Page 44 of Devoured

She did, a little. She understood it better when the knock came at seven.

She opened her own door for the second time that day to find Dean Royston on the landing, and if he'd turned his hat to rags this morning, he'd made up for it now. Clean dark shirt, sleeves rolled, jeans that had clearly met an iron under protest, freshly shaved, his good hat in his hand. He'd cleaned up for her. And he took one look at her in the dark dress with her hair down loose past her shoulders, and she watched it hit him, watched the easy thing he'd been about to say die in his throat, watched his eyes go down her once and come all the way back up to her face, and there was nothing cold in it now, nothing walled, nothing held back. Just a man looking at a woman like the floor had tilted under him.

"You're staring," she said. Her voice came out lower than she meant it.

"Yeah." He didn't stop. "I am."

She was fiercely, ridiculously glad she'd worn the dress.

"You look…" He stopped. Started over, plainer, because plain was the only way he had. "There's not a word for how you look. I'd just get it wrong." He held out his hand. "Come on. Whole town's gonna be there."

And that was the thing, the whole town's gonna be there, said while holding out his hand to walk her in on his arm. He wasn't sneaking her into a back booth. He was about to drive her up to the Cattlemen's Dance and walk through the door with her in front of every soul in forty miles, and he'd said it like it was nothing, like it wasn't the loudest thing a man could do in a town this size.

She put her hand in his.

The Cattlemen's Dance was the whole county poured into the rodeo pavilion under a roof strung with lights, a band up on a flatbed stage sawing through something with a fiddle in it, long tables of casserole and cobbler, a bar selling beer for the fire department in plastic cups, and what looked like every soul in forty miles in their good boots and pressed shirts and dresses that came out of the closet twice a year.

They walked in together.

She felt it happen, the small ripple that went through the place as Dean Royston came through the door with a woman on his arm, the heads that turned and turned away again too casually, the conversations that hitched for half a second. He didn't seem to notice or didn't care; his hand stayed at the small of her back, steady, the same certain weight as last night, walking her in like it was the most natural thing in the world, like he hadn't just announced something to the entire county without saying a word.

Lara had been in Soluno long enough now to be recognized, and that was its own strange warmth, Pearl waved a wooden spoon at her from the food tables and then looked at Dean's hand on her back and looked like she might levitate; Marge sent over a plate before she'd asked for one; the third-grade teacher said hello; two of the ranch hands ducked their heads and went red and called her ma'am. She'd come to the end of the map to be nobody, and somewhere in three months she'd become a somebody whether she'd meant to or not.

Then the Roystons descended, because the Roystons were impossible to miss and even harder to escape, a whole loud cluster of them, taking up more than their share of the room the way they did, and Remi got to her first, looking between Lara and her brother and his hand still at Lara's back with open, delighted glee.

"Well, hell," Remi said. "I'm gonna go get a drink and give you both a minute, because that is a lot, and I’m thrilled about it, but I cannot watch it sober."

"Remi—" Dean started.

"Bye."

"Still won't shut up about you, you know?" Chase said, materializing at Dean's elbow with two beers and the easy grin of a brother settling in to enjoy himself. He handed one to Dean. "Weeks now."

"I have not," Dean said, "said one word about her."

Chase looked at Lara. "That's exactly what I mean." He stuck out a hand. "Evenin', Lara. You look nice. He's gonna trip over his own feet trying to dance with you, just so you know going in. Never could two-step worth a damn when it mattered."

"I two-step fine."

"You two-step fine at brandings. Different thing entirely." Chase grinned and drank his beer.

And then Jett was there, in another good shirt, grinning the easy grin, and he hugged her hello, just folded her into a quick warm hug like she was already family, like she'd always been coming to these, and over the top of her head she felt, more than saw, Dean's jaw tick, the small flare of him not loving another man's arms on her even a brother's, and she found she didn't mind it half as much as she ought to.

"There she is." Jett pulled back from the hug grinning. "Tell me you didn’t let him pick the music for this. Last time Dean was in charge of a playlist we two-stepped to the same song four times because he wouldn't admit he'd lost the rest of it." He looked her over, approving, brotherly. "You clean up alarming, Baxter. He's gonna walk into a wall."

"He nearly did already."

"Good." Jett said it with feeling and tipped his beer at his brother. "See, this," he announced, to the family at large, "this is what I've been saying. Somebody who talks back to him. Dean, can we keep her, I'll behave⁠—"

"Jett," said Dean.

"Going, going."

A girl peeled out of the crowd and threw her arms around Dean's neck, and he caught her and laughed, a sound Lara had heard maybe twice, and swung her a half-step the way you do with somebody you've known since they were born.

"There he is," the girl said, letting go. She was young, early twenties maybe, bright-faced and quick-eyed and pretty in the open easy way of a girl who'd been loved her whole life, and she turned that brightness straight on Lara. "And you're Lara."

"I am."