And beside me on the rain-slicked mountainroadis a man who trains rescue dogs as penance for the lives he couldn'tsave, who kisses like every touch is the last one he'll ever get, who looked at me tonight with eyes full of cracks and still went down into six inches of water because someone neededhim.
I press my fingers to mylips.They taste like rain andhim.
CHAPTERFIVE
STEPHEN
She's sitting at my kitchen table with wet hair and one of my flannel shirts and I'm losing my mind.
I gave her the flannel because her clothes were soaked through and because I'm not the kind of man who lets a woman sit in wet clothing while I cook.But watching Lydia Brooke in my oversized shirt with the sleeves rolled past her wrists and the hem falling to mid-thigh and nothing underneath except whatever she kept on from the waist down is testing every shred of discipline I've built over thirty-seven years of life.
The elk stew is simmering on the stove.My cabin smells like rosemary and garlic and woodsmoke, and underneath all of it, her.Vanilla and rain and warm skin.She's got her legs tucked under her on the chair, bare feet, her braid drying in a loose rope over one shoulder.Scout is curled on the floor beside her.Duke is on his bed near the fireplace, one eye open, watching the new arrivals with the lazy surveillance of a dog who's decided these people are acceptable but wants it on record that he's reserving judgment.
"Your cabin is not what I expected," Lydia says.
I stir the stew and don't turn around."What did you expect?"
"Military precision.Everything squared away.Hospital corners."
"And?"
"Books on every surface.A hand-carved chess set that you clearly play against yourself.And a framed photograph of a fishing boat that I'm guessing was your father's."
I stop stirring.
She's looking at the photo on the wall near the front door.The Sea Maiden.My father's thirty-two-foot trawler, the one he took out of Astoria Harbor on a November morning when I was sixteen and never brought back.They found the boat three days later, capsized, tangled in her own nets.They never found him.
"His name was Paul," I say, because she didn't ask and that's exactly why I want to tell her.She waits for things.She doesn't push.She just creates the space and lets whatever's inside find its own way out.
"Is that why you joined the Coast Guard?"
"I joined because I wanted to save the people the ocean takes."I set the spoon down and lean against the counter, facing her."Turns out you can't save all of them.And the ones you can't save take something from you on their way down."
Her amber eyes hold mine across the small kitchen.The fire crackles.Rain hammers the windows.And this woman in my shirt, in my cabin, with her bare feet and her sharp mind and her hands that heal broken things, looks at me like she can see straight through to the wreckage and isn't afraid of what's there.
"Stew's ready," I say, because if I keep standing here looking at her, dinner's going to get cold.
We eat at the table.Close together because the table is small and because I pulled her chair to the side nearest mine without thinking about it.Our knees touch under the table.Neither of us moves away.
She eats like someone who's been working all day, which she has.No performance, no pretense.She tears bread with her fingers and drags it through the stew and makes a sound when she tastes it that vibrates straight down my spine.
"This is incredible."
"Family recipe.My mother taught me before she remarried and moved inland."
"Does she know you're here?In Montana?"
"She knows I left the Guard.She knows I'm alive.That's about all we manage these days."I refill her water glass from the pitcher."What about yours?You said you're testifying against your parents.That can't make for easy phone calls."
Lydia sets her bread down.Wipes her fingers on the flannel.My flannel, on her body, and every time she moves in it, the collar shifts and I can see the line of her collarbone, the shadow of the chain she wears, the soft curve where her neck meets her shoulder.
"My mother texted me yesterday.Wanting to know if I'm coming to Thanksgiving."A bitter laugh that doesn't reach her eyes."Like I can sit across from my father and pretend thirty-seven dogs aren't living in concrete runs the size of bathtubs behind his barn."
"Thirty-seven."
"That's the current count.It's been as high as sixty."Her voice stays steady, but her fingers curl around the edge of the table."They're not monsters.That's the thing people don't understand about cases like this.My parents love each other.They go to church.My mother makes the best apple crisp in Grafton County.And they keep dogs in conditions that would make you physically ill because they've convinced themselves it's a business, not cruelty."
I reach across the table and put my hand over hers.
