Page 51

"Tell him it's none of his business."

"Told him that this afternoon. He says it's a free country."

"It's a free county road. My gate's not." I roll on up the drive.

The guest house porch light is on, and a white square of paper is taped to her door. I can read it from the drive. It says the same thing it said last time. Main house.

At the house I lock the green ledger in my gun safe, behind the rifles. Nobody opens that safe but me.

My kitchen's dark. My bedroom lamp is on. She's in my bed, sitting up against the headboard in one of my flannel shirts. The cuffs are pulled down over her wrists. Her knees are drawn up under the quilt.

"I want you," she says. "Tonight."

My cock thickens in my jeans before she finishes saying it. She came to my bed on her own and said it plain. Crossing that floor is all I want.

"No," I say from the doorway.

Her chin comes up. "Because of this morning?"

"Because of today." I hold up my hand so she can see it in the lamplight, the split skin and the dried blood. "I put my hands on something in anger. A bag, not a man. It doesn't matter. I don't touch you on a day I've done that. Not to hold you, not to fuck you, not to give you one order."

"I'm not afraid of your hands."

"I know you're not. That scares the hell out of me." I stay where I am. "You can want me all you like. You don't get to talk me out of my own rule."

"That's not fair."

"It's not supposed to be fair. It's supposed to hold." I keep my voice level, because if it shakes, she'll hear exactly how badly I want to say yes. "You say Bandera, and I stop, no matter what. Your limits are yours. This one's mine, and nobody lifts it but me."

She stares at me. Her face flushes from her throat up, with anger and want both. Her fingers knot in the quilt.

"You're serious."

"Dead serious. I'll sleep on the couch if you want the bed."

She looks at my knuckles, then at my face, and I watch her work out that more happened today than a heavy bag. The hours I've been gone. The way I'm standing in my own doorway like a man who doesn't trust himself to come in.

"What did you hit?" she asks.

"The heavy bag in the fight barn."

"Why?"

Because you called for me in that cellar and kept it from me. Because a green ledger locked in my gun safe says I sold your father's paper to the man in the corner. Because my little brother told me I'm protecting myself instead of you, and he's right.

"Long day," I say.

She studies my face for a long time. She can tell there's more, but she doesn't push. I'd rather she pushed.

"I don't want the bed," she says. "I want you in it." She kicks the quilt to the foot of the bed. "Go take your shower, Hollister. I'm not going anywhere."

I go. Another minute in that doorway, and I'll break my own rule with her watching.

I run the water hot and stand under it until the blood quits running off my knuckles into the drain. I keep hearing Beckett. 'Tell her, Knox, or I will.'

When I come out with a towel around my hips, she's still on my bed.

My closet door is open. The chair from the corner of my room is inside it, under the top shelf. My winter coat hangs crooked where she shoved it aside.