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“And I’m a Red Sox catcher.”
“I do.” He seems serious.
“Do you then?” I scoff. “With a nice doggie? What was it, a camp for foolish wealthy?”
His eyes widen, just a bit. I watch his gaze dip to his boots before it rises back to mine. “Listen—” His full lips twist, pensive. “I wanted to say I’m sorry for last night.”
“You mean when you acted like a pig that’s escaped the fences?”
His head bows a little lower. I can see his shoulders r
ise and fall. “Yeah.”
“What?” I cup my hand around my ear. “Can’t hear over the rain.”
He looks up and says, “Yes.” His voice is low and hard.
I watch as he adjusts the poncho over his head, shifts his broad shoulders, curls one of his fists. When I felt I’ve held him prostrate long enough to suit, I dismiss him with a wave. “You can go back to the village now.”
His eyes flash, but the fire doesn’t burn. “You need help.”
“What I need is for a ship to come and carry you away.”
His lips press into a thin line, and then he nods once, barely. “I acted badly and I’m sorry. It was…inexcusable.”
“And yet you’re here, seeking…forgiveness?”
“I heard you needed help.”
“Quite a riot that you think that’s what you’re offering.”
His mouth tightens, and I feel the buoyance of my own mean spirit. “Do you have a crook, then?”
His eyes roam the soaked grass around us. “I don’t, but I can find one.”
“Try that, then. I’ll wait.” I sit back on the rock, tucking my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. I’ve been wet for so long; my skin feels plastic-y and strange. Despite my jacket hood, rain leaks in and trickles down my scalp. There’s nothing worse than being cold and wet.
Scratch that—there is: it’s being cold and wet and stuck on a mountainside with someone you abhor.
The Carnegie roams the path that runs horizontally across the slope, and I laugh. He’ll never find a stick up here. When he walks back toward me some five minutes later, I’m grinning in the dark. Until he holds out a crook.
“What is that?”
He grins, looking quite pleased with himself.
I stand. “Very well then. Let’s see you use it.”
“You want to help me gather, moving down into the valley?”
“I’ll let you work solo a bit. Then I’ll come in from the far side, there by the brush.” I point to a fluffy smattering of bushes on the far side of the splintered herd, a bit downslope. While he’s working, I’ll hike up and grab my pack, move past the Triplets, and descend.
His dark brows do something funny—a twist between puzzled and amused. “Okay, boss.”
He turns away from me, and I sit back on my rock. He’s shed his poncho, for reasons I can’t fathom. In the rain, his long-sleeved shirt clings to his muscled back and shoulders. I tell myself it’s okay that my eyes are clinging, too. I’m not admiring him—only his form.
He circles out around the first cluster of sheep—ten or eleven white spots, maybe thirty meters downslope—the way a good dog would.
So he does know a bit about it.
