He hasn't slept and he might not sleep until sometime late tonight.
I don’t know a lot about Rogue, but what I do know is that he's going to sit at those three monitors and watch the county road until Todd's back across the Garrison line, and probably for a long time after that.
I touched him on purpose today. The first time in twenty-two months I've put my hand on a man's bare skin who isn't my son.
I don't know what's coming. What Todd's going to do next, what Rogue's going to do about it, who that black sedan from two days ago belongs to, what the men I'm building a life around are about to be pulled into—none of it.
What I do know is this. I touched him because I wanted to… because even if I don’t know how to admit it to myself, I crave Rogue.
I want him, and I know he will keep us safe.
The next time Todd shows up on my porch, that's the man who's standing between him and my boy.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rogue
She just put her hand on me on purpose.
I'm standing in my front room with the door still cracked open behind her, and I'm looking down at my left forearm where her palm was a minute ago.
The Shotgun Saints patch is just dark ink under the bare skin. Her hand wasrightthere, right above it. I can feel her on me like she didn't ever take it off.
I've been stabbed for the firm's secrets once and stitched myself back together in a hospital bed in Lubbock.
I've been beaten by men with the kind of training that lets them keep going past the point where a normal man would stop.
I've stared down rifles, knives, a man with a hammer one time, the men who came after Phantom many years ago at the gate.
None of it shook me the way a twenty-eight-year-old widow's hand on my forearm just did.
I close the front door slowly, because closing it fast would mean something I'm not ready to mean yet.
I stand at the door for a moment with my forehead resting on the wood.
I think about the way she thanked me before she left.
The way her voice was rough at the edge of it, like she'd worn it out being angry.
The way she pulled her hand back slowly instead of fast, like she was deciding something while she did.
The way the warmth of her skin stayed on mine after she was gone.
That's the part I keep coming back to.
I push off the door, walk to the desk, and sit down in front of the monitors, because work is theonlything I know how to do with my hands when a woman's not in the room.
I call Phantom.
He picks up on the second ring. I hear a truck engine running in the background, which means he's still south of here on the run that was supposed to be home by lunch. "Talk."
I lean back in the chair and let the leather creak under me. Diesel is somewhere out across the yard, barking at something that's probably nothing.
"Hadley came to the cabin today."
"I know."
"You know already?"