Page 73 of Devoted

"It's her name on the deed."

"And mine on the phone. Write it down."

"Olivia, it's Saturday. It's not going anywhere over a weekend. You could sleep on it, and Monday I'll⁠—"

"Take it," Olivia said. "Take the first offer," and she hung up.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

He didn't turn a light on.

The truck ticked in the yard behind him. He sat on his own top step with his hat on the board beside him and the pens in front of him in the dark. The bull was in the east pen, standing where he stood most nights. Owen's right hand had swelled on the drive home till he couldn't shut it. He set it on his knee and let it throb.

He could still feel her step back from it. One step, off her own truck door and into the dirt, and his hand left hanging in the air.

Under that, all day, the line camp. Her hand flat on the middle of his chest, the rain coming down on the tin, what she'd said about the sun. He'd had the sun up today, high and hot over a lot full of trucks and church women, and he'd spent it walking to the one place on his uncle's ranch where nobody could hear him.

Headlights came over the cattle guard.

The truck came up the drive slow and stopped short of the yard light with the engine running a while before it quit. Brody got out with a bottle in his hand.

He came across the yard into what light there was, and his lip was split from the middle to the corner, swollen to twice its size, and he'd quit wiping it. He held the bottle up. Wax on the neck, red, still sealed.

"Figured we'd drink the man's whiskey while I decide whether to quit him."

"You've had that since February."

"It came out of the rental and into this one and I never once took it in the house. I'd forget it a week and then I'd hit a cattle guard and hear it roll." He stopped at the bottom of the steps. "You going to ask me up or do I stand here?"

"The pen."

"Pen's fine."

They went out to the east pen and put their arms on the top rail with the bottle between them on the pipe. The bull came up out of the dark on the far side and stood off Brody's elbow with his breath going.

"Evening, Judge."

The bull blew, and Brody looked at him. "He remembers me."

"He remembers everybody. It's not a compliment."

Brody got his knife out, cut the wax off the neck in one turn, pulled the cork with his teeth, and put his hand over his mouth after, because the cork had caught the lip.

"Don't say it."

"I wasn't going to."

He drank, and passed it. Owen took it in his left hand and drank. It was good whiskey, better than anything either of them would have paid for, and he set it back on the rail.

"Your hand."

"It's fine."

"It's the size of a ham, Owen."

"It's a fine ham."

Brody laughed through the lip and swore at it. He picked the bottle up and didn't drink and put it down.