He sat back, finally, set his hands on his thighs, and looked at the ceiling for a beat.
"Sweet Jesus."
"I'm sorry. I know that's a lot to land at the end of a Tuesday."
"No." His gaze came back down from the ceiling. He looked at me with an expression I couldn't place. "No, Astrid. Thank you."
I smiled. "You're welcome."
He looked back down at Penny. She'd laid her chin on his bare foot.
He bent over her and put a hand on her side.
"We're gonna fix it, Pen," he said, very quietly. "We're gonna fix it."
She came back to me. I let her tongue swipe at my wrist once. I sat back.
Easton hadn't moved. He was looking at me. Not at Penny. At me.
I had seen that look once before—a man figuring out who you actually were. I felt it from Brett in the first few weeks of meeting him, before any of the rest of him walked in. I told myself I would never see it on a man's face again. I hadn't been planning on it.
I cleared my throat.
"What?"
"Nothing."
A small, almost-smile.
"Drink your coffee, Astrid."
I drank my coffee.
I drank my coffee in his grandmother's living room, on his grandmother's couch, in front of his grandmother's dog, with my own dog asleep against her ribs, with a Hartsdale firefighter looking at me like a man who had just remembered something he hadn't even known he'd forgotten.
I came back to Hartsdale to be no one's.
Audrey punctured it that morning before I had my underwear on.
I had a feeling Easton Ford was going to puncture the rest of it before Tuesday was out.
CHAPTER 5
Easton
The house smelled like her after she left.
Something she wore, faint, layered under coffee and Penny's blanket and the lemon soap on the counter. I couldn't have named it. Something green and warm.
I washed the two coffee mugs by hand. Set them upside down on the towel by the sink, the way my grandmother used to set hers.
I got married young,she'd said.It didn't work out. I came home.
No business of mine. I didn't know why I was turning it over.
I went to Penny on the rug and crouched down with my hands on either side of her face. Her eyes were half-shut. The white was creeping in around the muzzle in a way it hadn't a year ago.
"We're gonna be alright, Pen. You hear me? We're gonna be alright."
