Page 83 of The Widow and the Wanted

There, in the pile of us, I cannot help but feel we’ve stumbled upon something. Something special I’d never thought possible. Something equally as dangerous.

The people in this territory, and all the settlements surrounding it, wouldn’t see us as merely unconventional. To them we would be fornicators. Lula would be branded ruined, cast out, whispered about as the worst kind of fallen woman. The three of us would be labeled sexual deviants, fit only for scorn, exile, or worse.

I’ve learned that much from Alfred Collins, even if it was never the lesson he meant to teach. No amount of careful conformity can truly control what others decide to believe about you. In their eyes, I will always be an ugly lie. If I were made of weaker stuff, I might have started believing it myself. If Boone hadn’t told me I was perfect exactly as God made me, I might still be twisting myself into knots trying to earn acceptance from people committed to misunderstanding me.

But lying here tonight, with Lula soft and glowing between us and Boone’s hand still threaded through mine over her belly, I feel the truth settle deep in my bones.

This, the three of us, tangled and spent, is a gift. A rare and precious thing most people will never be brave enough to feel.

I only hope Lula keeps seeing it that way when the world tries to tell her otherwise.

Chapter 23

Lula

Ican almost hear my mother’s voice.

“Little strumpet. Nothing but beaux on the brain.”

At the age of sixteen, such a judgment from the proprietor of a whorehouse felt like an unfair assessment. After all, it was the barkeep she’d caught me with at the time, and he wasn’t half as beautiful as the men I now wake between.

Though with the barkeep I’d had quite a bit more whiskey. Last night I was stone sober.

I become aware of everything at once. The bruising ache between my thighs. The hint of sex on the morning air. I wake facing Okee, who is now up and staring at the rafters, with Boone’s arm heavy around my middle, his warm breath in my hair.

Okee turns his head to exchange a quick glance. We don’t say anything. We simply exchange crooked smiles. Finally I sit up, first to face the day, blanket clutched to my chest, bare underneath.

“Well,” I murmur, “this is a disgrace.”

Boone laughs. “Christ, and here I’d nearly made a respectable man of myself.”

Okee laughs too. A laugh that takes years off him, bright and loose like he has forgotten himself for half a second. I look at him too long. Long enough to want to touch his face. Then Boone speaks my thoughts aloud.

“Mercy. Ain’t you the handsomest thing I ever did lay eyes on. How in God’s name did I get so lucky?”

A corner of Okee’s mouth lifts. He almost preens beneath it, then turns and catches Boone by the jaw.

“I’m the lucky one,” he says, and kisses him slow enough to make my face go hot all over again. I can only sit there clutching the blanket, feeling as though I have been allowed to witness something unbearably private.

“How long have you been keeping to one another?”

Okee and Boone exchange a look. It is the sort of look that says they have already had an entire conversation in silence, and need only decide which one of them will be kind enough to translate. Boone scratches at his jaw and huffs a chuckle. “If you mean ridin’ side by side, nearly six years,” Boone says. “If you mean when did I start pining after him like a goddamn fool, I took one look at him in a muddy field and I swore time stood still.”

That earns a genuine smile from Okee, small and helpless and so handsome its impossible to look away. “And you?” I ask him. “When did you start pining?”

Boone answers for him. “He struggled at first.”

“I did not struggle,” Okee corrects. “One does not act on feelings like that unless it’s safe. We’d served, fought and⁠—”

“Man saved my life,” Boone cuts in.

I lean in. “Okee saved your life?”

Okee’s eyes flick shut once, like he already regrets the direction this is taking.

Boone rolls onto an elbow. “Winter of ’64,” he says. “Cold enough your spit near froze before it hit the ground. We’d been ridin’ all day through a mess of sleet and mud, chasin’ graybacks through woods they knew better than us. Ground was slick as snot. Nothin’ went how it ought. Somebody fired from the tree line. Horses spooked. I was crouched, takin’ cover behind a tree, when next thing I know I’m on the ground with twelve hundred pounds of dying horse comin’ down on top of me.”

I gasp.