Page 15 of Switch

I wanted to remember this. The weight of her hair across my pillow. The little catch in her breath. The scar on her knee I’d kissed once before and found again tonight.

Then I started to move.

Long, deep strokes. Unhurried. She locked her legs around my back and her arms around my neck and we rocked together in that narrow spare bed with nowhere else to be. I kissed her mouth, her jaw, the hollow of her throat. She held on to me like she was afraid I’d go.

She had every reason to be.

When she came again, it was quiet. A long shudder that went right through her, her mouth open against my neck, my name in a whisper. It dragged me over with her. I drove as deep as I could get and let go, and for a few seconds there was nothing but her.

After, she stayed. She fell asleep with her head on my chest and one hand spread over my heart.

I lay awake with her hair against my mouth and listened to her breathe.

I reminded myself. The Gulf run. Then gone.

This time I’d tell her before I went.

It was the only difference I had to give her. She deserved better than me.

CHAPTER 5

SAVANNAH

Iheard Dale Pruitt’s stock trailer before I saw it, rattling empty up my drive, and I knew what it had come for.

I was in the wash rack hosing Biscuit’s legs. She’d come out of her stall sound for the third morning running, and I’d been standing there with cold water running over her fronts, letting myself feel good about it. Two years of work in those legs. Shockwave, injections, a hundred hours of hand-walking. Dale’s truck pulled up by the barn. He got out and took his hat off, and he kept his eyes on the ground until he’d walked over.

“Morning, Savannah.”

“Dale.”

He was a big, slow man with a rancher’s squint and hands like shovels. He’d known my father for forty years. He stood there turning his hat brim in his fingers and looking at Biscuit’s legs instead of my face.

“She’s sound,” I said. “You saw the video.”

“I saw it. She looks real good.” He cleared his throat. “Carol called Doc Ames yesterday. To ask how the visit went.”

My stomach dropped straight through the concrete.

“He said he didn’t have you on his books this week.” Dale met my eyes then. He looked sorry. That was the worst of it. “And Lupe Chavez’s boy says he saw a man walking down the county road yesterday evening holding his arm funny. Coming from your direction.”

“Dale…It’s not…”

“I’m not asking what’s going on out here. I don’t want to know.” He put his hat back on. “But I’ve got two horses in your barn, and I can’t sleep with them here. I’m sorry, honey. I am.”

There was nothing to say. He was right to do it. If I’d been him, I’d have done it too.

I led Biscuit up the ramp myself. She loaded like a lady, the way she always did. Dale brought the gelding, and I stood in my own yard with my hands wet and watched the gate swing shut on a third of my board money.

He stopped at the truck door. “Your daddy would’ve…” He stopped. Shook his head. “Take care of yourself, Savannah.”

The trailer went down my drive at a crawl. Dust hung behind it in the still air and wouldn’t settle.

Switch was standing in the barn door. I didn’t know how long he’d been there.

“That’s on me,” he said.

“Yeah.” I turned the hose off. “It is.”