For all his vices, Luke didn’t particularly care about gambling, but he would’ve bet money on Charlie’s reaction. [i]Let me put a thousand on ‘she already knows’ and ‘she makes it about Sam.’[/i] He put his dish in the sink and washed it so he’d have something to do besides look at her frozen expression. He even dried it and put it in the cabinet. When he had nothing left to touch or move, he got his cigarettes out of his pocket and put a dry one in his mouth. “You fucking asked about the letter so now you fucking know,” he said in a flat, matter-of-fact tone. [i]There’s a sixty percent chance of rain in the valley today, folks. Stay in the right lane to merge onto I-90 West. Please do not stand up while the ride is in operation.[/i]

Luke pulled back the sliding door and Jake bounded out of the kitchen, down the stairs, and towards the path that led to the barn. He usually took ten minutes to tire himself out before slinking back to the house, whining for a treat or a game of fetch. The sun was just starting to set, and there was a warm late-summer breeze he wanted to let into the house. The air pressure in the room currently could make an astronaut pass out.

“It’s the truth. Call it betrayal if you want. Whatever you’ve got to tell yourself, Charlie. Because if that’s the case, I’ve been betraying him for years. Him being dead or alive doesn’t change how I feel.” He’d somehow crushed the cigarette with all his fidgeting and hand gestures while he talked. He threw it out and got another one. “Him being dead or alive,” he repeated, “doesn’t change the fact that I’m not going to cross that line. Maybe I want something I know I’ll never have, but I’m not a fucking asshole. Telling you something you already know and acting on it are two completely different things.” 

He dug a finger into his chest – the good side, the right one – and stepped into Charlie’s space, eyeing her like he was a wolf in a cage who should not, under any circumstances, be let out. “Leaving this place [i]always[/i] hurt me. I left because it was my damn job. You guys had this, the farm, the dream, everything. Why would I stay in this town when I felt like a stranger in it for my entire life? Why? Why, when my unit needed and wanted me?” Luke caught himself raising his voice and lowered it, knowing that his volume wasn’t going to make her hear him any more or less clearly. “It wasn’t because I couldn’t stand being around you. It was because I could stand being around you a little [i]too[/i] much.”

Before he crushed it again, he put the cigarette behind his ear and walked around her, back to the sliding door. He could hear the jingle of Jake’s collar tags off in the distance.

“I want to stay if [i]you[/i] want me to stay. I know this farm, this place. We can make it run. We can make it work for us. It’s going to take time, months – fucking years. We commit, or we sell it. I’ve stood still for thirty years. I’m done now.”

He stepped onto the porch, lit his smoke, and whistled for the dog.

That kitchen was going to be the death of him.