Page 69

I put the bag in the spare room.

The room had been his office when I lived there, then briefly a guest room after he decided my desk made the apartment look crowded. The narrow bed was made with hospital corners. A stack of dealership brochures sat on the dresser. No dust. No evidence that the six months since I left had happened in this room either.

When I returned, Derek held out his hand.

"Phone."

I stopped.

Only for a second. Maybe less. But he saw it. Derek always saw resistance. His smile did not change, but the muscle at his jaw gave one neat flex.

"So we don't have any more disappearing acts," he said. "Just until we get settled."

The phone sat warm in my coat pocket. Boone's number was in it. Wyatt's. Cash's. The file number Sheriff Hutchins had written on the card. The voicemail. Every missed call. Every ugly little piece of Derek's trail.

I took it out and put it in his palm.

"Thank you."

He carried it to the kitchen counter and set it beside the fruit bowl, screen up, well out of reach from the couch. Then he plugged it into my old charger.

I had left that charger behind six months ago.

He had kept it.

"Sit at the table," he said. "You haven't eaten."

Not a question. He had never asked questions when a conclusion gave him more control.

I sat in my old chair. The one facing away from the windows.

Derek opened the refrigerator and began taking out containers. He talked while he worked, filling the apartment with the pleasant, rolling sound of himself.

"You made the right choice coming back. I know it probably doesn't feel that way yet. You've had people in your ear, and you're embarrassed, and you've made a mess. That doesn't mean we can't clean it up."

He put a plate in the microwave.

I folded my hands in my lap under the table. My chewed thumbnail found the scar along my opposite palm and worried it.

"That ranch situation wasn't healthy," he continued. "You know that now. Isolated like that, working all hours, surrounded by men who—" He gave a little laugh, sorrowful on my behalf. "Well. I don't need to explain what it looked like."

Boone checking the calf shelters twice.

Boone putting honey in my coffee before I knew I liked it.

Boone sitting below my eye line and asking what I needed.

Boone in handcuffs, telling me I had done right.

The microwave beeped.

I did not move.

Derek set the plate in front of me: chicken, rice, steamed broccoli. The food he called clean. No butter. No salt I could see. Portion measured by the man who had once explained that five feet tall meant I didn't need as much as I thought I did.

A fork landed beside it.

"Eat."