I had ripped her heart out and stomped on it. “This shirt is a loss,” she said. “Let me go see if we have any Hitchin’ Post ones in the office.”
She dashed out, and I sagged against the counter, the tightness easing. I filled my lungs, pushing away the panic, only to have new fears rush in.
What was wrong with me? This wasn’t my normal struggle to balance my worlds. I didn’t hunt ghosts. So why couldn’t I just say that?
And why did I have such a hard time looking myself in the mirror? When I did, all I could see was Jessica asking for my help, and Mac McCulloch demanding it. Because I was the one who took care of things.
Apparently, I wore it like a sign.
13
you could fit two of me inside the Hitchin’ Post T-shirt that Jessica brought me. I hoped to make a stealthy exit and call Phin from the car, but Ben was waiting in the dimly lit hall outside the bathrooms, leaning against the wall next to a pay phone with an age-yellowed Out of Order sign.
When I came out, he straightened and peered at me critically. “You okay?”
“I’m not going to melt, if that’s your worry.” And then I bit my tongue, because I remembered about his dad, and why he was so tightly wound, and that not five minutes ago I’d been thinking I should be nicer to him. “Sorry,” I said, the weight of the day dragging down my shoulders. “I just want to go home. Can you tell the others bye for me?”
Ben studied me a moment longer, and I wondered if there was an actual reason he’d asked if I was okay. Like maybe whatever was going on in my head showed on my face. “I’ll walk you out,” he said, in a don’t-bother-arguing sort of way.
Fortunately I didn’t really feel like arguing. As we made our way through the main room, he didn’t take my arm again, but when the crowd jostled us, his hand touched my back, not quite encircling me, but keeping me close so we didn’t get separated.
There was something so … stalwart about Ben. I’d only known him two days and he’d managed to infuriate me most of that time. But there I was, protected by the curve of his arm, and grateful for it. And not just because it felt nice, though it did.
We finally broke through the rabble and out into the warm summer night lit by a few paltry streetlamps and occasional headlights going by on the highway. I hadn’t realized how late it had gotten, and now I was doubly glad for Ben’s company, even when he dropped his hand from my side.
“My car is over here.” I nodded to Stella in the gravel lot.
“It’s not hard to spot,” he said, and he had a point. The Mini Cooper did stand out from the cluster of Harleys and the rank and file of pickup trucks.
“So, about Joe Kelly,” I began as we walked toward my car. Ben glanced over warily, but waited for me to go on, which I did. The episode with the deputy’s son was fairly near the top of my overflowing mental in-box, so the topic wasn’t as arbitrary as it sounded. “He’s actually still pissed about what your granddad did to his?”
“Great-granddad,” Ben corrected. He gestured for me to precede him between two trucks, then said, “Grudges last a long time here. Doesn’t help that my dad bought up the Kelly land during the oil bust in the nineties.”
I noted that the McCulloch manifest destiny didn’t sit too well with everyone. “Wasn’t that rubbing salt in the wound a little?”
“Just business.” We’d reached Stella’s back bumper. Ben slouched with his hands in his pockets, watching me fish my keys out of my pocket. “And he paid better than market value. I think he felt bad about the granddad thing.”
“I guess that explains why Deputy Kelly is a ray of sunshine whenever he pops over to your land. But not why the Goodnights put such a burr under his saddle.”
“Oh, I can imagine.”
The comment lacked bite. In fact, he seemed almost at ease. Ironic, when my brain was so overloaded that I couldn’t even seem to get my keys into the car door. I fumbled them and they hit the gravel with a thunk.
Ben reached for them at the same time I did, and we narrowly avoided knocking our heads together. I gave up and leaned against