Page 188 of The Fire Line

For the new shelves. I’m on page 214. Your confidence in me was insulting.

He had signed it with a J, slipped it beneath the cover, and mailed the package two days ago.

It was not contact—not exactly.

It was close enough that Jay had spent the past forty-eight hours alternating between wishing he could take it back and wishing it would reach Harris sooner.

He’d just picked up his own copy from the couch and was considering whether he had enough attention left for another chapter when his phone buzzed against the table.

Jay reached for it without thinking and stopped short when he saw the name on the screen.

Harris.

For one disorienting second, he thought of the book.

Too soon. There was no possible way it had reached Montana yet.

Whatever this was, Harris had done it on his own.

The shape of his name went through Jay with the same force as Harris emerging through smoke on the ridge, immediate enough that his body responded before thought could catch up.

When he opened the message, a photograph filled the screen.

Rain stood beside the lower fence with Jay’s navy cap hanging from her teeth. The crown had collapsed, and one side of the brim was darkened with horse saliva. Behind her, thin green grass showed through the burned ground, startlingly bright against the blackened slope.

Harris: Found this by the lower fence. She denies involvement.

A laugh escaped Jay, sudden and helpless in the quiet apartment.

He enlarged the photograph. Rain stared into the camera with the serene confidence of an animal who had destroyed the evidence and expected to be praised for returning it.

He typed: Tell her she can keep it. Blue suits her.

The answer came quickly enough that Harris must have still been holding the phone.

Harris: Looked better on you.

Jay stared at the message. He could hear the dry delivery behind it and picture the slight movement at the corner of Harris’s mouth. The familiar ease of the exchange settled over him so completely that for a moment he was back beside the fence, irritating Harris simply to watch the restraint in his face fail.

Jay: Careful, cowboy. That almost sounded like you missed me.

His thumb hovered over send.

For five weeks, Jay had believed a clean break would keep the feeling from growing into something more difficult. New York would absorb him, Harris would stay at the ranch, and whatever had existed between them would settle into memory before either man asked it to survive circumstances for which it had never been designed.

Instead, silence had removed every place the feeling could go.

Jay still thought of Harris when he woke and when he crossed the city late at night. He wanted to know whether Rain’s mane would grow back evenly, whether the new fence held, whether Harris’s hand had healed enough to turn pages without pain. He wanted Harris’s voice, his attention, and the particular, infuriating safety of being watched by someone who had learned when Jay’s humor meant he was afraid.

Five weeks had done nothing to make him want any of it less. If anything, the possibility that Harris had moved on had only made the wanting harder to dismiss.

Jay pressed send.

The message showed as delivered. For several seconds, nothing happened.

Then his phone began to ring.

Jay stared at Harris’s name for one stunned second before answering.