Fifty-Five

June 9, 1:00 a.m.

I want to go home. To sleep. To do anything to escape the ball of grief in my chest that’s growing with every breath.

I drive home on autopilot, barely aware of what I’m doing until I get through the gates. When I turn the final curve of the driveway, the house comes in sight and my body relaxes.

This is what I fought for, I remind myself as I unbuckle my seat belt. This is what I betrayed Duke for.

Home. The Rubies. Will.

Safety. Family. Sanity.

There’s a light on in the living room and a motorcycle parked in front of the porch, and I should have expected he’d be here.

He’s always chasing after me.

I walk up the porch steps and through the door.

Busy starts barking when she hears me and stops when she sees me. She leaps forward and plants her front paws on my stomach, smiling like she knows I need it.

There’s a creak from the third stair from the top. I look up, and Will’s there, his eyes red and tired. He hasn’t shaved; there’s rough stubble on his chin. It makes him look older.

Or maybe losing Duke made us older.

He doesn’t say anything and he doesn’t touch me, which I am so grateful for. If he touches me, I’m going to cry. I have years of tears to make up for, and if I start, I don’t think I’ll ever stop.

I can’t think anymore. I’ve been stamping it down, planning, moving forward, getting shit done, ignoring, ignoring, ignoring it.

But now he’s dead.

And now I’m alone.

I’m all that’s left of the McKennas. Of Momma and Jake.

It’s a strange feeling, being lost. It’s not one I’m used to. I always know where I am. Where I’m going.

It’s how he raised me.

He was true north and I was the compass, so now I’m just spinning in circles with nothing to point to.

“I just want to go to sleep,” I say.

“I’ll lock up,” he says, and it almost hurts to breathe around how grateful I am that he’s here. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d come home to the dark, empty house I expected.

I make it up the stairs, Busy at my heels. I’m so tired it takes almost all the energy I can summon up. But when I pass Duke’s bedroom door, I pause, my hand hovering over the knob.

I know it doesn’t look the same. The antique brass bed he and Momma slept in every night is gone. I packed it up and put it in one of the barns for storage. In its place is the hospital bed I bought the second month when I still thought I could do it—give him his peaceful death at home.

If I open the door, I’ll see it, taunting me. Reminding me what kind of daughter I am. Reminding me that I don’t deserve that title. Reminding me that I don’t even have his blood.

I force myself to move past the room into my own. Busy hops on the bed, her tail wagging back and forth against the quilts Miss Lissa stitched.

My entire body aches as I pull off my clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor. I know I should shower—I reek of sweat and smoke—but I can’t bring myself to move. I just stand there, frozen, exhausted, spinning, spinning, always spinning, with nothing to grasp on to.

I hear his footsteps coming up the stairs, pausing to turn off all the lights but the ones in the hall, and then my bedroom door swings open, and he’s there, in the room.

A wash of warmth goes over my bare back as he comes to stand behind me. “Wait a second,” he says. I force myself to stand still in the middle of my room, the cool air hitting my back as he steps away. I hear the scrape of my dresser drawer opening, and then he’s behind me again. I shiver, I can’t help it. He presses his forehead against my shoulder before he drapes the folds of the flannel shirt over me.

I button the shirt—his shirt—over my chest, and when I turn around, he’s stripped down to his black boxer briefs.

Busy jumps off the bed, trotting over to the rag rug next to the bookcase she likes.

I walk to my side of the bed and pull back the quilt and sheet, and he does the same on the other side. I slide in first, lying on my back, and he brings the quilt over the both of us before settling on his side facing me.

I’ve slept next to him dozens of times. In the back of trucks and high up in deer blinds. Snug in a tent, side by side in sleeping bags. Drooling on his shoulder on the couch after watching those old musicals Miss Lissa likes. Out in the backwoods, with nothing but a blanket between us and the sky.

Never in a bed. Never like this.

“Hey,” he says softly. His palm stretches over mine, but he waits until my fingers thread through his to pull me toward him. We’re lined up together, shoulder to shoulder, chest to chest, a tangle of thighs and calves, my always-cold feet pressed between his. Our noses brush. His legs are scratchy with hair; it tickles. His arm drapes over my waist, his hand settling at the small of my back, and I tuck mine over the curve of his hip, where cloth meets skin.

“You did so good,” he murmurs. “You are so good, Harley.”

I press my face into his neck.

“He’d be proud,” Will whispers. “I know you don’t think so. But he would be.”

“He’d hate me,” I say.

“No.” He brings me tighter against him. “Never.”

I wish I could believe it. But that’s not the woman he raised.

I close my eyes.

And finally, the tears come.