We leave Shawn with Prez, Doc and Savage. Wrench drives me back, since I’m too shaky to drive. We sit in front of my house once he turns the engine off.
“The things I said on my porch,” I start, and my voice cracks. “I said them to hurt you. I used what you told me because it was the only thing bad enough to make you leave. You've been everything to me, not useful. Everything.”
He turns and his big hands come up and frame my face, thumbs at my cheekbones, so gentle.
“I followed you tonight and I'd do it again. But that's the last time you’re out of my sight like that. I have your back, always. I’d lay down my life for you and Rosie, I need you to know that. I love you.”
Tears rush into my eyes. “I love you too.”
I kiss him, breathing in his leather and musk scent, and his arms close around me.
He kisses me slowly, carefully, like a man with all the time in the world and somebody to spend it on.
Chapter Twelve
WRENCH
Church runs for two hours the next day.
Prez stands at the head of the table with a map and lays out what he and Doc spent months digging up out of state. The room goes uncharacteristically quiet. Lucky sits forward the whole time, jaw working, because a lot of it points at the Lodge. When Prez finally raps the table he looks around at all of us and says, “That's next week’s war. Tomorrow, I'm told Marvin’s diner does a decent pie, courtesy of our very own baker. I’m buying.”
Savage tells the whole story of me grappling with Shawn. In his version I hit Shawn so hard his shoes came off. By late afternoon we know Shawn Jebson is going back inside to finish a long stretch plus interest, two states away.
Me, I've got a starter to install. I spend another hour on things she didn't ask for, cleaning the car inside and out. I drive it to Strawberry Street running smoothly, admiring my own handiwork.
Lila's on the porch steps in the afternoon sun, waiting. I climb out and hold up her keys.
“Fixed,” I say. “Starter, belts, brakes. Purrs now.”
She comes down the steps and takes the keys, and turns them over in her hand. I remember what she said.If you can fix it, we'll stay until then.
“Well.A deal's a deal.”
“Lila…”
“I said we'd stay until you fixed it.” She steps in close, right into my shadow, and hooks her finger into my cut pocket, and the sun makes her dark hair glow almost red. “You'll notice I never said what needed fixing.”
I stand there a second, outplayed.
“There's a lot broken around here,” she goes on, counting on her fingers. “The porch step. The bathroom faucet drips. The gate hinge sings in the wind. Rosie's bike has a wobble. And I've got a whole life,” her voice is unsteady, “...a whole life that got pretty banged up along the road, and I'm told you're a patient man.”
“That’s right.” I manage. My chest is tight.
I take her face in both hands and kiss her until the keys drop out of her hand into the flowerbed.
Behind us, a small dry cough.
Rosie stands at the gate with her backpack on and Waffles at her side, both of them wearing the same bemused expression.
“Mama. You're kissing Wrench?”
“I am, baby.”
“Maria's mom said it was quite the town gossip. It’s okay. I like him. Not as much as Waffles, but he’s nice.” She hikes her backpack, supremely unbothered, and looks up at me. “Are you going to be here more often now?”
I crouch down to Rosie's level the same as I did the first day she marched up to my dog.
“That's the plan, chiquita. That okay by you?”
