Page 66 of The Shield
I nodded.
“Granddaddy’s porch faces a live oak that looks like it could pick up the house and carry it if it got bored. The lake’s close enough to smell when the sun’s been on it. He keeps a short list of men he’ll let fix things. You’re not on it yet.”
“I’ll apply,” he said.
“Dad’s studio is cramped and perfect,” I went on. “Paint on everything. Coffee cups from a decade. He wears the same shirt every day and it’s a different shirt. He’ll pretend he doesn’t care about meeting you. He does. He always wanted a son who could throw a saddle and catch a fish in the same afternoon.”
“I can do both,” he said mildly.
“I know,” I said. “But he’ll want you to know that he could once.”
“I’ll let him,” he said simply.
We leaned on the rail and let the night lean back. A camera peeped around a piling and then peeped away when I gave it my best schoolteacher eyebrow. We weren’t hiding. We just weren’t performing. That felt like a boundary we could keep.
“You almost died,” he said after a moment, not a question.
“I didn’t,” I said. “I almost forgot to live. Different.”
He made the sound men make when they are trying not to step wrong in a dark room. “I’m going to be very annoying about keeping you alive.”
“Good,” I said. “I need annoying. I intend to be very annoying about letting Flapjack be your therapist and saying out loud when you want to take a walk instead of a fight.”
He kissed the top of my head. “Deal.”
“Deal,” I said. “Also, I want to learn to shoot. Better than the basics I got at camp. Not because I want a gun on me. Because I want to understand the things you know.”
“I’ll teach you,” he said. “Somewhere safe, with a very boring lecture first.”
“I love boring,” I said, and he laughed like I’d told him a dirty joke.
We wandered back to the lot like normal people. The night had the polite hush Charleston puts on when it knows it’s being watched. He opened my door and I slid in, turned my face to the window, and watched the boardwalk recede.
At a red light on Coleman, I caught our reflection in the glass of a dark shop—his profile carved out of shadow and harbor light, my braid a dark rope over my shoulder, the two of us looking like we belonged to the same story. It hit me so hard my throat went hot with it.
“What?” he asked, catching the shift without taking his eyes off the road.
“Just grateful,” I said. “For this. For you. For the ability to taste lemon pie and not think about my eulogy.”
He reached across the console without looking and found my knee, squeezed once. “Me, too.”
At home, the cameras were still across the street, but they seemed tired in a nice way. We climbed the stairs, our stepssyncing the way they had the first day he walked beside me like he’d been practicing in another life.
Inside, we kicked shoes into their corner. I pulled my dress over my head and his hands found the small of my back just because. We got in bed and faced each other and didn’t talk for a long time, because sometimes the best proof you’ve found the right person is that you can be quiet without worrying it means something bad.
Maybelle hopped up a minute later, all offended grace and soft paws, circled twice, and settled between us like a tiny, furry chaperone. Ethan scratched behind her ear, and she purred so loud it felt like a promise.
“Forward only,” I said into the dark.
“Only,” he said, and tucked my hand under his jaw.
Sleep came easy, the rare kind that didn’t have a soundtrack of sirens. The rain had finally run out of things to say.
In the morning, there would be headlines and calendars, policy and pushback, donors and drains, plans and planes. Tonight there was us, breathing in the same room, already building a life we loved.
30
ETHAN
