Page 14 of Devoted

He’d braced for the ache of her going and got this instead, the two of them moving around each other in a cold alley like a thing that had been running for years, her shoulder past his in the narrow spots, her breath and his breath and the cattle’s all standing in the air together, and every cow that went through the chute was one of a hundred and sixty, and the count only ran one way.

The wreck, when it came, was small. A heavy old cow hit the headgate wrong and threw her weight back, and the lever arm kicked, and Olivia grabbed it to hold the catch before it lost the cow’s head, and it was too much lever for one set of hands, and Owen was already there. His hands came down over hers on the bar, both of them, his chest against her shoulder blade, and they held it together, her hands under his hands, the cow’s weight running up through the steel into the both of them, one animal fighting and two people holding, and then the cow stood, and the gate held, and neither of them moved for one breath longer than the holding took.

Then she slid her hands out from under his and went back for the next cow, and he ran the catch, and neither of them mentioned it, then or after, and he felt her hands under his the rest of the night anyway.

They worked the whole twenty by dark. She helped him load the empties, swung the trailer gate, dropped the latch. Then she stood a second looking down his alley at the sorted pens, the first lot of her daddy’s herd standing under a stranger’s yard light with new tags bright in their ears, one day of ten done, and he watched her face add it up and set it down out of sight.

"Saturday," she said, and got in the truck.

He watched her taillights all the way out to the county road, both of them working, and stood in his own alley in the dark and the cattle-warm air, and didn’t say this one to anybody, not even the bull.

Nine working days left. He’d have paid a year apiece for them, and every one he worked brought June a day closer, and there was no way to do the thing right that didn’t run the clock down doing it.

He turned the yard light off.

CHAPTER FIVE

"Seven years," Harvey said, "and not a day of it on him."

He said it flat, to the glass he was drying, the way Harvey said everything. Olivia looked up from the booth and followed his eyes to the door, and Brody Royston was standing in it.

He had a duffel over one shoulder and the cold coming in around him, and he'd stopped just inside like a man who wanted one second to look at the place before the place looked back. He got about half of it. Then Remi saw him.

The sound she made had no words in it. She was at the pool table with a cue in her hand, and the cue hit the felt, and she came across that bar the shortest way, which was over the corner of a chair, and hit her brother at a dead run. He caught her the way you catch something you've caught your whole life, and swung her, and her boots took a bottle off the nearest table and nobody in the building cared.

"You didn't call." She was hitting his shoulder with the flat of her hand, once for every word, crying already and laughing over the top of it. "You land in Midland and you don't— I had a plan, Brody, I was going to be at the airport with a sign, you've ruined it, I hate you, don't you dare put me down."

"Hi, Rem."

"Don't hi Rem me."

Ainsley got there next and folded into the two of them.

"You're real," she said, into his coat. "Okay. Good."

Then Knox and Jett came off their stools together, and after a short discussion nobody won, the two of them had Brody off the ground, duffel and Remi and all.

"Put me down."

"You left the county," Knox said, from under one arm. "You lost your vote."

"He's heavier," Jett reported. "They fed him good over there."

"Put me down or I start telling people what happened to the church van. Both of you were in it."

They put him down. Mason arrived last, no hurry, the grin already on him, and wrapped his cousin up hard enough that Olivia heard it from the booth. He said something into Brody's shoulder too low to carry, and Brody said something back, and they stood like that a second longer than either of them would ever mention.

"You're staying this time," Mason said, when he stepped back. He didn't say it like a question.

"Stateside posting. Midland office." Brody spread his hands. "You've got me till they fire me."

Harvey set a longneck on the bar and went back to his glasses.

"Well," Lauren said, across the booth. "That'll be Brody."

"That'll be Brody."

Olivia drank her beer and watched the family get its boy back.