Page 64 of Westin

It feels like someone shot me right through the heart. Even from this distance, she looks so sad as she leans against the glass. Her face turns up to the full moon for a long time.

She pulls the curtains shut. I stand there for another hour before I go home. The night after that, I go at the same time and watch as she turns out what I assume is the kitchen light. Then, the bedroom light goes on, and she sits in the window, staring out.

Looking at nothing at all.

It turns into a routine. I watch her go to bed, and after she pulls the curtain shut, I can go home and get some sleep.

What I thought would be the best summer of my life turns into living hell. Jensen stays at the gatehouse one night. He’s on the porch having a cigarette when I head out to get Rocky from the barn.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

I pause on the steps. “Getting some air.”

The tip of his cigarette glows. It’s dark tonight, and the moon is a sliver in the sky.

“Do you go out every night to get some air?” he asks.

I shrug.

“You’re looking a little rough,” he says flatly.

I run my hand over my jaw. It’s stubbled. I shaved my beard off when I stopped drinking every night, and I’ve kept it cut back since.

“I look fine. Fuck you,” I say.

“Are you sitting on that hill over Thomas Garrison’s house?” He cocks his head.

I don’t say anything. He lets out a stream of smoke and leans back in his chair.

“It seems to me, the balance of things in Diane’s world is…delicate,” he says. “But I don’t think seeing her would upset it, so long as no one knew.”

“I’ve got no desire to fuck things up for her,” I say.

“This isn’t what she wants.” Jensen's jaw is set.

“I said I’d figure this shit out for her.”

Jensen sighs, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “She’s scared, and she has never had anybody to depend on but herself. Go see her. Try to convince her she can trust you.”

I hesitate. Jensen doesn’t know that Sovereign plans on bringing Clint’s widow to Sovereign Mountain. He knows about the Garrison-Sovereign feud—he knows some of the awful particulars, like Sovereign’s fiancée being pregnant by Clint the night she died. That Sovereign has a deep loathing for infidelity because of it. But he’s unaware that we plan to kill the rest of the Garrison brothers when the time is right.

He doesn’t know that I have a delicate balance of my own.

“It’s a situation, given who her husband is,” I say.

“I get that,” Jensen says. “I’m just saying, it wouldn’t hurt just to talk. Just make sure the Garrisons don’t find out, or she’ll be in trouble.”

He hands me a cigarette, like he knows how angry I am inside. I take a drag and let it sit for a minute as I think it over. Truth is, if I see Diane again, I’ll fuck her.

And I’m trying not to be that kind of man.

My mind goes back to her in my truck, on my lap, wrists tied to the wheel.

Pretty like summertime, flushed and riding me hard.

If I see Diane again, I will step over a line I’ve never crossed. It doesn’t matter to me that it’s Thomas she’d be cheating on. I have my doubts he’s faithful to her; none of the Garrisons are known for being faithful. No, this has nothing to do with Thomas.

Truth is, as much as he loved my mother, I’m not entirely sure my father played it straight. I don’t have any hard evidence, just a few too many nights when he came home late and wouldn’t say where he’d been.

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