What the fuck is he doing?
It's parked on the county road about a quarter mile down the cedar break.
Not at the ranch gate. Not close enough to see the bunkhouse.
Just parked there, on a public road, where Todd's got every right to sit and where I can't do a damn thing about it.
He's still here.
I take the clothespin out of my mouth and I press it into the line so hard the wood creaks.
I finish hanging the laundry with steady hands because Nash and Raine are at the kennel and I'm not going to be the kind of mother they look across the yard and see in a panic.
I pick up my empty basket, walk it back into my cabin and set it on the kitchen counter.
I take off my apron, hang it on the hook and head straight over to Rogue’s cabin.
I've stood at the bottom of his porch steps before. But, I haven't been inside.
I knock once.
He opens the door before my hand drops. "Hadley."
"Todd's still in town."
"I know."
"He's parked on the county road right now. About a quarter mile down from the gate."
"I know that too."
"Are you watching him?"
"Yes, ma'am."
I look up at him on the porch. White hat off, auburn hair finger-mussed, sleeves rolled to the elbow.
I know he hasn't slept and it shows in the set of his jaw, and he's still standing in his doorway like he's been waiting for me to come over since the second I started across the gravel.
"Can I come in?"
He steps back and I walk inside for the first time.
The front room is smaller than I expected.
Plain plank floors, a leather chair by the window that has been sat in for a decade, a desk along the back wall with three monitors and a closed metal cabinet I don't know the name for.
A row of books on the windowsill that surprises me—I'd have lost money on Rogue keeping books on a windowsill.
A coffee maker on a small counter by the bedroom door. The white hat on a hook by the front door.
The bedroom door is closed. I don't look at it.
He doesn't sit and I don't sit either. "Hadley."
"I want to know two things, Rogue."
"All right."
