Arty nods.
“You didn’t take that as a signal?”
“I did,” he replies, twisting the bottom of his shirt in his hands. “But I didn’t really have anywhere else to go.”
I look at Aiden. He looks at me, then hangs his head before grabbing me gently by the arm and leading me a couple feet away. “Would Dolly take ‘im?”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Take him?”
“Give him a job. Give him some people around him, so he doesn’t end up…like us.”
“Whywouldn’the want to end up like us?”
“Or a lot worse.”
I fold my arms, pretending to mull over the options. “Probably. At the very least, she’ll need someone to bury bodies for her once we go back to Arizona.”
“Not that.”
“I could teach him to play poker before we go.”
“Not that either.”
“You could teach him how to be menacing.”
“Cypress.”
“Fine,” I say, not wanting to push him too far on what has already been an eventful day. At least, not until later. “I’m sure she could find him somethingboring.” I glance back at Arty. “Go on inside and get something to eat.”
He only stares at me until I tilt my head toward the door once, then twice when he doesn’t move. His expression shifting from flustered to tentative hope as he walks up the stairs to be ushered in by an intrigued Dolly, who I have no doubt will find a place for him as she does everyone else. As she once did for me.
“He’ll be all right,” I tell Aiden, noting the way he also watches him. “Might not turn out to be a gunslinger or a gambler as you said, but not everyone is destined for that sort of greatness.”
Aiden chuckles. “My father used to say, there are a lot of things you can be in this life, but the most important is a good man. Hopefully he still has a chance at that.”
He starts to head for the door. “Aiden,” I call, waiting for him to turn before I say, “You are one, you know? A good man.”
His eyes fall. “Not sure some would agree with you.”
“Doesn’t matter if they do.” I walk over and grab his hat, lifting it off before I snag his shirt and pull him to me, kissing him hard enough that he blushes, the color deepening after I remind him,“You are to the important ones.”
He nods, smiling and kissing me back before he murmurs, “Think I can live with that.”
Nine Years Later
I pull myself up onto the rooftop of a boarding house in Preston, Arizona. The sky above clear and carrying a breeze that reminds me the temperatures are going to keep growing colder as we get closer to winter. I frown thinking about it, letting out a long sigh as I drop down onto two bedrolls and a few blankets that are already spread out, wasting no time before turning my attention toward where it most often resides.
“Hello, wolf,” Cypress murmurs, those striking blue eyes of his searching my face from where he lies next to me. “Everything all right?”
“There’s a girl in the stable,” I tell him, seeing no point in trying to conceal what’s on my mind after all these years. “She’s staying up in the hayloft.”
He immediately looks intrigued. “Oh?”
“Could hear something when I walked in,” I tell him, immediately feeding his curiosity rather than teasing him withit, since I feel as much a need to tell him as he does to listen. “First I thought it was a bird up in the rafters, but then she slammed the hatch down. Think she must’ve seen me and startled.”
“Why? Were you being broody?”
“No, I wasn’t…” I hiss out a breath, because while I might not have beenbroody, I also wasn’t friendly. Not after a long day getting here and not when towns like this one still tend to put me on edge no matter how many times we pass through. “I told her to come down, and she didn’t, so I went up.”