Across the yard, Rogue's cabin has the front room light on.
The window with the monitors.
I sit on the porch swing.
I think about Marlena. About what she said.That man would die for you.
About how she knew Garrett's name. About Rogue talking to Phantom about me.
Aboutme, Hadley Marie Cross, who has done nothing on this ranch in two months except cook, raise her boy, and try not to fall apart.
I think about Thunder making Nash laugh tonight. About the open-mouthed belly laugh I had given up on hearing again.
I think about Rogue's face when he saw me laughing with Thunder.
I think about Garrett. Not the memories. Just the present-tense ache that lives behind my breastbone every night.
Fuck, I miss him. I don't know what I'm doing without Garrett. But he isn’t coming back.
Across the yard, Rogue's window is still lit.
I grab the ring on the chain around my neck and hold it in my palm.
The metal is warm. Whenever I think about Garrett, I grab his ring. It’s the only thing that anchors me to him now, besides our beautiful little boy.
I just sit on the porch swing in the dark with my dead husband's ring in my hand, and across the yard, the light in Rogue's window stays on.
I'm not ready to move on, but I'm closer than I was this morning.
CHAPTER THREE
Rogue
She has her wedding ring in her grasp, holding onto it like a lifeline.
I'm standing at the front window of my cabin with the front room light burning behind me, which means anybody outside who happened to be looking at my window would see my silhouette clear as a billboard, and I don't move because I don't care.
She's on her porch swing across the yard, ninety yards away through the cedar dark, and she has it in her hand.
She doesn’t do anything except just sit there and hold it.
I stand at the window and watch her sit there.
Half an hour passes. The bunkhouse goes quiet. The guitar somebody was playing earlier shuts off.
Somewhere out past the kennel, a coyote yips and another one answers back, and Hadley doesn't move.
I'm not moving either.
She finally stands up around eleven-thirty and looks at the ring one more time.
She closes her fist around it and goes inside. Within a few moments, her porch light goes off.
I'm still at the window. I think about going to her.
I think about it the way a man thinks about putting his hand on a hot stove because the heat looks pretty.
I don't. I need more time. Hell, she needs more time.
