Austin. And then, because it all sounded so weak to even my own ears, I told him that Ron was a good man.

Ed agreed. And then with such gentle caring, he’d asked me if a good man was all I wanted, if it was enough. Or if maybe I might want something more.

Eventually, I realized I did.

“We were good together, a team. It was a mistake to leave you behind for that full year. It was a bigger mistake not to push harder when you said it was over.”