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After I finish eating, I lay down, keeping perfectly still. Outside, the horses nicker, the frogs sing. My twenty-first year starts today; I hope it’s better than my twentieth.
Maybe something exciting will happen.
It could be false hope, but I feel like it will.
Nana told me hope is as unpredictable as a meadowlark in the grass, hidden from view until someone steps too close. And then it bursts up into the sky, rising, trilling, black against the gold sunset.
There are no meadowlarks in the fields by the house. David hays them, and it scares the birds away.
CHAPTER FOUR
WESTIN
I should stop myself, but I don’t think I can.
My body is restless. I have a hunger that I know only one thing can satisfy, and it’s that sweet face, dusted with freckles, framed by golden waves. I didn’t think I had a type, but I know I do now.
And it’s Diane Carter.
Every part of her.
It’s like someone lit a fire in my chest, and it just keeps growing, stoked by every second I turn our brief conversation over in my mind. I swear, I remember everything. The way her lips moved when she spoke. Her soft voice, edged with a little vocal fry.
I’ve felt desire before, but not like this.
This is a fucking fever. I’d do desperate things to satiate myself.
The night of her birthday—the day I promised to visit her but didn’t—I pace the gatehouse floors.
Back and forth.
I take a shot of whiskey, then another.
The moon is full, so I go outside in the hopes of walking until I’m tired enough to sleep. It’s almost eight, so everyone is settling down. As I move through the employee housing, I see Jensen sitting on theporch of one of the vacant houses. Sometimes, when he’s helping with a job in the morning, he’ll stay overnight.
He takes a drag of his cigarette. “What’re you doing out so late, gunslinger?”
I wince. He doesn’t mean it badly, but the name unsettles me.
“Walking,” I say.
He stretches out his legs, blowing smoke at the sky. “Want to go shoot shit?” he drawls.
He’s not from here. He showed up from Kentucky when he was in his early twenties, tight lipped about his past but willing to work. Sovereign was one of the first to give him a job. Even after over a decade out here, he still drawls like he’s in deep Appalachia.
I consider his proposal.
“Yeah, alright,” I say.
We go down to the shooting range, a strip of rocky land with a hill that comes up to catch strays. Jensen takes his empty beer bottle and puts it on the rail, taking his time getting back to me. He fits his hat on and hangs his cigarette in his lip.
I know what he wants.
“How much?” I ask.
“Five bucks,” he says. “Spin and close your eyes.”
Jensen has a lot of dumb ideas, but I usually go along with them, so I’m not any better. I cock my pistol and spin once until my foot is exactly where it started. Then, I point, take a beat, and shoot blind. Glass splinters.
