been terrified of this same man, in this same clearing.
But suddenly she remembered
liking
them. Their bodies. Their smiles. The deep timber of their voices. The foreign nature of their masculinity and how it used to make her feel so protected and powerful all at once.
And she was lost somewhere in the awkwardness of his bare chest and her not being afraid. The manners that had ruled her life had long been forgotten, but the survival of the past few years left her with so few graces to navigate this situation.
“I was getting water,” she said, lifting the bucket, because she needed to say something.
He nodded.
“The other day—” She pointed to the flowers, where the indentation of her body could still be seen.
His smile was brief and startling, his face transformed. “Before the war that wouldn't have even made me look twice,” he said. “My sister was fond of naps in tall grass. It's something I forgot about.”
“Me too,” she said.
Silence rippled between them. The sun was skewered on the tops of the trees to the east.
“I slept two days away.”
“You must have needed it.”
“Who knew shooting your own husband could be so exhausting?”
Mama always said her sarcasm was ugly. Made her ugly, and his stunned expression was the proof right now. Mortification burned through her.
“I’m sorry—” she breathed. She was truly not herself and it was alarming to have so little control.
“You shot him three times,” he said. “Triple the exhaustion.”
Shocked, she laughed, a loud bark that wasn’t refined or ladylike or anything but honest. It felt good.
“That explains it.” This man standing here with the shy, quiet smile was a far cry from the cold killer she’d first thought him to be. “And you, you must just be tuckered from pretending to be an oil prospector.”
“Now that you mention it, I suppose I am.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, enjoying the teasing. “Do you even know anything about oil?”
“Not one thing. I have pretended to be a dentist, a doctor, a railroad man and an oil prospector. I fear since the war all I am is a very good liar. “
“You’re not alone,” she said, thinking of her many lies. “My mother would not be proud.”
His laughter was dark and rich and lovely, but it covered a grief. And perhaps a shame. Same as hers. “Neither would mine,” he said.
She smiled at him for too long and he began to clear up his shaving things with hurried hands.
“You…you and your brother must have so much to catch up on,” she said, reluctant to see him go. She'd been social before the war, a gossip more than anything, but Jimmy had kept them in hotel rooms and distant camps far away from people for ten months. She missed conversation.
“We do.” His smile was a glimpse into a hundred memories, a lifetime of shared moments. “I haven’t seen him since the war started. He was the first from our town to volunteer. I wasn’t so brave and joined later.”
Six years. The thought of those years without her sister was awful. She quite simply would not have survived.
“My sister has been my greatest comfort these last years. I could not imagine not having her by my side.”
“It’s… it’s like losing a little bit of who you are.” Cole wiped water from his face. He had a fine chin. Dimpled but strong. And his lips were . . . well, they were lovely. “And there are only the two of us left. My parents, my brother and sister. All gone. If Jimmy had killed Steven . . . ” He shook his head as if he just didn’t have words for that reality.
Her hands strangled the edge of the bucket. The threadbare charm she wore for Jimmy was nowhere to be found, and she felt naked and raw under Cole’s gaze. All she could think of was his face as he handed her that gun. The way he seemed to understand that her soul was less important than killing the man who had taken so much from her.
“I would have shot Jimmy myself,” he said softly, as if he could see the