“The middle of fucking nowhere.”
“No, I meant actually. I need coordinates.”
Rooster had thought he was done panicking, but a wave shook loose in his chest. “Deshawn.No.”
“Don’t tell me no.” Mild, distracted. More rustling. A quiet “ah.” “Okay. I’ve got a pen. Whenever you’re ready.”
Rooster’s heart slammed against his ribs. “Deshawn.”
“We’ve established that’s my name, yeah. You having a stroke?”
“You can’t come here.” Desperate. Sweating.
“Last I checked, I was retired, and I can do whatever I feel like doing.” Calm. Deliberate.
Rooster squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed fruitlessly at the tension between his brows. “It’s dangerous.”
“Good thing I’m a Marine then, huh?”
“But Ash and Desiree–”
“Can hold down the fort.”
Rooster groaned.
“Ash,” Deshawn said, voice moving away from the phone. “Talk some sense into this idiot.”
There was a muffled sound, and then Ashley’s voice said, “Let him come help you, youidiot.”
His throat grew tight. It was difficult to speak. “Ash, I’m sorry–” Tremor in his voice, watery and awful.
“Don’t be sorry,” she said firmly, “but don’t be stupid either. Give him the coordinates so y’all can go get your girl.”
“I’ll be on the next flight,” Deshawn promised.
And there was only so much arguing a man could do.
Rooster, shaking all over, said, “Okay.”
~*~
He stood on the porch for a long time afterward, until the shadows grew long and the birdsong swelled with the last eagerness of evening. Until Jack came outside with two cold Buds in longneck bottles and said, “Sit before you fall, son,” with the simple observation of a parent.
Rooster sat in one of the rocking chairs and allowed a beer to be pressed into his hand. “I shouldn’t,” he said, numbly. “I’ve tried to quit a buncha times.”
“When you met her?” Jack asked, taking the beer back.
“Yeah.”
“Can’t be vigilant when you’re drunk,” Jack said, taking a sip of his own beer.
“Yeah.”
“I won’t ask outright,” Jack said. “But I’ll listen, if you want to tell me about it.” His shirt collar rustled as he turned to look at Rooster; his gaze was too sympathetic to look it. “About her. Just if you want.”
Rooster imagined the way the beer would taste; the fizzy bitterness of it over his tongue. He shouldn’t talk about Red, but he realized that he wanted to. That, or go find Jack’s liquor cabinet and scope out his bourbon selection.
He took a breath and said, “She was brought up like a lab experiment.”
