“Interesting. Likeyou.”
“Oh, go to hell.”
“Touchy. Just like you with our little reverend?” She laughed, and he mustered up a scowl. There was a pointed discomfort in knowing both men he’d wanted saved no room for him next to the Bible in their bed.
“Laurie won’t last here. Not with his hypocrisy,” Decker finally said. Maybe the problem was him. Evolutionary development kept people from wanting him. Aside from Safine, he’d had no others this long; and even she was slipping away.
Her expression softened, and she leaned over, bumping her shoulder against him. “I didn’t know at first either. Give him time.”
“I don’t want him.”
“You can't look me in the eyes when you lie, darling.” Safine patted him on the shoulder and flashed a smile before she left.
The night turned crisp, the full moon bathing Main Street in silver as Decker shut down the saloon for the night. Ender’s Ridge had been quiet since Nathan’s article, but those who lived here didn’t mind—some of them were to blame for the disappearances. Decker would have welcomed the empty streets, if it didn’t mean his business would go under within a few months. Something had to change.
Earlier, he’d caught Willa admiring Sister Inez’s new shoes before she suggested trying them out at the dance hall, and thechapel now lay dark except for the light flickering at the parsonage window.
Straining his hearing, Laurie’s fervent whispers came to the surface, muffled through the walls. Decker expected he was sitting on the edge of his bed, paging through that damn Bible, searching and praying for both condemnation and acceptance of his feelings.
Decker pushed him to the back of his mind.
Laurie’s words were for God, not him.
The path to justification, and a willingness to accept that one thing might have to be cast aside for the other to be true, was a long and torturous road. It was a journey Decker never started, and Thomas never finished. Though Abigail was lovely to him, they’d never had children; Thomas had never looked at her the way he looked at Decker, had never touched her the way Decker touched him when no one other than the wide-open sky was around to see.
He supposed Thomas’s love for his wife was like how Safine loved him.
Lavender in the midst of sagebrush where men were meant to love women and women were meant to love men and neither could be anyone else.
The only difference was Safine knew, and Decker knew, and they did not have to pretend with each other.
Sitara pretended with no one. She wasn’t above gnashing her teeth at a child, and she was a force of nature badly in need of a hunt for the last two days.
Hay rustled under Decker’s boots, the only sound in the quiet, dark barn. He lit the lantern hanging off a rusty nail and lightflooded the stalls, their fly-specked boards hosting piles of hay and bags of feed.
Sitara stood in her corner stall, one leg cocked to the side as she slept. Decker whistled. Her head bowed and she shivered and shifted her weight to another leg as he slipped through the gate. He ran a hand along her neck and winced at the knob of her bones rippling under his fingers. Decker murmured softly to her as he lifted her eyelids, their normally pink tinge now dull and grey.
She’d never been sick before. Bad blood aside, creatures that had been turned didn’t come down with illness. Decker caught a rat lost in the bag of grain and pressed droplets of blood to her gums, sitting with her as they waited for the one person that could help her.
Dust shook from the barn doors as Safine burst through them two hours later, heaving now-empty saddlebags on the floor before she started untacking her horse with hurried, frustrated movements.
Decker got to his feet. “Keep her in the outside paddock.”
She sharply turned, as if not expecting him to be there, before she heaved the saddle to its resting place. The latch clicked open on her stall, and Decker snapped.
“Dammit, Safine, leave her outside.”
She whirled to face him again. “What in God’s name is your problem?”
“Did you figure out what was wrong with Lee’s horses?” His breathless question was met with suspicion.
Safine pressed her lips together. “Won’t know until the morning.”
“Shit.” He glanced back at Sitara. Veins spiderwebbed across her neck and spine as she hung her head. “She’s sick. I don’t know what’s wrong with her. She’s burning up, she lost weight overnight.”
Safine wiped her hands on her dirty skirt and released her horse in the outside paddock before she joined him. She frowned and pulled away from the heat blistering from Sitara’s hide.
“This is all wrong. Everything has been wrong, Safi.”
