Page 24 of Rune’s Solace

He kissed my head again. The lady by the window smiled at us, charmed to pieces.

Across the street, not looking at his phone, not looking at anything but us, the biggest stillest shape on King Street watched a boy kiss my hair, and I let him watch it, and I told myself the warm ugly thing in my chest was satisfaction and nothing else. Nothing like the other thing, the thing that would’ve had to admit it mattered whether his eyes were on me at all.

Not one inch, I’d promised Brenda.

And here I was spending his first morning making good and sure he got a long look at a lie. Which is its own kind of inch, if you’re honest about it.

I wasn’t feeling especially honest. I finished my coffee and let my fake boyfriend hold my hand and let the other man watch, and it was the worst, safest, most complicated morning I’d had in a long, long time.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

BY THE FOURTH day I had her life memorized, and it was the worst damn thing I’d ever done to myself, and I’ve done some things.

Seven-oh-two out the gate every morning, that little Honda swinging onto the county road with the sun still low. She drove careful. I hadn’t known that about her. Two hands on the wheel, mirrors checked more than they needed checking, a girl who’d learned young that whatever was behind you mattered, and I fell in far enough back that a stranger wouldn’t have made me, close enough that nothing got between us without going through me first. Across the bridge she always slowed at the same stretch, just for a few seconds, eyes cutting toward the water, and it took me two mornings to figure out she was doing it on purpose. Ten seconds, maybe. Just her and that river before she hit campus. By the third morning I was slowing too, far enough back she wouldn’t notice, looking at the same damn water like some lovesick asshole. Closest I was getting to sharing anything with her, so I took it.

Then we hit the city.

And there was the fucking boy.

Sawyer. I’d run him the first damn day, the way you do when some man starts putting his hands on somebody you’re charged with keeping alive. Nineteen. Clean sheet. Part-time job. Mother out in Summerville. No warrants, no drugs, no debts, no bad company, not so much as a speeding ticket worth getting excited over.

Fucking choirboy. Should’ve made my job easier. Didn’t.

Instead I spent days watching him put his hands on her and learning a new way to hate a man who hadn’t done one damn thing wrong.

First morning, the kid walked right up behind her, bent down, and put his mouth on the top of her head.

I damn near came off the bike.

Not because he’d done anything wrong. That was the problem. He did it easy. Familiar. Like he’d done it a hundred times and planned on doing it a hundred more. Then he sat his ass down beside her, put his arm along the back of her chair, got close enough that his shoulder touched hers, and Amy let him.

Fuck me, she let him.

She leaned into him. Laughed at whatever he said. Let him take her hand and keep it right there on the table like there was nothing in the world to think about, and I sat two lanes away watching some kid touch her like it was the easiest thing he’d ever been allowed to do.

With Sawyer, she sat with her back to the damn door.

Took me a minute to understand what I was seeing.

Amy. Back to a door. Didn’t check it every time it opened. Didn’t track every man who passed their table. Didn’t keep her hands tucked close or her shoulders ready. She just sat there loose and laughing, letting that kid lean all over her while the damn world moved behind her back and she never once turned to check it.

Safe. She looked safe with him. That one hurt worse than the kissing.

I knew what that kind of easy cost her. I’d watched her take near a year getting there with me, inch by stubborn inch, until she’d quit watching my hands and quit checking how close I stood and started walking out to my cabin alone without thinking twice about what kind of man waited inside. She’d sit in my dirt with her knees muddy, follow me into the woods with a basket over her arm, turn her back on me without needing to know where I was every second.

Then I’d fucked it up.

Now some nineteen-year-old kid had what I’d spent a year earning. No. That wasn’t fair. He hadn’t taken a damn thing from me. I’d handed it over. Didn’t mean I had to enjoy watching him have it.

Kid hadn’t done shit wrong. I’d checked. Still wanted to put him through the coffee shop window. Wanted that arm off the back of her chair. Wanted his hand off hers. Wanted his mouth about six fucking feet from the top of her head, and none of it cared that I had no claim on her or that I’d been the one who made damn sure of it.

Jealousy isn’t much interested in what’s fair.

I’d told myself months ago this was what I wanted. Amy with somebody her own age, somebody clean, somebody she could plan a future without making her part of anything ugly. I’d shoved her away for exactly this, so she could land somewhere soft instead of spending another year getting tangled up in a man old enough to know better and mean enough to make her regret it.

Well. There she was. Soft landing. Fucking hated it. Worst part was, it started screwing with the job.

I caught myself one morning watching Sawyer’s thumb move over the back of her hand instead of watching the intersection, and that pissed me off worse than anything the kid had done. Devil put me there because I was supposed to be better than that. Amy belonged at the side of my sight and the street belonged in front of me, but I had it backward, watching some boy touch her while half of King Street could’ve walked up behind me carrying a damn rifle.