Page 79 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight
“He ain’t got one.”
She smiled, drunk and a little mean. She always got a little mean after a case went bad. It wasn’t personal, it was her way of dealing. Still, Grady didn’t mind being on the receiving end of it, but he’d be damned if Cole was.
“Everyone’s got one.”
“Leave it.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. He stared back, his finger tapping his full glass.
“Okay,” she said and drank.
Later, when Charmaine had passed out on the couch and Grady had carried her up to bed, she woke up as he lay her down. Grady watched her bleary eyes hone in on him, her hand coming up to stroke his face. She leaned up, kissed him, and slid her other hand down to his crotch and rubbed. He wasn’t hard, and the more they kissed and the more she rubbed, the less he got there.
Grady broke the kiss and sat back.
“We gonna talk about this?” she asked.
“Not right now.”
She blew out a breath, and Grady thought she was going to say something else, but then she was breathing deeply, loudly, and he knew she was asleep.
Grady got up and knocked on Cole’s door. No answer. He opened the door, poked his head in, and saw the bed perfectly made and empty, the same way it’d been for months. He went downstairs, out to the porch and stood for a minute, the night quiet and cool. He headed for the barn.
Sure enough, Chloe was there, her head swinging to him as he walked in. Grady went up and saw Cole lying back on the horse blankets in the stall next to hers. Chloe moved and put her head over the edge as if she were guarding Cole, giving Grady the stink eye.
“Ain’t too cold tonight,” Grady said.
“It’s cold enough,” Cole replied.
Grady braced his arms on the stall door and looked down at him, at where he’d made himself right at home with a makeshift bed and his horse—who should’ve been in the pasture for the night.
“You ain’t gonna come in?”
Cole snorted.
“She’s asleep,” Grady said and didn’t know why he said it, why he was explaining anything.
“I’m all right out here.”
“All right,” Grady replied. He didn’t move. Everything felt off. But then Grady realized that no, only one thing felt off.
He couldn’t recall what it felt like not to kiss Cole as the last thing he did in a day.
Cole was watching him, steady but guarded in a way Grady wasn’t used to from him anymore. Grady knew he couldn’t go into the stall and kiss Cole because for one thing, he wouldn’t be able to stop, and for another, he had his wife asleep in his bed, and even accounting for what happened last time, that was before. And before what, exactly, Grady couldn’t have said, but it was before something shifted between him and Cole, between him and Charmaine.
“You be needin’ anything else tonight?” Cole asked after a while. It sounded forced and hopeful all at once.
“I ain’t sure,” Grady said and heard the honesty in it.
“You ain’t sure,” Cole replied bitterly.
“I’ll see you in the morning then.” Grady pushed himself up and went out.
Grady went in, sat on the couch, leaned back and blew out a breath.
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