Fated to My Mate's Uncle novel · Chapter 6 of 32

Chapter 6: The Roof

The Range Rover's taillights went off down the burn road toward the highway bridge.

Twenty wolves turned and looked at Fraser.

He didn't look at any of them.

He looked at me.

"Not here," he said.

"Then where?"

"Later."

He walked off toward the barn.

The crew didn't follow him. They looked at me instead, as if I'd know what to do with him.

I didn't.

Patsy stuck her head out of the cook shack.

"Chili's on. Anybody who doesn't eat it, I'm taking personally."

They went in.

I didn't.

I went to the shower house, because I had ash in places ash should never be, and because I needed somewhere to stand still.

The camp shower house was a concrete block with four stalls and one lightbulb.

The hot water didn't last long.

I stood under it and let it run cold too.

Whose bed he was in the day Angus died.

Fraser's jacket. Fraser's scent, loud as a siren. A man with no alibi.

And now Charmaine, smirking, like she'd been holding that card for eight years.

I got out, pulled on Patsy's flannel over a damp tank top, and opened the door.

Fraser was sitting on the step outside.

He'd washed his face. His hair was wet. He'd been waiting.

I stopped in the doorway.

"Sit," he said.

"I'm fine here."

"Then I'll talk to your knees."

I sat on the top step, as far from him as the step allowed.

That wasn't very far.

"I was on her roof," he said.

He was looking at the dark, not at me.

"July third, eight years ago. Angus asked me to patch the shingles over their kitchen before the storms came. I was up there all afternoon. Angus was at work."

"And Charmaine?"

"Came up the ladder around four. Sundress. Two beers."

He rubbed the burn scar on his hand.

"She sat down on the ridge next to me. She talked about how Angus never noticed her. Then she put her hand on my leg."

I didn't say anything.

"I said no. She laughed and put it higher."

"I got up and went down that ladder so fast I nearly broke my neck. I got in my truck and drove straight up to the lookout tower and didn't come down till morning."

"And the jacket."

"On the roof. On the ridge, where I'd been sitting on it. I didn't even think of it till they put it on the table in front of you."

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