Page 189 of The Fire Line

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

The gravelly sound of Harris’s voice went through him with the intimacy of touch.

Neither spoke immediately. Wind moved faintly against the phone, as if Harris was outside somewhere. Jay could picture him beside a fence, looking toward the pasture because emotional honesty apparently still required several acres of open ground.

“So,” Harris said finally. He paused and cleared his throat. “I do miss you.”

Jay’s fingers tightened around the phone.

“A lot more than I figured I would,” Harris added.

The directness caught Jay unprepared.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve been feeling that too.”

Harris was quiet for a moment. “Been trying to figure out what good sayin’ it does.”

Jay rested his free hand on the copy of Middlemarch. “Come up with anything?”

“Nope.” Harris exhaled slowly. “I know seein’ you wouldn’t fix anything. We’d still live two thousand miles apart. You’d still have your work, and I’d still have the ranch. There’re a hundred reasons this is a bad idea, and most of ’em are good ones.”

Jay went motionless, listening into the silence on the line as though Harris’s next words might decide everything.

“I know it’s not fair to ask you to keep this going when I can’t tell you what it’s supposed to look like,” Harris continued.

The wind moved again. Jay heard the faint metallic complaint of a gate somewhere beyond him.

When Harris spoke next, his voice had gone rougher.

“But I can’t get you out of my head, Jay.”

Jay closed his eyes.

Relief moved through him slowly, easing something that had remained tight since Montana. Whatever else Harris could not offer him yet, Jay had not been alone in this.

“Don’t want to, either,” Harris said.

The admission settled beneath Jay’s ribs and stayed there.

Harris drew a breath. “I just need to see you.” A pause. “Can I come see you?”

Jay opened his eyes. Beneath his palm waited a book meant for shelves Harris had not built yet—a place in a future neither of them knew how to name.

Harris had spent five weeks finding reasons this could not work and called anyway.

A smile broke across Jay’s face.

“Yeah, Harris,” he said. “You can come see me.”