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He was awake. He lay on that couch with one arm behind his head and a blanket across his hips, and the moon through the window showed me every inch of his chest. I tried really hard to not notice his muscles and tattoos.

“Can’t sleep?” he said.

“Your couch is a foot shorter than you are. I can hear you fighting it.”

“I’ve slept on worse.”

“We could trade.”

“No.”

“Or we could share? The bed’s big enough for two, Havoc. I don’t bite.”

He took so long to answer that I thought he might actually be thinking about it.

“Go back to bed, Bolton,” he said at last. His voice had dropped into his boots. “Please.”

I’d known that man most of my life, and I’d never heard him say please. I went back to bed and lay awake till dawn wishing he’d said yes.

The rest of the week went the same way. On Friday morning, I gave up before the sun did and went looking for coffee.

He was already in the kitchen. He stood at the stove in his jeans and nothing else, cracking eggs into a pan with one hand. I stopped in the doorway. The hawk on his shoulder ran down onto his back, and there was a compass inked below it on his arm. His jeans sat low on his hips. He had a scar under his ribs as long as my finger.

“You’re staring, Bolton,” he said, without turning around.

“You’re cooking. I’m in shock.”

“I can make eggs.”

“What else can you make?”

“Eggs.”

I laughed. He looked over his shoulder at me then, and his eyes went down my bare legs to my feet and back up. I was wearing his T-shirt and not much else. I’d worn it every night that week, and he’d never once asked for it back.

He turned back to the pan and I could see his jaw tensing up.

I went to get dressed. His hallway was narrow, and he came down it for a shirt at the same moment, and we somehow met in the middle. We both stopped. He put his hands on my hips to move me aside, without thinking about it.

But his hands stayed.

They were big and warm through the cotton, and his thumbs sat right on my hip bones. I looked up. He was looking at my mouth.

I’d spent most of my life being very sure that he didn’t see me. Standing in his hallway with his hands on me, I finally let myself think I’d been wrong.

“Eggs are burning,” he said roughly, and let go. Our eyes lingered on each other’s faces a beat longer before he moved. I immediately missed the feeling of his hands on me.

By nine his bike was parked in front of my shop, where it had been every day that week, and he was sitting by dryer six with his boots on my folding table.

Around eleven a cowboy off the rodeo circuit leaned on my counter and asked what a pretty girl did for fun in a town like this. He was harmless enough, but before I knew it a shadow fell across the counter.

“She sews,” Havoc said. “Your dryer’s done.”

It was still spinning. The cowboy took his clothes out still slightly damp and left.

“That was a paying customer,” I said.

“He still paid.”