Sometimes he got angry, resentful that she didn’t see him as a man, even though he didn’t want to see her as a woman. Even though he knew all of it was futile.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know if it will make me happy. But... I don’t know. It’s something people do.”

“Don’t do it because you’re bored,” he said.

“I’m not,” she said.

“I trust you,” he said. “Whatever reservations I might have, I have to come back to that. We’ve known each other for a long time, Sammy, and I might not always understand exactly what you’re thinking, and I may not agree... But I don’t have to. It’s your life.”

“Okay,” she said. “So buy me a drink and give me your opinion on every man in this room.”

“Okay,” he said.

His back was still up when he went to the counter to order a drink from Laz, and he knew it wasn’t the other man’s fault. And if he sensed that Ryder was irritated with him for no reason at all, he didn’t say.

He got one beer each for him and Sammy, and then joined her at the table she had snagged on the outer edge of the room.

Prime viewing area.

“You know,” Sammy said as he sat down at the table. “While we’re doing this, we could always find you someone to sleep with.”

He was thankful that he hadn’t opened the beer yet, considering, because he would’ve snorted it up his nose. “Excuse me?”

“It doesn’t seem fair. Looking for someone for me.”

“Yeah, but the goal that you’re looking for is slightly bigger than an orgasm.”

Something strange happened after he said that. Sammy’s cheeks went red. And the redness spread. All the way up to the roots of her pale blond hair. He had never known Sammy to be embarrassed. Not about anything. Least of all sex. She seemed to live to pick at his more conservative spots, try to make him uncomfortable. And over the years, he had just stopped letting her. At least, he had stopped letting her see it.

And occasionally, he would do something like he’d just done. Be the one to go ahead and bring up orgasms. It never sat right with him. But he figured turnabout was fair play.

“What?”

“I... Nothing.”

“I don’t hook up with locals,” Ryder said. “You know that.”

“Yeah,” Sammy said. “But I find it weird.”

“It’s just... It never seemed like the right thing to do.”

He preferred to find women outside of town. If he needed to scratch an itch then he would go to Copper Ridge or Tolowa, but never here.

He preferred to keep that part of himself separate. From everything here.

From Sammy.

She had never extended that courtesy to him, but then, why would she? And in a strange way he had never really resented it. Because again, her freedom.

That easy way she had with herself, with her body... He had never wanted to do anything to hurt her, to stop that, to affect it.