After a long moment, he shifts, settling on his side and pulling me with him.
The quilt comes up over us, and I tuck into the curve of his body.
His arm wraps under me. His other hand finds the chain at my throat, fingers tracing the gold links, careful around the ring, like he's reading a story I haven't told him yet.
"Hadley?"
"Yeah."
His voice is quiet. Sure. "I'm not lettin' you go back to bein' careful with me."
The laugh that comes out of me is quiet and breathless, and I feel it move through both of us. "Good."
He presses a kiss to the top of my head. His hand stays on the chain. And I stay right there, letting the afternoon light fade behind the blinds, letting his heartbeat steady me, letting myself feel all of it—the grief and the want and the hope—tangled together under that dark grey quilt.
Outside, Diesel barks once at something that's probably nothing.
I'm going to have to get back to my cabin eventually, but I don't move yet. Neither does he.
For the first time in nearly two years, I'm lying next to a man who isn't my dead husband, and my body doesn't know how to feel guilty about it.
My body knew before my brain did that this was where it was supposed to be.
The ring on the chain isn't coming off today.
But the not-ready feeling I have about it isn't the same shape as it was a week ago.
It used to feel like a fence I couldn't climb. Today it feels like a door I haven't opened yet.
I press my forehead against Rogue's shoulder.
The Shotgun Saints patch is in my line of sight.
The dark ink of it lies just under my chin where I have my face turned.
I run my thumb along the edge of it once.
Mine.
CHAPTER NINE
Rogue
I reach for her before I'm fully awake.
My hand moves across the sheets to the place she was yesterday afternoon, and there's nothing there but cold cotton and the faint smell of her lavender soap on the pillowcase.
My fingers close on the empty fabric and stay there for a moment while my brain catches up to my body.
She's not here.
She went home before Nash got back from ice cream with Grace yesterday afternoon.
I watched her cross the gravel in one of my t-shirts with her hair down her back, and she didn't look over her shoulder, and I didn't follow her.
I sat at the cypress desk and worked, then I went to bed.
And my body, in its sleep, did what it apparently does now. It reaches for her.
