Page 97 of Rune’s Solace

And farther out than all of it sat Drago. Still alive. Still federal property. Still capable of making trouble from a cage if the right kind of man answered the phone. Mystic knew it. Devil knew it. Every patched man at that table knew we hadn’t heard the last of him.

That was tomorrow’s problem.

Today I had dirt under my nails and Amy kneeling beside me arguing about whether a plant with three and a half leaves counted as alive.

I’d take today.

“Alright,” I said. “Set it in.”

She lowered the little plant into the hole, and I helped steady it while she pushed the dirt back around the roots.

Our hands met in the middle.

Neither of us moved away.

Amy looked down at them, then at the plant. “This is really the first one.”

“Yep.”

She sat back on her heels, and for a minute she just stared at it. I had to admit it looked a little pathetic. One thin green thing sitting in a lot of fresh dirt.

“It looks like nothing,” she said.

“For now.”

“No, I know. I just...” She laughed and wiped at her face, leaving dirt across one cheek. “I thought it would look more important.”

“Most things don’t at the start.”

That came out before I thought much about it.

She smiled.

I caught her around the waist and pulled her into my side, and she came easy, fitting herself against me while I put my mouth against the top of her hair. Lilac. Her hair smelled faintly like it.

“I like it,” she said.

“The plant?”

“The start.”

I looked down at the little thing we’d just put in the ground.

“Yeah.”

“Me too.”

We sat there a while with the morning coming up around us, the clubhouse getting louder behind us and the first cool air we’d had in months moving through the garden.

I’d spent a long time thinking love was mostly about what you kept somebody safe from.

Turns out a lot of it was smaller than that.

Her smile went soft, and she leaned over and kissed me, dirt on both of us and the first lilac between our knees. Then she picked up the next pot and handed it to me. “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got five and a half sticks left.”

I took it from her.

And we went back to work.

THE END