Page 26 of Rune’s Solace

Kid beamed like he’d won something. “Stay hydrated, Tall, dark and felonious.” Then he trotted his ass back across the street.

He had a strange way with words that was for fucking sure.

Amy was waiting for him. She smacked him the second he got close enough, hard enough in the shoulder that he rocked sideways, and the little bastard only laughed and dropped into the chair beside her like getting hit by her was one more good thing that had happened to him that morning.

I sat there holding a blueberry muffin from my own personal hell.

I ate the goddamn muffin, and of course it was good. Little bastard couldn’t even bring me a shitty muffin so I’d have one clean reason to hate him.

Sawyer was decent. Funny, apparently. Took care of her. Made her laugh. Had the good sense to bring a man food even when that man had spent everyday considering what he’d look like going through plate glass. Couldn’t hate him clean.

Tried.

Didn’t take.

That was the whole damn problem with the kid. If he’d been some mouthy little punk, I’d have had something to work with. If he’d treated her wrong once, put a hand where she didn’t want it or made her shrink even an inch, I’d have been across that street before he finished doing it and slept fine afterward. But he didn’t. He watched her. Fed her. Made her laugh. Knew when to get close and when to leave her alone, and she trusted him enough to sit with her back to a window while he was beside her.

Sawyer wouldn’t do what I’d done.

That was the part that kept grinding.

Kid would probably take her to class, buy her coffee, kiss her damn head, and never once decide he knew better than she did what she ought to have. Wouldn’t make her stand in a clubhouse full of people and watch him walk off with another woman. Wouldn’t give her something good and then rip it out from under her because he’d decided hurting her once was better than maybe hurting her later.

Exactly what I’d wanted for her. Exactly what I’d shoved her toward. Fucking hated him for it. Good, I made myself think.

Didn’t feel good.

Felt like chewing broken glass and pretending my mouth wasn’t bleeding.

I finished the muffin, balled up the little white bag, and shoved it into my cut pocket instead of dropping it on the ground, which I wasn’t going to look at too close. Then I put my eyes where they belonged and made myself do the damn job. Corners. Cars. Faces. Doors. Amy there but not the center.

Worked for maybe a minute.

Then she laughed.

My eyes went straight back to her.

When she left, I followed her home. Same distance. Same road. Same little Honda in front of me, her purple hair just visible through the back glass. We reached the bridge and she slowed at her spot, those ten seconds of water she kept for herself.

I slowed too.

Watched the river because she was watching it, then watched the back of her car the rest of the way home and told myself it was the job.

Josie was on the cabin steps when I got back, two beers sweating beside him, and he took one look at my face and didn’t say anything for a while, which is the thing about Josie.

Then he said, “You’ve got crumbs on your cut, brother.”

I looked down. Blueberry. Fuck my life.

“Long story,” I said, sat down next to him, took the beer, and didn’t tell it.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE CAR STARTED dying a mile past the bridge, and some part of me knew right then exactly how the evening was going to end, and started grieving it early.

It had been making a sound for a week, a little tick under the hood I kept turning the radio up over. Not because I hadn’t heard it. I never miss the sound of something about to go wrong. My body won’t let me. I just didn’t have the money to answer it, and until today the radio had been cheaper. That afternoon the tick turned into a shudder, then a cough, then the dash lit up like a slot machine and the wheel went stiff in my hands, and I coasted the dying weight of it onto the shoulder with maybe the last thirty feet it had left, out where the pines came right up to the ditch and there was nothing in either direction but road, marsh and the sun going down.

I sat there a second in the tick and steam of it and did not look in the mirror, because I already knew what was in the mirror.