“Not here.” The reassurance was as much for himself as it was for her. “It’s different. The people don’t seem to mind as much about what you are or where you came from.”
She offered a wry smile, voice dipped low. “The fake wedding bands you both wear say you’re a dirty liar, Decker Belmont.”
He returned the smile with an easy shrug of his shoulders, wincing at the healing rawness of his sun-touched skin. “Keeps possibilities open. Folks care more about a ringless woman staying home than a married woman out at all hours with a stranger.”
Safine appeared over her shoulder, sloshing down a steaming bucket for the limp steer under Decker’s hands, and Willa glanced back at her. A rare smile grew on her face. “Wouldn’t say we’re strangers.”
Safine matched her grin.
If Decker was a praying man, he would’ve prayed to anyone who would listen that the heartbreak would mend quickly once Willa moved on. As he was the furthest thing from a praying man, he could only hope.
If the doctor couldn’t be found here, her stubbornness would drive her to finally end the decades of chasing and, once she was finished, he doubted ever crossing paths with her again.
Cricket swore behind them as one of the steers aimed a kick at his head. The broad hoof whistled harmlessly past. His luckyamulet worked once again. A grin flashed across his face as the steer hopped and bucked, and another hoof clipped his hat, sending it pinwheeling into the muck.
Shaking his head, Decker released the steer they’d finished treating and let him charge towards Cricket.
Willa angled her attention to him with a sly smile. “What ‘bout you? Anypossibilitiesyou’re keeping open?”
Thomas.
He thought of Thomas Haven.
Long gone, resting peacefully next to his wife, ‘only ever loved one woman’, Thomas.
Decker couldn’t blame the man for his reluctance to love; he knew too well the deeply unsettling feeling of being the only one in the room that looked different, clashing with traditions, religions. Possessing an otherness that set him apart even more than crimson fangs.
A few came after Thomas—strangers, friends, neighbors—but they weren’t much more than a release during the jaw-grinding time in between feeding, when the days turned long and he forgot his sanity.
“No,” he finally answered, shoving down the wrong, aggressivelyirritatingvoice that whispered the name of the preacher.
They returned to the saloon early in the morning, bone-tired and covered in muck, and lined up to rinse off the worse of it in the tank out back—much to the ire of Lucy Goosey, who hissed and honked and flapped razor-edged wings as Safine shooed her away.
Mr. Gibson’s cattle would have a fighting chance, and Safine promised she’d check on them soon, but insisted he return them to the Haven ranch to recover once they were well enough for the journey.
Exhaustion sank into Decker when he finally reached his room, and he smoothed a brush through clean hair and coated it with rose-scented macassar oil.
His mind was his own again.
Except for Laurie.
Memories of his hands on him and the rush of his blood in his ears was enough to make Decker crush his duty underfoot like a dropped cigar until he retrieved it, straightened it, and hazily focused on important things.
The salve eased his aches from the train, but the pain didn’t bother him nearly as much as Nathan’s words had. The venom in his voice now was so unlike the man he’d known running the barber shop down the street. Always with a fair price—even if some complained—and then one day he’d been gone, the door locked and boarded shut after Elias. Only to reappear and shove the rest of them into the stark light, as if the Blessing chipping away wasn’t enough.
Decker’s fingertips idly ran over one of the blisters on his shoulder where he’d been scorched. He hadn’t burned, at first, soaking in the taste of the sun on his skin before panic set in.
Nathan may not have been the reason the veil wavered, exposing Ender’s Ridge to the light like a forgotten cask—but he knew something.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow afternoon Decker would go to theSilver Starand ride the train in the day like a proper, human man. With any luck, the sun wouldn’t burn him, and if it did, he could endure if it meant he got answers.
Today won’t be the last time I see you, Nathan Griggs.
