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The room offered no alternative.

I sat up too fast. My head objected, the bed frame squeaked, and a crease in yesterday’s shirt pulled tight across my stomach. I still wore my jeans. My socks had migrated in opposite directions during the night.

My boots stood together by the wall.

I looked at them until the rest came back.

The table. Gallons. Cash asking about a margin.

Then:

Help me to bed, Cash.

I had said that.

Not hinted. Not manufactured a small practical problem that would permit him to volunteer. Asked.

I pressed both palms over my face.

I remembered being lifted. The doorway passing close to my feet. His shirt against my cheek, soft from washing, and the way he had paused beside the bed until my fingers released his arm.

The boots, too. Something he had muttered about their expense.

I had nearly smiled.

Apparently, my entire professional defense system could be defeated by a hard chair and a man prepared to remove difficult footwear.

My phone wasn’t on the crate.

I reached anyway, found the water glass instead, and stopped with my fingers around it.

From the other room came the small scrape of a pan across a burner.

Then a cupboard opening.

I held still.

The smell reached me a moment later: butter warming, toast, coffee. Something savory enough to make my stomach contract.

Breakfast.

I swung my feet toward the floor. There would be messages. The replacement coupling needed checking. Friday’s observation needed a workable demonstration, not another night of turning rented equipment into an expensive lawn sprinkler. I had numbers to reconcile and a budget that had developed the financial equivalent of a chronic cough.

Eight forty-eight.

I had slept almost eleven hours.

The last time I had woken without an alarm or a phone vibrating against my hand had been before Denver. Before the version of Denver I meant when I thought the word alone.

Outside, boots crossed the porch.

I waited for the knock.

It didn’t come.

The steps continued past my window. A door opened at the front of the bunkhouse, then closed gently. Water ran at the sink.

I sat with my feet on the floor and listened to him not knocking.