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I shook my head. “Just knocked the wind out of myself.”

Chief bent slightly, trying to see my face.

“You okay, babygirl?” he asked, a soft rasp near my ear.

I nodded, trying to speak coherently while falling apart inside. “I-I’m okay.”

His hand shifted on my shoulder. “You want me to go kick his ass?” he asked quietly. “Would that help?”

I let out a shaky laugh that came out as more of a gasp. “No, that wouldn’t help.”

Some of the tension eased in his arm. Not enough for him to let go.

Clayton reached us, his expression changing as he took in my muddy clothes. “What happened?”

“Somebody fell into her,” Sadie told him. “She didn’t hit her head.”

“No one ever said she hit her head,” Ruckus told her, looking baffled. “Why do you keep bringing it up?”

“Because I’m trying to keep this a misdemeanor,” Sadie said. “Work with me.”

That surprised a laugh out of Ruckus, who was not always quite sure what to do with her.

Clayton looked toward the people farther up the bank.

It was like I could read his mind. “Leave it,” I said before he could go anywhere. “It was an accident.”

He looked back at me, then at Chief’s arm. Chief didn’t seem to notice.

“What would help?” Chief asked me, his voice soft to the point of tender, as though the last two years had just disappeared.

I touched the front of my wet shirt. “I’m covered in mud.”

“I noticed.” His thumb moved once against my shoulder. “Come on.” He eased away from my back but kept hold of my arm.

Sadie handed him the towel.

Then he was leading me up the bank, toward the house.

The shortest route passed beneath the trees beside the porch. He didn’t take it. He followed the open edge of the lawn instead, putting himself between me and the dark.

He didn’t ask whether I wanted to go around. He remembered.

I watched his hand on my arm and tried not to make that mean more than it did.

It was a hopeless exercise.

There was an outdoor tap at the corner of the house. Chief turned it on and held the towel while I rinsed my hands. The water ran brown over my fingers.

My palms stung. Nothing terrible. A few scrapes, some grit. My knees looked worse than they felt.

He crouched briefly to look at them.

“Can you bend them?”

I did, feeling foolish and grateful and increasingly angry with myself for both.

“I fell in the mud, Declan. I didn’t get hit by a car.”