In Bed With My Ex's Brother-in-Law novel · Chapter 30 of 32

Chapter 30: The Mark

Rance went very still in the arena dirt.

All around us the grandstand was still yelling.

He didn't hear any of it. I could see that.

"Say it again," he said.

"Mark me. At the next full moon."

"Shiloh." His thumbs moved on my wrists. "You know what they say about half-bloods. That a mark won't take. That it's a waste of a bite."

"I know who said it."

"I don't care if it takes." His voice cracked. "I need you to know that before you ask me. I'd marry you with no mark at all."

"I know you would," I said. "That's why I'm asking."

The next full moon was eight days later.

Kacey drove back to Laramie on Sunday with her pizza-box sign in the back window.

She made me promise to call her the second it was done.

"Not the second," she said, from the truck. "Gross. In the morning."

Gran spent the week cooking like somebody had died.

On the fourth day I asked her why.

"Somebody's getting married into this family," she said, rolling pie crust. "I'm going to feed her till she can't leave."

On the night of the moon, the Bridger boys went to town for pizza.

All four of them, in one truck, at five o'clock, without being asked.

The youngest one stopped at the porch steps on his way.

"Good luck, ma'am," he said, and went red to his hair, and ran.

Gran went with them.

She'd never eaten a pizza in her life. She said she might as well start.

Rance had laid a bedroll in the hay meadow below the house.

Right at the creek bank, under the big cottonwoods, where the grass was already knee high.

His old rodeo bedroll, the canvas one he'd slept in from Pendleton to Cheyenne, with two wool blankets on top.

The grulla was in the near pen with her belly round as a barrel.

She watched us walk down through the grass.

The moon came up over the Owl Creeks, white and enormous, so bright it threw our shadows.

I'd worn a dress.

Blue cotton, with little buttons down the front, that Kacey had made me buy in Laramie and then made me promise to wear for something.

Rance had seen it on the porch and had to sit down on the steps.

Now he stood at the edge of the bedroll in a clean white pearl-snap shirt, with the moon on his face.

He couldn't seem to say anything.

The new scar on his shoulder had healed pink over the old one.

"You're nervous," I said.

"I've been nervous for eight days."

"You rode a bronc in front of four thousand people."

"That was a horse." He swallowed. "This is you."

I took his hand and put it on my left shoulder, on top, over the dress.

"Here," I said. "This is where I want it."

His fingers tightened, very gently.

"Coy kept me five years," I said, "and never once put his teeth on me. And the first night with you, I felt you stop. Right there. Like you'd been thinking about it and didn't dare."

"I didn't dare."

"Dare now."

His eyes went gold.

"Say it plain," he said.

"I want you tonight. I want your mark on me tonight. Yes, Rance."

His chest rose and fell, ragged.

"Yes," he said.

His hand stayed on my shoulder over the blue cotton.

Then his fingers found the top button and slipped it open.

I held still under his hands and it was the hardest thing I'd done all week.

"Eight days," he said, rough. "I've been counting buttons on this dress since I saw you on the porch."

"Then you should be fast at it by now."

"I don't want to be fast."

He opened the second button.

The third.

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