Page 15

"Fine," she says. "Are we done talking?"

"We're done."

I reach past her, shut the back door, and turn the deadbolt. Then I step back an arm's length and face her square, so she can see every move I make. I hold out my hand, palm up, and wait.

She studies my hand. Then she puts her left hand in mine.

Her fingers are cold from the yard. I close my hand around them, and she doesn't pull away.

I spent a year driving back roads at night looking for this woman.

Now I'm gripping her hand, and I want her so bad my whole body aches with it. I'm still the one who decides what happens next.

"My room's down the hall," I say. "We'll go slow on account of your ribs."

"I'm not made of glass, Hollister."

"No. You're made of cracked ribs and a busted hand. We go slow."

I pick up the rifle from beside the pantry with my free hand.

She glances at it and looks back at me.

"The whole place is on lockdown," I tell her. "The rifle goes where I go."

I walk her down the hall with her hand still in mine. She doesn't lean on me, but she doesn't pull away either.

I shoulder my bedroom door open. The room is dark. I stop inside the door and remember the guest house last night, when I raised my arm toward the light switch and her whole body jerked away from my arm.

"Lamp," I tell her. "On the nightstand. I'm reaching for it."

I let go of her hand, cross to the nightstand, and turn on the lamp. Yellow light spreads across the quilt and the bare floor. With the lamp on and the night black outside, the window over the back pasture reflects the whole room like a mirror.

I go back to the door and lean the rifle against the wall beside it. Then I shut the door and turn the lock.

She's come a few steps into the room, and she watches the rifle, then the lock, then me. I stand between her and that door until she stops checking it.

I cross to her. She lets her right arm drop to her side, and I start on the buttons of the flannel. There's nothing under it.

Her breath goes short when the backs of my fingers brush her skin. I take my time, one button and then the next, until the shirt hangs open down the front of her.

The bruises over her ribs make me want to kill somebody. They run from under her left breast down past her waist, purple and green and yellow, old marks under new ones.

I've had my own ribs broken, and I know what it takes to mark a body like that. She didn't get those from a fall. Somebody put them there.

I say nothing about them. I put my mouth on the side of her neck instead, where the skin isn't marked. Her pulse hammers against my lips.

She shivers. Goose bumps rise along her arms.

When I slide the flannel back off her shoulders, she catches both cuffs, her good hand in a tight fist and the wrapped one curled as far as it will go and holds them down over her wrists. She doesn't look at me while she does it.

She doesn't want me seeing her wrists. I don't know why, and I don't ask.

"Shirt stays on," I say, and I leave it hanging off her elbows.

She looks back at me and nods once.

I pull the drawstring loose and drag the sweatpants down over her hips. They drop to the floor, and she steps out of them. She stands there in nothing but my open flannel, with her nipples drawn tight and a flush spreading down her chest.