“Sorry,” he mumbled.
“What for?”
“For – you know – that.”
She smiled slightly.
“I meant to say thank you for that, actually,” she said.
The back of his neck felt hot again. He reached up to pull down the brim of his hat, but his shoulder felt stiff and sore, like he’d slammed it into something during the fight.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
The moment Adele unlocked the door of their shed, the pointer bounded across the room and jumped on Jack, trying to lick his face. Adele grabbed it by the collar and said, “I better let him out a minute.”
“Good idea.”
When he was alone Jack took off his shirt to examine his bruises. It was a slow process; his left arm hurt too much to raise all the way, but he managed it in the end. Three bruises were already blooming purpley-black over his ribcage, and a fourth, larger than the others, blossomed on his left shoulder.
“Shit.”
The door opened and the dog came bounding back into the room, but it was checked by an admonishment from Adele and sat panting on the floor beside Jack.
“Wow,” said Adele. Jack looked over his shoulder to see her staring at his back. “He got your back good.”
Jack looked down at his ribcage.
“Got my front good, too.”
He lay down on the rust-orange sofa and leaned his head back with a sigh. Adele perched beside him, balanced on one leg on the sofa’s edge.
“How bad’s my back look?”
“There’s only one bruise, but it’s pretty awful. Really dark already. That man can hit hard.”
“Don’t need to tell me that.”
Adele unscrewed the jar from the bartender with difficulty and smeared bruise cream over Jack’s shoulder. A shudder ran up his spine when she touched him, but he clenched his teeth and hoped she hadn’t noticed. She grinned.
“You allergic to me now or something?”
Shit. She’d noticed.
“Maybe it’s the cream,” Jack said.
“Maybe.”
He closed his eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had touched him so gently, intimately – when he’d been with his last girlfriend, whenever the hell that was – he couldn’t even remember that just now.
She covered all four of his bruises with cream, but then she touched him again, hesitantly, on the lower left side of his stomach. His stomach muscles tightened. He opened his eyes and saw her gazing at – his tattoo, he realized. She traced the simplistic Celtic trinity knot and the date beneath it so lightly that he barely felt her finger.
“Ten twenty-two, two-thousand two.” Her fingers withdrew and she met his eyes. “What’s this?”
He looked at the ceiling. There was a water stain over his head, brown and splotchy.
“Day Pops died,” he said.
“Your grandfather?”
“Yeah.”
She opened her mouth, changed her mind, and then changed her mind again.
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly.
“Doesn’t matter,” Jack said.
She opened her mouth again, but this time she seemed to decide it would be better to say nothing.
“He was the only one who ever really supported me.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Adele said.
“I know.”
They were silent for a few minutes.
“Dad thought I was an idiot,” Jack said finally. “He said the only thing I’d get in rodeo was a busted-up face. Thought Pops was an idiot too – or anyone who wanted to do something bigger than grow corn and soybeans. And Mom always went along with whatever he said, and Todd – my brother – he might admire me for getting out of there, but he never says anything. He feels like he’s gotta go along with Dad too. Pops and Gram took me in and never said a word about it, just set me up working on the ranch. Then Pops discovered how good I was with the horses, and he figured I’d like rodeo.”
Adele traced his tattoo again, but it seemed a more absent-minded gesture now: Her gaze was directed at it but her eyes were unfocused.
“What happened to the ranch?” she asked. “When he died, I mean.”
Jack ran a hand over his stubble and said in a tired sort of voice, “It’s gone now. He didn’t have anyone to take over it, with Dad’s attitude toward cattle-raising and organic farming.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Well—”
“No, I know what you mean.” He sighed. “I was in Miami when he died. Living there. I was a year out of rodeo and I just – I was—”
He struggled to find words, unaccustomed to trying to explain his motives, but Adele said, “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I know.”
But he wanted to tell her, he thought. Only he didn’t know how. He could hardly explain to himself why he’d moved to Miami after his last rodeo, why he’d spent the last ten years moving from city to city even though, truth be told, he felt there wasn’t enough space for him in any of them. Why the last bull-ride had shaken him so badly in the first place. Adele’s fingertips still rested on his tattoo, light as butterfly wings.
“We should get to bed,” he said. “Got a drive tomorrow.”
She nodded and took her fingers away. Without them his skin felt cold.
“Okay,” she said.
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