I look out across the gravel at her cabin sitting empty in the afternoon sun. Her porch swing moving a little in the breeze. The wet boots from yesterday still on the rail. "How's College Station?"
He sighs. "Presley's nervous. Marlena's cried at every meal. Cal's cuttin' a tooth. I'd rather be on a horse."
I almost laugh. "Take care of your women, Prez."
"You too, brother."
The line goes dead. I stand on my porch for a minute longer with the phone in my hand. The wind is moving the cottonwoods at the edge of the property and the dogs at the kennel are quiet.
I let myself back into the cabin and Hadley is still at the table with Nash. Diesel's on the rug. She has put a fresh cup of coffee at my place at the desk.
I sit down in my office chair, all the monitors live. The Bell relay on the right. Hartley's dot on the left.
Within a few days the compliance officer in Houston will pick up the phone and Todd will lose his job for the first time in nine years.
Tonight, or tomorrow, or the next day, Hartley will get whatever final order he's waiting on and start moving closer to me.
I came out of that life ten years ago with a hole in my ribs and a debt to a man named Phantom.
But I'll go back into it tonight if I have to.
Going back into it different than I went in the first time. The first time I had nothing to lose and nothing to come home to.
This time, I have something worth living for.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Hadley
I've been on this porch for an hour and I haven't written anything.
The notebook is open on my lap. The pencil is in my hand. The page is blank in the way pages get blank when your brain is in a different room than your body.
The heat is coming up through the porch boards in long slow waves. The cicadas are loud. Diesel is asleep at my boots with his belly against the cool plank where the shade falls. The dishtowel I brought outside with me is wadded in my left hand for no reason at all.
My right thumb keeps finding the chain at my throat. It happens four times before I catch myself. I make my hand drop into my lap. It comes back up to the chain before I count to twenty. I make it drop again.
I've been at Rogue's cabin now for three days. Three days of feeling like I'm his woman, three days of every brother on this ranch carrying a piece of what Phantom used to carry alone, and every gate having a body on it, and Hartley's truck sitting somewhere south of Llano with my whole life in his crosshairs.
I'm grateful, and I'm losing my mind a little.
The pencil moves. I look down. I've written *Garrett would've hated this* on the page and I don't remember writing it.
Boots on the gravel pulls my attention from my notepad. I look up.
Bex is crossing the gravel from the direction of the barn, and there is no clean place left on her. Her leather farrier's apron is hanging from one shoulder. Her t-shirt is dark at the chest and under the arms. Her jeans are grey at the knees from the dust. There's a long smear of grease up the inside of her right forearm where she's been wiping it. Her dark hair is back in a knot that's coming apart on one side. She's got her water bottle hooked through two fingers and a rasp tucked into the back pocket of her jeans like she forgot to take it out.
She climbs the steps without slowing down and drops into the empty porch chair beside me. "Tell me you got somethin' cold to drink, Cross."
I laugh. The laugh comes up from somewhere deep. "Sweet tea. Be right back."
I get up, go inside, and come back with two glasses and hand her one. She drains half of it in three swallows. Sets the glass down on the porch boards between her boots. Wipes her mouth with the back of her wrist and moves the grease smear to a different part of her arm.
"Lord."
"Long day?"
"Spur's three barrel horses are gettin' twitchy with every brother on the gate. Tippin' their feet, dancin' on the cross-ties, gettin' froggy when I lean into the hoof. I worked an extra half hour on each one of 'em to settle their feet down. Took me till now."