Page 97 of Wreckage and Rain

I lie there next to my husband, both of us dressed on top of the covers, a hand's worth of him and nothing else, and I want the rest so badly it frightens me. I don't reach for him. Something in my chest settles. Not forgiveness. Recognition. This isn't the man who forgot my birthday. I close my eyes and I realize I want this with him.

Chapter 29: Healing

Sam

It's a dead Tuesday, slow enough that I'm cutting limes I don't need cut, when Summer comes through the door a little after eleven. Three days since the show and she still walks in like the room owes her something, which it does. I reach for the bourbon before she's on the stool.

"There she is." I slide the glass across. "Still finding glitter in unspeakable places?"

"Found some in my ear this morning. Three days." She climbs onto the stool and wraps both hands around the bourbon. "I'm never getting it all out, am I."

"Never. It's in you now. Welcome to the life." I lean on the bar. "How's the comedown."

"Weird. Big. I keep waking up at four with my whole body still up on that stage like it didn't get the memo the show ended." She drinks. "Is that normal?"

"It's normal. You scared the hell out of your own body up there. Give it a week, it settles."

"You were at the back. The whole time."

"Where else would I be."

"You had a face on. Second number. I looked out and there you were, doing a face."

"I was working."

"You were not working. I know your working face. That was a different face."

"It was a hell of a number." I let that be as much as I'm giving her, and she lets it go, because she knows me.

"How's the cowboy."

She knows the question isn't really about Colt.

"He's doing the work, Sam. Not the version where a man says sorry and waits for a medal. The real one. He shows up. He listens. He's climbing back out of whatever they buried him under." She turns the glass a slow quarter. "I'm letting him back in. Slow, with my eyes open. But all the way, I think."

"I've felt it since he came into town. I watched him the night you took that stage. A man who's performing crowds you, makes sure you clock everything he does for you. He didn't do any of it. He hung back at the wall and let the night be yours, didn't push, didn't make it about himself. I read people for a living." I wipe a stretch of bar that's already clean. "That's not a man running a play. You don't have to walk me up to it slow. I'm a grown man. I'll live."

She says my name. Not soft.

"Sam."

She looks into my eyes. Just the one word, hard enough that the rag stops moving in my hand.

"You pulled me out of the water when I'd forgotten I had a body, and you handed it back with no bill, no conditions, no story I had to perform to earn it. You were the softest place I had when I didn't have one left. I am not walking out of here and leaving you behind like you were a season I passed through on the way back to my life. You're not a season. You're kindred. You're mine. I want you with me always, however that has to look, and I need you to take that and not wave it off."

And for once the smart mouth comes up empty. No line. No deflection. She's cracked the lid and she's watching me, waiting, and there's nothing clever to put between us.

"It's funny that you think I'd let you go that easily." I smirk. "You're the first person in three years I let all the way in. I'm not giving that up because Colt is back." I make myself hold her eyes back. "You're stuck with me. Kindred doesn't come with an exit."

One tear gets loose. She catches the rest.

"Kindred," she says.

"Kindred."

She reaches across the bar and takes my hand and holds it, and I let her, which is not something I do with most people. We sit in it a second.

Then, because one of us has to break it before we both go under: "And your cowboy better get used to me. If he's in your life, he's in mine. I've always wanted a little brother to make miserable."