Chapter 8: Cutbank Creek

By day nine, we had a rhythm.

I got up at five for the animals, and Joss got up at five for the saw.

We ate eggs standing at the counter with our hands all over each other.

Then we went to work.

At night we came home to each other.

On Thursday I had a call at noon to pull a splinter out of a mare's hoof.

Joss met me afterward at Cutbank Creek with sandwiches and a blanket.

He had thirty minutes before he was due back at the mill.

The creek runs shallow and cold there over a wide shelf of flat stones, with cottonwoods dropping yellow leaves into the water.

The air was soft and warm for the first of October.

Nobody ever comes to that stretch on a weekday.

We ate the sandwiches sitting on a big sun-warmed rock.

His phone buzzed on the blanket.

He glanced at it.

"Emmett," he said. "The potluck's Saturday. Everyone's bringing a dish. He wants us there at six."

"Us."

"He said 'the pair.'"

I made a face.

Joss laughed, and wiped mustard off his thumb, and the sun lit the stubble on his jaw.

I looked at him for a long moment.

He was sitting in the open air with his sleeves pushed up and his big hands loose on his knees.

He had thirty minutes.

"Joss."

"Mm."

"Lie back."

He raised an eyebrow, but he lay back on the flat rock with his head on his folded jacket.

The sun fell across his chest and his throat.

I knelt beside his hip and put my hand on the buckle of his belt.

"Here?" he said. "Laney, anyone could..."

"Nobody comes here. I've fished this creek since I was nine."

"I've got to be at the mill..."

"In thirty minutes. This will take less."

He laughed, low, and his stomach muscles flexed under my palm.

"Take your belt off," I said.

He did.

I undid his jeans and drew them down past his hips.

I took him in my hand, and I looked at him in the daylight.

I had not really looked at him until then.

He is long and thick, and the head is dark and slick, and a vein runs the length of him.

I traced it with my thumb.

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