Page 50 of The Queen's Box

“Oh, I know. You made that crystal clear last night.”

Willow lifted her chin defiantly. “Isn’t offering some help better than none at all?”

Cole tugged at his hair and turned away from her. “Good Lord, woman. You are the most infuriating creature I have ever met.”

That made Willow feel better. She liked being called infuriating. She liked being calledwoman, especially in that tough, macho, country-boy way Cole wore so well.

Good Lord, woman.

Yes, man?

Not that Willow was looking for a man. Not a mortal man, and certainly not this mortal man. It wasn’t like that. But she’d take Cole’s rough-hewn impatience over Mr. Chapman’s well-mannered flattery any day.

Her heart sank, and her pleasant feeling of self-satisfaction crumbled like dust. Screw Mr. Chapman. Screw him for still existing in her hidden crevices, for slipping not through the cracks of the world but the cracks ofher, no matter how hard she tried to plaster those cracks over.

She kicked at a rock, only she misjudged and drove her toe straight into unforgiving granite, a chunk of it wedged deep in the soil. Pain ricocheted up her foot despite the protection of the borrowed work boots.

Cole circled back to her. He had hisnow, listenface on and was no doubt all geared up to deliver part two of his lecture on Why He Was Right and She Was Nothing but a Silly Girl. Then he saw that she was fighting back tears—notbecause of Mr. Chapman but because of how much her toe hurt—and his expression softened.

“It’s good of you to care,” he said, moving closer and placing his hands on her shoulders. “There are better ways to go about it, that’s all. Because say you give this kid twenty bucks. What happens next?”

“He walks down to the Piggly Wiggly? He buys twenty dollars’ worth of candy that’ll rot his teeth out? So what, if it makes him happy?”

“Happy for twenty minutes, maybe.”

“Oh, c’mon. Longer than that.” What she wanted to say, but wouldn’t, was,And if it was Micah? Would you slap away the hand of someone trying to help Micah?

“At any rate, that’s assuming the kid sees a dime of it,” Cole said. “What happens when his daddy takes that twenty dollars and buys a bottle of Old Crow, a jug of Wild Irish Rose, and three packs of Camels?”

Willow blinked.

“Maybe he remembers his kid,” Cole went on. “Maybe he does, and he tosses in a couple of Pixy Stixs at the register. Blueones, if they’ve got them. Not because they’re his kid’s favorites, but because they were the ones he liked best, if memory serves. And he remembers what it was like to have something sweet and bright that was all his own, even if the happiness lasted only two minutes.”

Cole dropped his arms to his sides and gave Willow a crooked smile. “So what do I know? Maybe it is better. Maybe this is what better looks like.”

“It is,” the kid said. He’d crept back up without them noticing. “And I’d do real good with that money, you have my word on it. I’d buy my sister that baby doll she wants—Strawberry Shortcake or something like that. Eliza says her hair smells like real strawberries.” The kid’s eyes went dreamy. “And for me? I’d get a jawbreaker. One of the big ones you can’t hardly hold in your mouth, the kind you gotta work on all day. And a toy car, but not the plastic kind. One of them metal ones with doors that open and shut.”

He hesitated. “For my daddy, I think I’d get him one of them lighters from behind the counter. The nice kind. Silver. If he had one of those, he’d stop using matches and burning his fingers.”

His voice dropped to a whisper. “He gets mad when he does that.”

Willow blinked away her blurry vision and smiled at the kid, who sucked his snot back in for the fifth time. “That’s a really good plan. I like the way you think, bud.”

She handed him the bill, and he accepted it reverently, looking up at Willow with huge brown eyes.

“I’ll still have enough left for a Pixy Stix, right? One of the blue ones?”

Willow’s throat went tight. “Is blue your favorite?”

“I don’t know. Is blueyourfavorite?”

Willow hadn’t had a Pixy Stix since... she couldn’t remember when. Didn’t they all taste the same? Weren’t they just sugar doused in dye?

“Blue is one hundred percent my favorite,” she said.

“I knew it! I knew it, and that’s why you like me, right? Because we’re alike, you and me!” He grinned, all gap teeth and sun-chapped lips, and ran off down the hill, calling out for Eliza and rhapsodizing about the doll he was going to get her, his voice floating back like birdsong.

Willow and Cole watched the boy disappear down the hill, his arms flung wide like he might take off flying.

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