"She said we should give it to him on Saturday."
"We're not going on Saturday, baby."
Maisie looked at me. The look. The one she'd inherited from some ancient negotiator ancestor — calm, patient, utterly certain that the other party would come around.
"We'll see," she said.
She'd stolen my line. She'd stolen my holding-pattern, noncommittal, I-don't-want-to-say-no-so-I'll-say-this-instead line, and she'd used it against me with the precision of a courtroom attorney. I was outmatched.
I drove her to school. Kissed her. Watched her march through the gate with her backpack and her one remaining sock — she'd lost the other somewhere between the bathroom and the car, a mystery I no longer had the energy to solve — and I sat in the parking lot for two minutes with my hands on the wheel.
You kissed him.
I closed my eyes.
You kissed him on a hilltop with a picnic his mother packed and a sunset that looked like it had been ordered from a catalogue. You stumbled into him like a teenager, and instead of stepping back, you put your hand on the back of his neck, and you kissed him, and for four seconds, you forgot every reason you had for not doing exactly that, and then you remembered, and he said, "Okay" and that was worse.
Okay. He'd said okay. NotI'll wait,orI understand,orwe can talk about this when you're ready— all the things men said when they wanted you to know they were being patient, which was just another form of pressure dressed in nicer clothes. He'd said okay, and then he'd been quiet, and the quiet had been enormous and kind, and it had not, at any point, asked anything of me.
Which was the problem.
Because I knew what to do with pressure. Pressure was Preston's language — the withdrawal of warmth after a wrong answer, the pointed silence at dinner, the way he'd close himself off like a bank shutting its doors and make you apply for readmission. Pressure I could navigate with my eyes closed.
A man who made a joke about spreadsheets with my hand still on his neck and then gave me all the space in the world — that, I had no defense against.
I opened my eyes. Started the car. Drove to work.
The office was quiet when I arrived. Bev was at her desk with her reading glasses and a case file, which meant she'd been there since seven. "Morning," I said.
"Morning." She didn't look up. "There's tea on the counter." Which meant she'd taken one look at me and already knew what kind of day it was going to be.
"Thank you."
"Mmhmm."
I sat at my desk. Opened my laptop. Pulled up the Mercer file because the Mercer file was straightforward and required zero emotional processing, just contract review and document organization, and if I could lose myself in Section 4(b) of a property easement dispute, I could go at least an hour without thinking about Clay Blackwood's mouth.
Section 4(b). The easement runs along the —
My fingers in his hair. The sound he'd made — low, quiet, barely there, like something had come loose in his chest. The heat of his skin under my palm when I'd pressed my hand to his jaw and felt the muscle there clench.
Section 4(b). The easement runs —
The way his hands had found my waist and just stayed there. Not pulling, not pushing. Just holding. Like I was something he was letting himself have for the first time. The way his breath had hitched when I stepped into him, and his whole body had gone still — not frozen, not uncertain. Waiting. Letting me lead. Letting me take exactly what I wanted.
The way he'd saidokay. Low and rough and close enough that I'd felt the word against my lips.
I closed the laptop.
Theo arrived at eight-fifteen with an iced coffee the size of his forearm and an energy level that should have required a permit.
"Good morning, good morning, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and Clara Mae told Rosa who told June who told me that your car was at the Blackwood Ranch until DUSK on Saturday evening — DUSK, Callie — and I would like to discuss the implications of a trail ride that extends past sunset because in my experience —"
"Theo."
"I'm just presenting evidence."
"This isn't a courtroom."
