Page 61 of Rooster's Remorse
He decided.
He took my whole life in his two hands and made the call without asking, to keep me breathing, and I have hated him for it every day since.
Now I'm watching him do it again, to another woman he loves, for the same reason.
And it's the right call. It might be the only one there is.
If he doesn't decide for her, she dies in that house the way my mother died in ours, on the floor, over an address.
So which was it, with me?
I stand against the wall and watch Finn save his mother the only way he's got, and for the first time in ten years, I can't find the line anymore between what he did to me and what love looks like when the men coming through the door don't care one bit what you agreed to.
"She's packing," Finn says, and lowers the phone, and his hand won't hold still. "She's packing."
He looks at me.
And I've got nothing to give him, because everything I've been certain of for ten years just slid out from under my feet.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Rooster
My mother flew out of Tucson just before seven this morning, and I don't breathe right until Amara's man texts a photo of her at the curb.
She's got one bag. She's got her good coat on, the wool one she wears to church and the doctor and nowhere else, and she's standing outside an airport she's flown out of maybe twice in her life with a stranger loading her into a car.
She's looking at the camera because he told her to, and she's trying to smile.
She doesn't know how to look scared for a photo. So she smiles.
I look at that photo until my eyes burn.
Then I text backthank youand put the phone face down on the workbench and stand in the cold garage with both hands pressed flat on the metal until my chest comes down out of my throat.
She's out.
She's on a plane over the Gulf right now.
She'll be here tomorrow, and for the first time in years, my mother's going to be somewhere I can put my body between her and the door.
They call church for the run at ten and they let me in, which they've never done for club business.
I understand why the second I sit down at the foot of the table.
I'm not there as a member.
I'm there as the man who knows Ironwood.
Everybody in the room knows the difference and so do I, and I keep my hands on my knees and my mouth shut until somebody wants it open.
Amara goes through it fast.
"Crossing's handled. My uncle's got a property that straddles the line down past Sasabe. House on our side, house on theirs, and a tunnel between that's older than me and better built than most of the roads up there. We go under with everything we're carrying and we come up in Arizona clean. No port, no plates, no cameras. That's his whole part of this. He gets us across and back, and after that it's ours."
"What's it going to cost us?" Razor says.
"Nothing we're not already good for." She doesn't elaborate and nobody pushes it, because whatever runs between Amara and her uncle isn't table business. "The bigger piece is the other side. We can't stage a run on a property in Cochise County out of Chihuahua. We come up out of that tunnel and we've still got two hundred miles to cover and nowhere to stand."
