He’s busy on his Nintendo Switch anyway, so I know he’ll be occupied for however long I need.
The gravel between my cabin and Rogue's has never felt this long.
My boots are barely keeping up with my legs.
My heart's doing that pounding thing again, but it's the bad version this time—not the fluttering nervous one I had at the bunkhouse this morning.
This one's sharp and high in my chest and my hands are still cold from holding the phone.
I clutch the phone in my hand like it might fight me.
The voicemail is still on the screen.
Garrett's mama gave me this one.
The words keep playing on a loop in my head and every time they hit the line about his mama, my stomach turns over.
I don't know what I'm going to ask him to do. I don't know what he can do. I just know I can't be the woman standing in her kitchen alone with that voicemail in her hand, and Rogue is the man across the gravel.
I don't slow down until I'm on his porch.
He opens the door before I knock twice.
He takes one look at my face and his own face changes. "What happened?"
I hold the phone out. He takes it. He listens to the voicemail. His jaw sets. He listens to it a second time. Hands the phone back to me. "You wanna come inside, or you wanna talk on the porch?"
"Inside, if that’s okay."
He steps back.
I walk into his cabin for the second time. The chair by the window. The three monitors. The closed bedroom door. The same room as yesterday and a different room because I know what his mouth tastes like now.
He sits on the edge of his desk, while I sit on the leather chair.
He says, "Tell me what you want me to do, Hadley."
"Whatcanyou do?"
"A lot." He doesn't blink. "None of it on the books. All of it I want you to be okay with before I do it."
I look at him for a long moment.
I think about Todd standing on my porch calling me honey.
I think about Garrett's mama in her kitchen in Garrison giving my number to the man whopretendedto be Garrett's best friend.
I think about a six-year-old boy at my kitchen table asking if Rogue was going to stay forever.
"I want him to stop. I don't care how. I just need him to stop."
Something in Rogue's face moves one degree. Like he's been waiting to be allowed. "All right."
"I don't want to know how."
"Good."
The room goes quiet after.
