Page 54 of Reluctant Bride

“I’m making sure you don’t miss.”

“I’ve stitched a horse’s leg shut in the dark with worse light than this. I’m not going to miss.”

“Then I’m staring for no reason.” The whiskey’s caught up with him somewhere between the second pull and now, the adrenaline finally draining out and leaving something looser behind, softer at the edges than he lets himself when sober. “Or I just like your face better than the ceiling.”

Heat climbs my neck, warm and stupid, the exact kind of warm and stupid I don’t have room for while I’m holding a needle over an open wound. I duck my head so he can’t watch it happen on my face like I’ve been watching everything happen on his.

“Hold still,” I say again, mostly so I have something to say. “Or I’ll make this hurt on purpose.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me, Sullivan.”

He doesn’t buy the threat for a second. He doesn’t say anything about it. He doesn’t have to. I watch him read the deflection for exactly what it is, that unnerving fluency he’s always had for reading me, the one that let him see the step back I took an hour ago and set it aside instead of flinching from it. It should feel like an invasion, being known this thoroughly by a man I’ve spent the last week trying to keep at arm’s length. Instead, it just feels like being caught, gently, by someone who isn’t going to make me pay for it.

He’s not hiding any of it anymore. Not the jealousy at the fair, not his hand at my back in front of half the county, not two years of going home to an empty house because some stubborn, broken part of him apparently couldn’t make himself want anyone else. I know that part is true. Two years, clean, since Chicago. He’s telling the whole valley I’m his without a shred of hesitation, and I still haven’t let myself say the same thing back where anyone could hear it.

I tell myself it’s the clause. Paper only, clean exit, no custody of assets beyond what we brought in. The truth is smaller and worse. He tried to tell me why he left, at the cove, water still on both of us, and I didn’t let him and chose the day instead. I’ve had since Cornell to wonder what Ashley had that I didn’t, and one afternoon to find out, and I picked not knowing. But not knowing isn’t an answer I can survive.

I tie off the last stitch and cut the thread close to the knot, and he flexes his fingers once, testing the pull of skin, and doesn’t say anything about how it feels. I wrap it clean, gauze then tape, my thumb steady against the small sage-green sprig hiding just past the edge of the bandage on his inner wrist.

I rise and put the kit away, then head for the stairs, because I need ten minutes alone under hot water to scrub this whole morning off my skin before I can trust my own face again.

I don’t get the ten minutes.

His phone rings before I’ve cleared the second step, and something in his voice when he answers stops me cold.

“Yeah.” Braced. “It happened four hours ago, dad. I know what’s coming at six.”

A pause.

“That’s six hours away. I’m not handing you a name at noon just so you can feel better about the evening news.”

I go still on the stairs, one hand on the rail.

“I don’t have a name for you. I have a scared man who said one under duress, and a piece of paper Sage sat on for three weeks that might mean nothing at all. That’s not a name, dad. That’s a guess with somebody’s life attached to it, and I’m not handing it to a newsroom before I know it’s true.”

Whatever comes back is short. His answer comes even faster.

“Then let six o’clock run with no name in it. I’d rather own that for one news cycle than hand you a name that turns out wrong.”

Silence, longer this time.

“Then be disappointed at six.” His voice doesn’t rise. It just goes very quiet, which hits harder than shouting would. “You want a name so you feel ready for tonight. I want the right one. Those aren’t the same job.”

The call ends like most of his calls with Declan seem to end, abruptly, with nothing on either side worth calling a goodbye.

I don’t move. I can hear him not moving either, a man deciding if his own hands are done shaking for the day.

I go the rest of the way up before he catches me listening. Neither of us is ready to admit what just happened, him refusing his father, me choosing to hear it, both of us keeping something back from the people who think they’re owed it.

I don’t have a name for it yet, this thing we’re both apparently willing to do now. I just know it’s new, and I know we’re already getting good at it.

Rimrock doesn’t wait for the dust to settle before it starts grieving.

I haven’t managed more than a few bites of leftover chicken, standing at the island instead of sitting down, when Tessa texts three times in a row, the third one just on our way, which in Tessa means she’s bringing food whether we’ve eaten or not, because that’s how this valley processes a bombing. You bring casseroles to the people who survived it.

She shows up at eight with Eli trailing behind her carrying two more foil pans like a man drafted into service against his will. I’ve already got my laptop open on the counter, GoFundMe half filled out, because somebody has to do it and Nell’s idea of fundraising technology still stops at a mason jar on the diner counter.