I watch the way his eyes don't leave my son's face when Nash is talking, the way he sets his spoon down between sentences so Nash can see he has the man's full attention.
My throat is full, my chest is loud, and my hand keeps finding the chain at my throat.
Outside, the cicadas are starting up for the evening. The light through the front windows is going gold. Diesel is asleep on the rug with his chin on his paws.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Rogue
I wake up before her.
The early light is grey through the slats again.
She's against my side with her cheek on my chest, her hand flat on my stomach, and the chain at her throat lying along my ribs.
I don't move. I haven't moved in a while.
My hand is on her hip where it ended up sometime in the night and I'm not taking it off until I have to.
Yesterday morning my hand crossed cold sheets and found nothing. Today my hand is on her warm skin and her breath is moving against my chest.
The bed feels different. It feels… full, like it isn't so damn lonely anymore.
I look down at her hair across my shoulder. Sandy blonde. The freckles across the bridge of her nose are darker in this light. Her mouth is slightly open. Her lashes are longer than I remember.
I lift one knuckle and trace the side of her jaw—slow, barely touching, the kind of contact that won't jolt a person awake. Herbreathing stays even and I let my knuckle rest at the corner of her jaw for a long moment.
I think about her dead husband. The man who saw Todd coming from a hospital bed and tried to warn his mother. The man who held this woman first. A man who loved her enough to spend his dying days protecting her from the next threat.
I'd like to think he'd appreciate the way I care for his wife and son, and how I'll shed as much blood as I have to keep them both safe.
I'm not going to let him down.
Out of nowhere, there's a creak in the hallway. Small bare feet on the floor, then the quietest whisper from the doorway that I've ever heard. "Rogue?"
I lower my voice so I don't wake her. "I'm awake, partner."
"Diesel's hungry."
"All right. Give me a minute."
The small feet retreat down the hall.
I slide out from under Hadley one inch at a time. Lift her hand off my stomach and set it on the pillow where my body was. She turns into the warm spot and stays asleep with her hair across her face.
I pull on jeans from the floor of my own bedroom and don't bother with a shirt, and walk barefoot into the front room.
Nash is on my rug in his pajamas. Diesel is sprawled next to him with his head in Nash's lap and his old eyes half closed. The boy is scratching the dog's ear slowly, like it's the thing he was born to do.
I pull the bag of dog food out of my pantry—that I moved from the kennel, because I had a feeling this dog would be here too—and pour two cups into Diesel's bowl. The dog rises with the dignity of his age, crosses the floor, eats.
Nash watches him eat. I lean against the counter and watch the boy watch the dog.
"Rogue?"
"Yeah, partner."
"Do you always wake up this early?"
