Chace disconnected.
Deck, Terry and Dave got close but it was Dave who spoke.
“What do you want done with the shit in there?”
“You take pictures?” Chace asked.
“Yeah, about a hundred of ‘em,” Terry answered.
“Good,” Chace said on a jerk of his chin. “The milk crates, the books, bring them back to the Station. Careful with those books. Keep them as they are however you gotta do that. I’ll come and get them when he can have them at the hospital and I want him to have them as he keeps them. Yeah?”
Dave gave him a nod and a, “Yeah.”
Chace looked at Deck. “I gotta get to Faye. They’ve left the hospital.”
“Right, Chace. I’ll help the boys here with the kid’s stuff.”
Chace nodded, gave a chin dip to Dave and Terry then turned back the way he and Deck came.
He walked through the dark, quiet night, the moon silvering the snow, the trees shadows, the only sound his boots crunching through the icy ground cover.
But the only thing he saw was the inside of that shed.
And he still smelled it.
He needed Faye.
Deck was right and he was wrong. He couldn’t use the thought of her to get past what he saw.
He needed her.
And Malachi, whoever the f**k he was, needed everything.
* * * * *
Chace blinked away sleep and the first thing he saw was the soft, light blue sheets of Faye’s bed.
In other words, he saw sheets because Faye wasn’t in bed with him.
He sat up and turned in order to angle out of bed but stilled when he saw her on her couch. She was wearing his sweater, her knees to her chest under it, stretching it out. She had on a pair of bulky, thick socks. Her neck was twisted, her chin resting on her arm which she had laid along the back of the couch, her eyes aimed out the window lit by the first kiss of dawn.
She looked her usual cute but he also saw something in her profile he’d seen on her face before, once. Something he saw years ago. Something he didn’t remember until he saw it just then.
It was one of the few times they’d been in the same place at the same time and she’d caught his eyes for brief seconds before she quickly looked away then moved away.
It was right after he’d married Misty.
It was sorrow.
The memory, what he now knew it meant and her look sliced through him like a blade just as her head turned and her eyes caught on him.
She bent her neck, rested her cheek to her knee but held his gaze.
“I love this town,” she whispered.
“Come back to bed,” he whispered back.
“Lived in it most my life, left to get educated, came back as quick as I could.”