Chapter 8: Loft

Rex got out of the truck before it had properly stopped.

I got out the other side.

The man with the camera lowered it, smiling, and held up his free hand.

"Evening. I'm so sorry, I think I took a wrong turn."

"There's no turn here," Rex said. "It's a dead-end lane."

"Then I'm even more sorry."

"You were photographing my door."

"Was I?" The man looked surprised. "A scenic bunkhouse. I'm in real estate."

I took out my phone and photographed him, the Suburban and its plate.

His smile slipped half an inch.

"This is private property," I said. "You're welcome to leave on your own, or I'll ring the sheriff and let him ask what you do for a living."

"Understood. Ma'am."

He was in the Suburban and gone in under a minute.

I watched the taillights shrink.

"Your first dead-end lane," Rex said quietly. "You're getting good at this."

"I'm getting angry. It's a different thing."

"Is it?"

I turned.

He was standing close, his hat pushed back, a faint smudge of fire still along his jaw.

"Rex," I said. "Where is the hay kept?"

"The what?"

"The hay."

His eyes did something complicated.

"In the barn loft," he said. "Why?"

"Because I'd like you to show me."

The next afternoon the sun lay in long gold bars through the barn's cracked boards.

I climbed the loft ladder in a borrowed shirt of Rex's and no bra.

He was up there already, stacking bales, shirtless and sweating.

He turned at the top of the ladder and watched me come over the edge.

"Jem."

"I told you to show me the hay."

"I thought you'd forgotten."

"I don't forget things."

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