Chapter 119

Liam

I came home at seven.

Ryan had looked at me as if I had grown a second head when I told him I was leaving. “It’s seven,” he had said. “You don’t leave at seven.” I had told him the western patrol could live without me for one night, and that if anything caught fire, he knew where I lived. Then I had walked out of the packhouse before I could change my mind, and sat in the truck in the drive for five minutes with the engine running, thinking about what I was going to say.

I still didn’t know when I pulled up outside the house.

The kitchen light was on. The windows had steamed up from the inside.

I opened the front door and stopped.

The house smelled of onions and garlic and something roasting, rich and dark, with rosemary in it. There was music playing very low on the old radio on top of the fridge, something with a fiddle. The table was set. Two plates. Two glasses. A loaf of bread on the board, already cut.

Kaia was at the stove