I hang up.
Bram’s a few feet down the rail, phone to his ear. He’s got the deputy voice on, flat and even.
“Appreciate it, Hutch. I mean that.”
He pockets the phone and, for a second, neither of us says anything. There’s a man out there who put his hand on her tonight, and part of me wishes he’d be in Tate’s truck, waiting on him.
“It’s handled,” Bram says, probably using his brotherly powers to read my mind. “Warrant by morning. There’s nothing left worth doing out here that we can’t do better in there.”
In there.
The hall to the master door’s open, the light’s on, and I lose the thread of whatever I was going to say back to him.
Because there’s Ash, shirtless, hauling the spare comforter in both arms, and past him, up in the middle of the big bed, on her knees, is Luna.
Building.
She’s conscripted the whole cottage. Pillows, blankets, the quilt out of the hall closet and what looks like Ash’s shirt. She’s fast, tucking and shoving and pressing things flat, and even from the hall the smell of her comes down and takes me by the spine.
“More,” she’s telling Ash. Not asking. “I need more. The gray throw, the big one, it’s in the—”
“Living room. On it.” He turns, his eyes a little wild.
“Reed.” Her head comes up, her eyes landing on me, glassy, blown black. “Good. You’re wearing exactly what I need.”
“Beautiful, I’ll wear nothing at all, you just have to—”
“Your shirt. Off.” She makes grabby hands at me. “Yours too, Bram.”
My hands are already at the hem.
I drag the shirt over my head and hand it across and she snatches it and buries her face in it, eyes shut, and the sound she makes pulls something loose in me I didn’t know was tied off. She works it down into the pile against the headboard and smooths it flat.
Bram’s already got his off, folding the thing, before he hands it over. She takes it and weaves it in beside mine. Then she sits back on her heels and looks at the two of us crowding her doorway, half-stripped and dumb with it.
“Out,” she says.
“Out?” Bram asks.
“I have to finish. I can’t do it right with you all standing there looking at me like that.” She shoves the hair off her face.
Ash, just back with the gray throw, opens his mouth.
“Ash, my love, out.”
He sets the throw down at the foot of the bed and we all go. She shuts the door on the three of us and we stand in the hall like the world’s horniest job applicants, listening to her move around in there.
Then the door opens six long minutes later. We file in. And, yeah.
I’ve spent my whole life around things built to last. The barn my great-grandfather raised. The press my dad put back together by hand.
But this is the best thing I’ve ever seen, and it smells like home.
“It’s beautiful,” I tell her, rough.
She lights up, her chin lifting, a small pleased curve coming to her mouth.
I’d burn the whole orchard to the dirt before I’d let anything take that look off her face.
