Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(90)
She did. “Is that an ice cream counter?”
“Yeah. Buck’s old lady, Opal, runs it. Makes the ice cream. Lotta people come for that. You want a root beer float for lunch?”
It was all she could do to refrain from happy dancing right there in the middle of this time capsule of a shop. “That would be awesome! I want to take pictures first—and could we have our floats outside, under that tree?”
“I don’t see why not.” He kissed her cheek. “I’m gonna go talk to Buck. You take all the pictures you want. You need to pee, right? There’s a little john back by the ice cream.”
With a squeeze of her hand, he walked over to the sales counter and left her to play. She went back and took care of her business in a small but clean and modern-enough bathroom, and then hurried back up front.
She took lots of photos. Her eye still trained to unsettling juxtapositions, like the old and new she’d found everywhere in Signal Bend, she saw similar kinds of connections all over the shop. Her favorite photo, though, and she knew it when she saw it through the viewfinder: Buck and Badger, leaning on opposite sides of the glass counter, talking. She caught them both looking down into the case—she didn’t think they were actually looking into the case; they were, instead, simply talking quietly. Old Buck, with his short, bright white hair and sun-darkened, deeply lined face, his chambray shirt faded around the imprint of bib overalls, and young Badger, his full beard covering his young, smooth cheeks, his long, auburn ponytail lying straight down his back, over the patch on his kutte. Standing so that she had them slightly backlit by the windows, Adrienne pulled the image in as close as she could and set only those two men in focus, most tightly on their faces.
oOo
When she’d taken all the pictures she could, they got their root beer floats, in tall, old-fashioned soda-fountain glasses with striped paper straws and tall spoons, and took them out to the picnic table under the tree. The horse was gone; Adrienne guessed that the man buying chewing tobacco had arrived on horseback.
They sat together on the same side of the bench, hip to hip, but they didn’t talk much. Adrienne felt sated by the day, full and content. The weather was perfect—a bright, early fall day, a light breeze and a warm sun, the leaves on the trees right at the beginning of their end, a few yellows among the greens. Birds sang, bees buzzed. And she was sitting with the one person she loved above all others. All others. She’d had made the right choice. This life—she was still trying to understand it, but she knew it was where she belonged. At Badger’s side.
She thought about that strange moment at the tattoo shop the day before, when Red had asked if she had Badger’s ink. Did it mean something that he hadn’t asked her to take his ink? Was that something she should expect him to do, if he meant them to be really serious? Shannon didn’t have any—or, at least, none that she knew of.
“I need to talk to you about something, babe.”
With a shake of her head, Adrienne brought herself back to the moment she was in, sitting next to Badger. She ran his words back through her head; they chilled her.
“What’s wrong?”
He pushed his half-finished float away and did the same with hers, lifting it gently from her hands.
Then he turned toward her and took her hands in his.
“I love you.”
Guarded, she smiled. “I know. I love you, too.”
“I don’t ever want to be with anybody else. I know I couldn’t ever feel like this about anybody else.”
Her brain leaped out ahead, trying to see where he was going. She stayed quiet, waiting for him to get there and show her. She thought of the night she’d arrived in town, seeing that girl’s head in his lap. He wasn’t telling her that stuff like that was still going on, was he?
Looking down at their linked hands, he sighed. “Things with the club are about to get bad, I think.
Maybe real bad. Like last year. Maybe even worse. So I shouldn’t ask this now. I know that. I’ve been trying not to say anything, because I know it’s not fair. But I have to. If you say no, then I understand. I really do. But Adrienne, you make me strong. You make me feel like I mean something.”
“Badge, what?”
He looked up. “I want to put ink on you. My ink. It doesn’t have to be my name. But I want it to be something that everybody knows means you’re mine. Before everything goes to hell, I want that.”
Because she’d just been wondering about this very thing, and because his roundabout way of getting there had her about two steps from certifiably insane, she laughed. Relief and irony impelled the laughter, but Badger couldn’t know that, and his face went dark with hurt. He tried to pull his hands away, but she tightened her grip.
“I’m not laughing because I think what you said is funny, Badge. I’m laughing with relief. Yes. I’ll get your ink. I don’t know what you want, and I’d like a say in what it is, but yes.”
Grabbing her hard and laying her back, his arms supporting her, he kissed her fiercely.
The rest of what he’d been saying finally caught up and got through. She pushed his head back and looked into his eyes. “Are you saying you might get hurt again? Or worse?”
He brought a hand forward and cupped her cheek. “Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. We’re going to push back against the guys who killed Hav—the ones who f*cked up my chest.