Page 73 of Open Road

She isn’t looking at Winchester.

She’s clearly aware he’s there.

The conversation between them takes place from fifteen feet away. No words cross the distance, nothing visible from where I’m standing, except the particular quality of two people deciding something simultaneously from opposite sides of the same question.

Then she looks at him.

He doesn’t look away.

She says something, too low to carry across the yard. Nothing changes in her expression, but the moment carries the quiet gravity of a question she’s been waiting a long time to ask.

His answer is brief.

Her chin tilts, the slight movement of someone absorbing information they maybe expected. She turns back toward the fence, away from him.

Winchester’s glass goes down.

Not set.Down.On the table beside him, without looking to see where it lands, he moves.

He crosses the yard, a large, deliberate man who has made a decision and is now simply carrying it out. The destination is clear. Nova doesn’t turn around until he’s close enough that she would have heard him coming, close enough that the light catches the chrome of his watch and the set of his jaw.

I look away.

This one isn’t mine to watch.

Roam’s arm comes around me from behind. One arm is over my shoulder, pulling me in against his side, his chin against my temple, the way he does when he’s not thinking about it. Rose sleeps on his other side, barely anchored, trusting the world to hold her.

The compound is quiet now, the late quiet, the version that follows a good night. Somewhere behind me, something is beginning. Behind me is whatever comes next.

In front of me is the yard, the lights, and the Florida sky filling with stars above the tree line.

Roam’s arm tightens slightly. “You good?” he says.

The laugh comes up the way it does now—easy, unannounced, the reflex of a woman who has found enough reasons for it that it lives close to the surface. “So long as I’m with you and Rose,” I say. “Better than good.”

He’s quiet for a moment, the stars hold still.

Then, so low it’s almost just a breath, “Home.”

TO BE CONTINUED