The Unjust Shall Live By Sin
Caine lay on his back in the belly of Laney’s van, the seats folded flat beneath them so the whole back turned into one long, uneven mattress. He kept his palm where it was, resting on his chest. Laney’s head lay there, her hair brushing his chin, the warm weight of her cheek moving every time he breathed.
The air inside the van was warm and still. Outside, some bug scraped a dry rhythm in the grass. A distant truck rolled past and threw a pass of light through the back windows, thin and blurred by dust. It slid over the curve of her shoulder and then was gone.
Her fingers traced slow lines along the back of his hand. She wasn’t really drawing anything, just moving, following the beat of his. The tip of her thumb kept catching the same bone.
“You know at some point, this gon’ have to end, right?” she said.
Her voice was quiet. She didn’t lift her head. She just kept her eyes somewhere on the roof above them.
Caine’s shoulders shifted under her. He answered with a small shrug, the movement lifting her with him. “We been sneaking around,” he said. “Ain’t no reason we can’t keep sneaking around.”
Laney blew out a breath that warmed the fabric of his shirt. Her fingers slowed for a second, then picked up again, tracing the same path across his knuckles.
“That’s the thing ‘bout the middle of nowhere, Caine,” she said. “Sooner or later, some nosey bitch is gonna realize somethin’s different. Then they start whisperin’ behind they hands till the entire town’s talkin’ about it.”
“You really think people would believe that you would be fuckin’ around on your husband?” he asked.
Her fingers stopped. Not a freeze, just a pause, the slightest hitch against his skin before they started moving again, slow and deliberate. Her nails grazed the back of his hand once.
“You’d be surprised what people would assume ‘bout me,” she said. “It wasn’t but a few days ago Mrs. Wilcox asked me if I was pregnant.”
He raised an eyebrow even though she couldn’t see it in the dim. The van rocked a little under them when he shifted.
The delay sat between them. Laney felt it. She tilted her face up off his chest and looked at him through the dark.
“Caine,” she said. “I got my tubes tied after Hunter. I wasn’t tryin’ to have no more kids.”
He hummed in response, a low sound in his chest that she could feel against her cheek when she settled back down.
“Now that’s some shit I’m surprised to hear from you,” he said after a beat. “Figured that wouldn’t be somethin’ y’all did in your family.”
Laney looked back toward the ceiling. Her fingers went back to his hand. “Ain’t nobody know,” she said with a small shrug he could feel more than see. “It was durin’ COVID. Popped him out alone ‘cause of the pandemic and Tommy had just left for Germany.”
The van filled with the sound of both of them breathing. Somewhere up front a piece of loose plastic clicked soft with each small sway. Laney’s phone buzzed against the carpet, then a thin alarm tone cut through the quiet, high and insistent.
She reached out without lifting her head, patting across the shadowed floor until her fingers closed around the phone. The glow from the screen lit the inside of the van for a second, turning her face pale, catching the line of his jaw, the curve of her bottom lip. She thumbed the alarm off and let the light die.
“We got another fifteen minutes,” she said, voice a little rougher around the edges now. “And then we gotta go pretend.”
Her head settled back on his chest.
“Fifteen minutes plenty time,” he said.
Laney looked up at him again, that same small movement, chin dragging along his shirt. In the faint light that leaked through the back windows, a faint smile pulled at her mouth.
~~~
Mireya’s pen moved quick across the page, ink catching the afternoon light where the table cut a harsh line of shade. Her laptop sat open in front of her, the chemistry textbook propped half on the keyboard and half on her forearm. The air outside the library ran warm even in the shade. Every time the glass doors hissed open behind them, a thin ribbon of cooler air slipped out, touched the back of her neck, then vanished into the heavy heat.
High tables and metal chairs lined the walkway. Somebody had left a Styrofoam cup sweating on the next table over, straw bent, lipstick ring drying at the rim. Students drifted past with backpacks hanging low, conversations overlapping about Greek letters, midterms, rides home, somebody complaining about parking again.
Sena leaned back in her chair until it squeaked, dark hair pushed off her forehead with one impatient hand. Her eyes stayed fixed on the dense block of text on her tablet for another second before she shut them, head tipping back toward the washed-out sky.
“This shit is so confusing,” she said, voice clipped with frustration. “You can’t tell me that they’re not purposefully writing this in gibberish.”
Frankie snorted without looking up, braids swinging when she shook her head. She had her notebook open but her pen lay across the middle of the page, stalled mid-sentence.
“C’s get degrees, girl,” she said. “That’s what I keep telling myself.”
Mireya’s eyes tracked the problem she was copying down, then the line of her own handwriting under it. She paused, pen tip hovering a beat over the paper.
“C’s aren’t going to get you in HSC though,” she said, finally looking up.
Sena dropped her chair back onto all four legs with a soft scrape. She pointed at Mireya with the capped end of her pen.
“Now, that’s what I keep telling myself,” she said.
Frankie sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes, even as her mouth twitched like she wanted to smile.
“I’ve already decided that if I can’t get into HSC then I’m just going to Nicholls or Holy Cross,” she said. “I’ll be straight.”
Mireya let a breath out through her nose that turned into a short laugh.
“It’s crazy that you already got a back-up plan in our first semester,” she said.
Frankie finally looked up from her notes, eyes bright with the kind of tired that came from too many late nights scrolling and not enough reading. She tilted her head, mouth curling.
“Bitch, I had this backup plan before I even applied to this motherfucker,” she said.
That broke whatever tension had been sitting over the table. Mireya and Sena both laughed, the sound cutting through the low murmur from the other tables.
The laughter slid into a softer quiet. Frankie picked up her pen and went back to underlining a paragraph. Sena leaned forward, elbows on the table now, fingers hunting for a line in the problems they had highlighted earlier. Mireya dropped her eyes to the study guide she was building, cursor blinking in the document on the screen while her hand copied key equations into her notebook in tighter, more careful handwriting.
Pages rustled. Pens clicked. The soft tap of Sena’s nails against the metal table kept a loose rhythm next to the scratch of Frankie’s pen. Mireya tried to lock onto the words on the page in front of her. Electron configurations. Quantum numbers. Some chart she had already stared at three times that day and still had to look at again to make it stick.
At the back of her mind, a small voice she had never been able to shut up whispered that this place was not really made for her. Not the clean sweep of the library steps, not the hum of people who only had to think about tests. Her life sat divided into parts that did not fit together clean.
Nights under lights, skin oiled and glittered, bass thumping through the floor until it climbed into her bones. Hands on her waist. Hands in her hair.
Morning routine with Camila, brushing tiny teeth, fighting tangles, packing snacks. Kissing her forehead before dropping her off and pretending she was okay.
Then this. A plastic chair outside a library, chemistry notes spread in front of her.
The feeling pressed at her chest in a way she recognized. Somebody who had slipped in through the side door and was waiting for somebody to notice. She flexed her toes in her shoes under the table and tried to breathe past it.
Mireya lifted her gaze from her notebook. Across the table, Sena’s brow furrowed as she typed something into her laptop, the light from the library catching a faint shine at the corner of her lip gloss. Frankie’s braids brushed her cheek when she bent closer to the page, lips moving soundlessly as she read.
Mireya’s eyes moved between them. Frankie’s soft curse at a problem she still could not get to balance. The curve of Sena’s shoulders as she leaned in, jaw set. She looked back to Sena and held there.
Sena must have felt it. She glanced up, their eyes catching. Sena’s mouth tugged into a small, tired smile. Then she dropped her gaze back to her laptop, fingers already reaching for the trackpad again.
Mireya rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand until small dots of light sparked behind her lids. She let out a slow breath, leaned back in her chair until the metal frame creaked, and rolled her neck once to chase off the stiffness. Then she pulled herself forward again, dragged the notebook closer, and started filling in the next line on her page, diving back into the study guide she was making.
~~~
Ramon stood on the corner with his back to the brick, shoulders easy, hoodie light on his frame. It was one of those slow afternoons where the heat did most of the talking. Cars drifted down the block every few minutes, music leaking from cracked windows, then gone again. For once it was just him and the BGs. E.J. was in Belle Chasse, Tyree was sitting in somebody’s classroom, and the block still needed watching.
The younger ones had posted up along the sidewalk and in the yard, half working, half playing. One leaned against the crooked chain-link, tapping a rhythm on the metal with a lighter. Another sat straddling a milk crate near the gate, laces loose, head tipped back as he laughed at something on his phone. They clowned on each other between hand-to-hands, jokes tumbling over the low murmur of traffic, their voices too loud for how exposed they were.
An older man shuffled up from the direction of the avenue, cheeks hollowed, eyes a little glassy. He cupped his hand against his mouth as he spoke. One of the boys slipped off the crate, met him halfway, and the world narrowed down to their hands. Palms touched, grip turned, something small passed, and the old man headed back the way he came, already fishing in his pocket for a lighter.
Ramon let them handle it. That was why they were here. Still, he drifted to the mouth of the block, sneakers grinding grit on the pavement. He checked the intersection, eyes running quick over every parked car, every porch. No blue-and-whites, no unmarked Crown Vic. Just a woman dragging a trash can, a bike rolling lazy past, the sound of a dog barking two streets over. He stood there one more beat, then walked the other way, toward the far end of the block.
The sun hit harder on that side, no tree cover, just straight light on asphalt and warped siding. Ramon wiped sweat from his temple with the back of his hand and scanned that corner too. A delivery truck idled at the stop sign, turn signal ticking, then eased off. No police, no city trucks, nobody slowing that didn’t have a reason. He took it in and turned back.
By the time he reached the yard again, the youngsters had gone back to talking loud. Two of them argued about who had more money. Another pretended not to listen, but his eyes kept sliding over, waiting his turn to talk. A plastic grocery bag rustled in the weeds near the fence, catching the faint breeze that barely made it between the houses.
That was when she came down the sidewalk.
The woman’s heels clicked uneven on the cracked concrete, catching in spots where grass pushed through. She wore a short black skirt that had seen better nights and fishnet stockings with a hole spidered open at one knee. Her tank top clung to her, faded and pulled thin, one strap sliding off her shoulder. She headed straight for the boy closest to the corner, the one with his hands deep in his hoodie pocket and his eyes on the street.
“Y’all got some crack?” she asked, voice rough but steady.
The boy slid his hand from his pocket, nodding once. “How much you got?”
She dug into her bra and came out with two crumpled dollars, smoothing them on her palm like that might make them worth more. “This all I got.”
The boy stared at the bills, disgust pulling at his mouth. His friend watched from the fence, grin already curling.
“That ain’t enough, bitch,” the first one said, smacking the money out of her hand. The bills fluttered down to the sidewalk, landing near her scuffed heel.
She bent halfway, then straightened, eyes darting between their faces. “Alright, alright,” she said quick. “I’ll give you some head.”
The corner shifted. The boy with his back on the fence barked a laugh, shoulders bouncing. The one in front of her looked over his shoulder at him, waiting. The second shrugged, palms up, like why not. The first boy grinned, the decision made.
“Shit, alright then,” he said.
He bent to scoop the two dollars up and started toward the narrow strip of alley that cut behind the nearest house. The woman turned to follow, tugging her skirt down with one hand.
Ramon was already moving.
He crossed the yard in a few quick strides shoulder brushing the low branch of a scraggly tree. Gravel crunched under his shoes as he stepped into the path of the boy heading for the back. He planted a hand in the kid’s chest and shoved, not enough to drop him, but enough to send him stumbling back toward the sidewalk.
“How you gonna pay the plug back if you getting your dick sucked for the shit, lil’ nigga?” Ramon said.
The boy threw his hands up, palms empty, eyes wide for a second. “My bad, big brudda,” he said. His voice cracked on the last word, more boy than man.
Ramon reached into his hoodie pocket, grabbed the two dollars, and ripped them back out. He turned and snapped his wrist, the bills smacking into the woman’s shoulder before falling to her hands.
“Get the fuck out of here, Asia,” he said.
She clutched the money to her chest like it might fly off again. Her makeup was smudged at the edges, lipstick bled past the line of her mouth. “C’mon, Ramon,” she said, desperation thin under the rasp. “I just need a little rock to get through the day.”
Ramon stepped in close enough to smell sweat and cigarette smoke clinging to her. He grabbed the back of her neck, fingers spreading against damp skin, and turned her toward the corner. His voice carried down the block.
“You see her?” he called, dragging her gaze across the line of boys. “If you see her anywhere, you bet not sell her a motherfucking thing. If you do, I’ma kill you.”
The youngsters went quiet fast. One nodded so hard his hat slipped back on his head. Another lifted both hands, wrists loose, all innocence. The one he had just shoved stared at his sneakers, jaw tight, shoulders drawn in just enough to show he had heard every word.
Ramon pushed Asia away from him, hand leaving a faint red mark at the base of her neck. “Get the fuck on,” he said.
She stumbled once, heels catching, then caught herself. She straightened her dirty clothes with two quick tugs, tugged her tank top up, and lifted her chin. Without looking back at him, she crossed the street, dodging a slow car, and called out toward a man leaning on a stop sign.
“Hey, baby,” she yelled. “You want some head?”
The man turned, interest flickering, and Asia drifted his way, voice dropping low as she reached him. Ramon watched just long enough to see her start the same tired pitch, then shook his head once, short.
He went back to the corner, back to the space he had been holding all afternoon. His eyes went to the intersection again, then the far end of the block, the rhythm of his checking unchanged. Behind him, the youngsters picked their jokes back up where they’d left them, voices rising and falling between the quick, quiet sales that never stopped for long.
~~~
The door to the advisor’s office clicked shut behind Caine and the quiet of the room gave way to the low hum of the academic center. Printers whirred somewhere down the hall. A TV over the front desk rolled silent highlights from the Coastal game.
He shifted his backpack higher on his shoulder and let out a breath through his nose. They had just gone over midterm dates, quizzes, all the little pieces that could drag a GPA down.
The carpet in the hallway muted his steps as he cut toward the lobby. Fluorescent lights sat in long rows overhead. A girl in a Georgia Southern polo sat behind the front desk, tapping on a keyboard.
Caine rounded the corner into the lobby and spotted Derrick McCray before Derrick even turned. The man stood near the doors, phone in one hand, the other in his pocket, talking to a staffer in a button-down. The suit was lighter today, more business casual than the first time Caine had seen him, but the same easy posture sat on his frame.
Derrick looked up, caught sight of him, and his face broke open.
“Caine!” he said, voice filling the space. He opened his arms wide, smile wider. “I’ve been meaning to reach out to you since the polls came out Sunday. How’s it feel to be ranked?”
Caine cracked a grin, shoulders loosening. “It’s kinda crazy to be real with you.”
Derrick laughed from his chest. “It’s crazy for us, too, especially after last season. We pretty much have shot up out of nowhere. We’re the talk of the conference right now.”
He clapped the staffer on the shoulder, dismissing him, then tipped his head toward the doors.
“Walk with me,” he said. “I’m on my way to another meeting.”
Caine nodded once.
They pushed through the glass doors together. The concrete outside the athletic building stretched in clean lines toward the parking lot, hedges trimmed neat along the walkway.
“Halfway through the season,” Derrick asked, falling into an easy stride beside him, “how are you liking things?”
Caine took a second before answering. Georgia pines instead of shotgun houses. He hitched the strap of his backpack again.
“I ain’t gonna lie to you,” he said. “I wasn’t feeling it when I first got here, too different from New Orleans, but it’s cool now.”
Derrick’s eyebrows went up. “Cool now, huh?”
He drew the words out, amused, and cut his eyes past Caine toward the building. Two girls in athletics shirts crossed the breezeway ahead of them, arms stacked with folders and a box of copy paper. One of them glanced over, recognized Caine, and gave a quick, shy smile before looking away again.
Derrick’s mouth twitched, question already answered in his head. He shook his head once, still grinning, and they kept walking.
“I’m not going to bore you with the stats and all that BS us finance guys like to talk,” he said, “but bottom line, you’re making us money, kid. Impressions, interactions, views, everything is up through the roof. You’re turning BTAs into converted CTAs.”
Caine huffed out a laugh. “BTAs?”
“You liked that?” Derrick asked. “My kid taught me that one.”
He slapped Caine on the shoulder, palm landing over the backpack strap.
“But look,” he went on, tone smoothing back into business, “like I told you before I know they’re sniffing around, trying to get you in the portal, but I can tell you that your potential earnings as a junior with two great seasons under your belt is higher than your potential as a sophomore with one.”
They stepped off the sidewalk and onto the asphalt of the lot. Rows of cars sat under the afternoon light, paint catching the sun.
“It’s not really been something I been thinking about, transferring,” Caine said. “I’m just trying to play ball.”
Derrick nodded slowly, as if he respected the answer, even if he didn’t buy it all the way.
“It’s one thing to say that now,” he said. “It’s another thing to say that in December. But I’m telling you that we, the Foundation, we’re committed to you. Give us one more year and we’re going all out on a marketing package built around you.”
They wove between two parked trucks. Ahead, a silver Lexus sat in a shaded spot near a tree, windows dark.
“Are you going to be a millionaire from it?” Derrick asked. “Hell no. Neither am I. But we’re talking six figures, easy. Let us build your legend up then in ’28, you go to Georgia, Alabama, Florida, wherever and tell them give you six or seven million instead of the five hundred thousand they’ll give you to fight for a chance to hold a clipboard.”
Caine kept his eyes on the blacktop for a few steps and nodded once.
Derrick clicked the unlock on his key fob. The Lexus chirped and flashed. He stopped at the driver’s door and turned so the sun caught the edge of his smile.
“Think about it, Caine,” he said. “And keep getting those wins. GATA!”
Caine lifted his hand in farewell and turned away toward the path that led down to the union.
~~~
Mireya sat in the passenger seat with the engine off and the windows cracked. Her fingers tapped out an uneven pattern on the door panel, nails clicking against plastic, then dragging back to the same spot.
The street in front of the house stayed quiet. A car rolled past every few minutes, music low, somebody’s bass a thick thump that faded quick. Farther down the block, a dog barked and kept on barking until somebody yelled and it cut off. The whole row of houses felt like it was holding its breath.
Her phone buzzed against her thigh.
She pulled it from the pocket of her shorts and looked down at the screen. Ramon’s name sat over the text.
You told him yet?
The words sat there, small and black. Her thumb hovered over the screen. For a second she thought about opening the thread, typing something back, even if it was just a lie. Yeah. I told him. Or Not yet. I will.
She locked the screen instead and slid the phone back into her pocket.
The quiet inside the car pressed in again. The smell of Trell’s cologne lingered faint on the seat, mixed with sun-warmed leather. Mireya shifted, dragging her nails along the door again, and stared at the front of the house.
The front door opened.
Dez came out first, one shoulder hooking a small duffel bag, the strap digging into his shirt. Even from where she sat, Mireya saw his face clear. Both eyes swollen, the skin around them dark and puffy, stitches catching light along his forehead. His lip had a thick crack running through it. He stepped down to the walkway with a small hitch, the limp turning every step into work. When Boogie came out behind him, duffel in hand, he said something Mireya couldn’t hear and swung a lazy hand toward Dez’s side.
Dez flinched away fast, teeth clenching.
Boogie laughed and shook his head, still talking, his shoulders loose. Dez tried to laugh with him and didn’t quite get there. They popped the trunk on Ant’s car and shoved the bags inside. Dez moved slower on the walk back to the porch, hand braced at his ribs once before he dropped it.
Ant came out next, door swinging wider around him. He had another bag in his hand, smaller, and he passed it to Boogie without breaking stride. Trell followed, sunglasses already on, T-shirt clean, chain sitting neat against it. He paused on the top step, leaned in toward Ant, and said something low.
Ant nodded once, short. He jerked his chin toward the cars and peeled off toward his own, keys already in his hand. Boogie and Dez moved with him, the three of them breaking off from the front of the house in a loose line.
Trell stood there a second longer, eyes behind the dark lenses turned toward the street. Then he came down the steps and walked straight to his car. Mireya stopped tapping her fingers.
He opened the driver’s side door, slid in, and shut it with a soft, solid sound. The key turned. The engine caught, humming under their feet.
Trell looked over at her as he shifted into reverse.
“All good?” he asked.
Mireya met his gaze and nodded once. “Yeah.”
She leaned back into the seat, letting her shoulders sink into the worn cushion, and turned her face toward the window as he eased them away from the curb. The house slid past in her peripheral vision, the porch, Ant’s car, the backs of Boogie and Dez as they finished loading up.
They rolled to the corner and Trell tapped the brakes before turning. Mireya watched the block fall away behind them in the side mirror, the houses, the strip of sky over the roofs, then looked forward again.
“What happened to Dez?” she asked.
Trell snorted a quiet laugh under his breath. “He did some shit that made me look bad and there’s gotta be consequences for shit like that, you know?”
Mireya turned her body more toward him without thinking, one knee angling on the seat. “What’d he do? That was that bad?”
Trell lifted one hand from the wheel and waved it, the gesture sharp and dismissive, then dropped it back down.
“It don’t really matter,” he said. “Have you ever seen The Wire?”
She shook her head.
“They got this scene on there where a character says ‘My name is my name,’” Trell said. “That’s how shit works in the streets. I can’t have people shitting on my name because niggas under me not moving how they should be moving.”
The city moved past her window in a slow run of blocks and side streets. Mireya nodded. Her fingers found the seam of the seat between them and picked at it. The words settled in. She shifted again, turning more fully toward him, one elbow braced on the console, body pulled closer.
“I guess that makes sense,” she said.
Trell glanced at her, his mouth curving just a little.
“Thought you said you were familiar with niggas like me?” he asked.
Mireya nodded, her eyes on the side of his face, on the line of his jaw under the frames. “I am. They just weren’t too worried about their reputation.”
Trell huffed. “Don’t sound like they were too serious about the game then.”
She shook her head, gaze still on him. “He wasn’t. Not like that.”
“Old boyfriend?” Trell asked.
Mireya didn’t answer. She held his profile in her line of sight, steady, the question hanging between them. She let it sit there, unpicked. The tires hummed under them, the air from the vent finally starting to cool the space.
A faint smirk tugged at Trell’s mouth, but he let the question die. He shifted his hands on the wheel, knuckles loose.
“What you trying to eat?” he asked.
Mireya let her shoulders relax back into the seat again. She lifted one shoulder in a small shrug.
“Surprise me,” she said.
~~~
Laney wiped the last streak of sauce out of the pan with a sponge that had already gone soft around the edges. The kitchen light sat harsh over the sink, humming under the steady rush of water. Plates stood stacked to dry, the boys’ plastic cups turned upside down along the rail. The house had settled into the stillness it only found after bedtime, quiet enough that she could hear the clock over the stove and the faint whir of the fridge.
She turned off the tap and shook her hands once before dragging the dishtowel down her fingers. Her shoulders ached in a way that matched the day. Work, then running the boys from one thing to the next, then baths and dinner and the run of “Mama, I need…” until the last door finally shut. Now it was just her and the hum of the house.
She rubbed at the back of her neck, thumb pressing into the tight spot there. The muscles protested. She rolled them out and reached for a stray cereal box on the counter, folding it down along the seams. Her phone buzzed against the laminate, the vibration skating across the surface.
She glanced over. The screen lit the corner of the kitchen blue.
Caine: thinking of you.
Her mouth pulled into a small smile. It loosened something in her chest for a second. She picked up the phone, thumb hovering over the keyboard. No words came, so she pressed her fingertip to the message and tapped the heart. The little red icon bloomed beside his text.
The old thread above it showed the other side of them. Times to be at the church. Things that needed fixing. Supplies to pick up for the daycare. “Can you look at the AC?” and “I’ll be there at eight.” She scrolled up once, then back down to where his last words sat.
Her tongue pressed against the back of her teeth. She opened the options, hit delete, and watched the text slide away. Just the short exchanges people expected to see between Mrs. Laney and folks from church. Orders and confirmations. Nothing soft.
She set the phone face down on the counter and moved to the sink window. The glass caught her reflection first, faint, then gave way to the dark outside. The camper sat in its rut. No porch light on the little step. No dull yellow glow bleeding through the blinds. The metal shell picked up just enough light from the house to show its outline.
Laney stood there, watching for any twitch of movement. No shadow crossed in front of it. No flash of Nevaeh lighting a cigarette. No laugh rolling across the yard. Just the sound of insects and the distant rush of a truck somewhere beyond the fields.
“Figures,” she murmured under her breath. Her fingertips tapped once against the sill. Blake never did stay anywhere long. It would be just like him to pack up and drift to the next place that would take him in, leave that camper sitting there.
She let the curtain fall back and turned away from the window. The vinyl under her bare feet felt cool where the small rug didn’t reach. She picked up a lone fork from the table, dropped it into the sink, and was reaching for the switch to kill the overhead light when the sound hit her.
Boots on the porch. Heavy, spaced steps across the boards, each one sinking into the old wood. Her heart punched once, but her body stayed steady. The doorknob rattled, someone testing it.
Laney’s feet carried her backward toward the fridge, slow, careful. Her gaze stayed on the door. She lifted her arm, reaching toward the top of the fridge, fingers searching for the edge of the shotgun they kept up where little hands couldn’t reach. Her fingertips brushed dust and empty space, hunting for the cold line of metal.
Before she found it, a key slid into the lock. The scrape of it in the tumblers cut through the quiet. The knob turned smooth.
She froze, hand still hovering above her head.
The door swung open on a draft of cooler night air and the smell of travel. Tommy filled the doorway, duffel hitched over one shoulder, still in his fatigues like he’d come straight from Oklahoma to the truck and then home. Dust clung thick to his boots.
His eyes caught on her with her hand still up over the fridge, took it in, then moved away without comment. He closed the door with his heel, turned the deadbolt, and checked it twice, giving it a test tug.
“They cut it short,” he said. Terse, flat.
Laney dropped her arm, fingers curling in toward her palm. She gave a small nod. “Okay,” she said, voice low.
He didn’t answer. He slid the strap off his shoulder and started down the hallway toward their room, each footstep heavy on the worn path. She fell in behind him without thinking, body slipping into the familiar rhythm, letting him lead the way.
In the bedroom, the air held the stale warmth of nights she’d spent alone. Tommy let the bag fall near his side of the bed, the same spot it always landed. He crossed to the chair in the corner and sat down, exhaling as he bent over his boots. His fingers worked at the laces, quick and impatient.
Laney stepped toward the dresser, hand reaching for the strap of the bag. The soft lamp light spilled across the top of the drawers, catching on the silver frame that should have been standing straight. It wasn’t.
The wedding photo lay on its face, felt backing to the room.
Her hand paused on the strap for a moment. Tommy’s head was still bent, attention fixed on the knot he was undoing. While he leaned over his boots, she slipped her fingers off the duffel and reached for the frame instead. She lifted it, turned it upright, and set it back in its place.
She nudged the frame until it sat square and let her palm rest on the top edge for a breath.
Tommy grunted as he pulled the first boot free. She dropped her hand, grabbed the duffel strap, and hauled the bag up onto her shoulder.
“I’m goin’ to wash this,” she said.
He gave a short nod, eyes still on his feet. The second boot hit the floor with a soft thump.
Laney shifted the weight of the bag and moved toward the door. At the threshold she glanced back once. “You want somethin’ to eat?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
She dipped her chin and stepped into the hallway. The narrow walls closed around her as she carried the bag to the laundry room. The light there flicked on with a buzz when she hit the switch. She dropped the duffel beside the washer, unzipped it just enough for the smell of sweat and field dust to escape, then zipped it again. The wash could wait.
She turned the light back off and walked the short stretch back to the kitchen. The hum of the fridge met her at the doorway, steady and familiar. She went straight to the sink and twisted the faucet. Water rushed out, warming and then cooling against her fingers before she let it run.
She planted both hands on the edge of the counter, arms locked straight. Her shoulders rose once, fell. She bit down on her bottom lip and held there, eyes fixed on the dark window over the sink.
it be your own sometimes
