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Some of the tension left his shoulders when he saw Micah.

Not all of it.

“You’re staying here?” he asked.

“Until I’m done,” Micah told him. “Then I’m taking her home.”

Chief nodded. He still didn’t go.

I stood beside the open door, my hand resting against the glass.

There were things I had wanted to say to him since Saturday. Things I’d imagined saying if I ever got him alone, if he ever stood in front of me long enough to listen.

He was listening now.

I couldn’t say any of them.

“Declan,” I said instead. “I’m here.”

His eyes met mine.

For a second, the look on his face was the same one I’d seen beneath the oak. Before he’d managed to put himself back together.

“I know,” he said.

I went inside.

He didn’t leave until I was sitting beside Micah.

I had spent two years wishing he would stop looking away.

I hadn’t meant like this.

Clayton had a black eye and an explanation that insulted us both.

“I ran into a wall,” he said with a grin.

I had stopped halfway down the front walk. Sadie stopped beside me.

Wednesday morning had been going reasonably well until then.

Clayton leaned against the passenger door of Chief’s Suburban, his blond hair still damp, one hand wrapped around a travel mug. He looked almost offensively pleased with himself.

The skin beneath his left eye was purple.

Not a shadow. Not bad lighting. A bruise that spread toward his cheekbone, with enough swelling to change the shape of an eye I had been looking into nearly my whole life.

I went straight to him.

“Let me see.”

He straightened, which was unhelpful. I caught his chin and made him bend again.

“Hazel, it looks worse than it is.”

“Then you won’t mind me looking.”

He submitted with a sigh.