Chapter 11: Boone

Boone's POV

I stood up off that cot and buttoned my own shirt wrong.

Behind me, Lainey was pulling hers closed over her breasts with shaking hands.

I couldn't look at her.

If I looked at her, I'd see the place on her breast where my mouth had been.

"Go up to the house," I said. "Go to bed."

"Boone."

"Go to bed, Lainey. Please."

She went out the side door of the barn without looking at the truck.

Hayes got out of it.

He walked into the yard light with his hands in his jacket pockets.

"You want to do this out here," he said, "or inside where Dot can't hear it?"

We did it in my study.

Mary Ellen's study, really.

Her daddy's desk, her granddaddy's chair, her horse books on every wall.

I poured two bourbons from the bottle on the shelf.

It was a Ransdell's, with that damn spring house on the label.

Hayes didn't sit.

"You had her on a cot," he said.

"And you had her in your bed six days after that supper."

"She walked up that hill on her own feet, Boone. I didn't drag her into an empty aisle by the arm."

I drank half my glass.

It burned all the way down, and it didn't help.

"Let her go," I said.

Hayes laughed, short and ugly.

"You sold her farm," he said. "You sold her mama's farm out from under her at a supper with a hundred and fifty people watching."

"I know what I did."

"You gave Mary Ellen's pearls to a girl who sends old mares to the killers."

"I know what I did, Hayes."

"Then you don't get to tell me to let anything go."

I set my glass down on Mary Ellen's desk.

"Why'd you say yes so fast?" I said.

He looked at the bourbon in his hand.

"Because she asked."

"You didn't blink. You didn't even look at me first."

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