The Vallis Defense: Cold Human
Copyright© 2026 by Cold Creek Tribute Writer
Chapter 7: The Ring and the Table
Friday Night at 20 Main Street, September 2011
Janie arrives at 20 Main Street late Friday afternoon, overnight bag slung over one shoulder, hair tangled from the drive with the F-150’s windows down. Scott meets her at the courtyard entrance, Red at his heel. She drops the bag on the flagstone and puts both hands on his face and kisses him, and the kiss lasts long enough that Red sits down and rests his chin on his front paws. When she pulls back her eyes are bright and her thumbs trace the line of his jaw before she lets go.
“Two weeks is too long,” she says.
“I know it.” He picks up her bag. “Everyone’s coming tonight. I hope that’s all right.”
“Half of them already like me better than they like you,” she says. “This should be fun.”
The apartment upstairs is suspiciously clean. Janie’s eyes travel it once, and she says nothing. She sets her bag in the bedroom and comes back down to the kitchen, where he is already working, sleeves pushed above his elbows, a cutting board covered in diced onion and cilantro. She watches him cook, leaning against the counter with her arms folded and her ankles crossed. The ring catches the light when she reaches for a glass, and she tilts her hand, studying the stone the same way she has studied it since June, confirming it is still there, and the whole improbable fact of it.
The guests arrive between six and seven.
Father Finlay comes first, carrying a bottle of wine and wearing his collar but no jacket. Scott meets him at the door and brings him into the kitchen, where Janie is drying her hands on a dish towel.
“Janie, this is Father Finlay. He runs Saint Bart’s.”
“It’s good to finally meet you.” Janie shakes his hand. “Scott talks about you.”
“And I’ve heard a great deal about you, though we’ve never met.” Finlay takes her hand in both of his. “A parish priest keeps a list of what matters to the people in his pews. You’ve been at the top of Scott’s since the engagement.”
That gets a laugh out of her, quick and real, and Scott likes the sound of it.
Rita Nogawa and Lindsey Voss arrive together. Scott waves them in from the doorway.
“Janie, Rita Nogawa, my architect. She’s the reason this building doesn’t fall down. And Lindsey, her partner, who takes the pictures that make Rita’s work look even better.”
“I’ve heard the renovation stories,” Janie says, shaking Rita’s hand. “It’s good to put a face to the name.”
Rita studies her with the attention she gives an interesting building. Whatever she concludes, she keeps to herself, but her handshake lingers a beat longer than courtesy requires.
“He undersold you,” Lindsey says, grinning, taking Janie in from head to foot. “I’ve been hearing about you for months and he was too modest.”
“Lindsey,” Rita says, low.
Scott catches the exchange and chuckles. Rita and Lindsey rarely agree on anything, but they clearly agree Janie is beautiful. He is absolutely bringing this up later.
Shirl comes upstairs through the internal stairwell carrying a dessert she claims she made.
“Don’t let the pastry chef find out I said that,” she says, setting the platter down.
Janie is already crossing the kitchen toward her.
“Shirl!”
“There she is.” Shirl pulls her into a one-armed embrace, balancing the platter with the other hand. “Been too long.”
Andi Farrell arrives next, in something that makes Rita close her eyes briefly, and hugs Janie like they picked up right where they left off.
“The ring,” Andi says, not letting go. “It’s gorgeous. Tell me everything.”
“Later,” Janie says, laughing. “Let me breathe first.”
Taylor comes last, wearing a fitted blouse and slim jeans, her hair clean and pulled back. She spots Janie and grins, crosses the kitchen and hugs her hard, pulls back to grab her hand, and inspects the ring for the third or fourth time.
“I told him,” she says to the room. “The first night I met you two together, I told him.”
“You did,” Janie says. “You really did.”
Scott shakes his head, and Taylor catches his eye over Janie’s shoulder, fierce and grateful.
Scott watches Janie move through the room, easy in it, half these people already old friends and the rest closing that gap fast. The ring keeps circulating, and Andi’s reaction is the loudest. Father Finlay raises his wine glass before dinner and offers a short toast, wishing them a marriage built on the same patience Scott showed rebuilding this building, one wall at a time. Everyone drinks to it.
“Dinner’s ready,” Scott calls. “Sit wherever, just leave the head chair for Janie.”
Conversation is easy and overlapping, voices crossing and doubling back, laughter arriving from multiple directions at once.
After dinner the group migrates downstairs to the Black Horse. A regional band is playing and the bar is loud and full, a typical Friday night in a college town. Shirl moves behind the bar to help her staff, tying an apron without breaking stride. Yegor is working the door, wide and immovable in his Black Horse security shirt. He spots Janie and breaks into a broad smile, his greeting formal in a tone that is entirely Yegor.
“Miss Janie.”
She reaches up and squeezes his forearm, and the big man colors slightly above his collar.
Elena is at her usual spot near the pass-through at the end of the bar, where Yegor can keep an eye on her. Janie finds her and they pick up the conversation from years back like no time has passed. Elena’s English carries it, and Janie asks about her journalism classes, leaning in to hear the answer over the band.
Father Finlay takes a corner booth and nurses the same beer for the rest of the evening, watching the room. Rita and Lindsey dance, Rita leading, Lindsey following loose-limbed. Andi dances with an enthusiasm that clears a radius around her. Taylor sits with Finlay, and their booth becomes its own oasis, a spot for the others to catch their breath between songs.
Scott and Janie are on the floor together. She is good at this, her body finding the rhythm before his does, her hips catching the downbeat while he is still sorting out the tempo. He follows her lead and does not care who notices. Her hand rests flat against his chest, her fingers curling into the fabric when the band slows. She smells like the perfume she put on after dinner and, underneath it, the salt of her skin. He pulls her closer. She lets him.
A drunk NTSU kid, maybe twenty, makes his move on Janie while Scott is at the bar getting water. His hand goes to Janie’s waist and he leans in to say something over the music. Janie steps back and shakes her head, and the kid does not catch the refusal. He grabs her around the waist and puts his hand on her, pulling her toward him. She twists to free herself while he holds tighter, grinning, his mouth moving near her ear.
Yegor is already cutting through the crowd, parting it the way a plow parts a field, but Scott is closer. He sets the water glasses on the nearest table, crosses the floor, and puts one hand flat on the kid’s sternum, applying just enough pressure that the kid’s center of gravity shifts backward and his grip on Janie breaks. The kid looks up at six foot two of Marine scout sniper, and whatever he reads in Scott’s face finishes the conversation without a word. Scott’s hand stays where it is.
Yegor arrives a half-step behind, filling the space at Scott’s shoulder. The kid takes in the combined width of what is now standing in front of him. He raises both palms and backs away into the crowd, stumbling once on someone’s boot before turning and heading for the exit under his own power. Yegor follows him to the door and through it, then comes back a minute later and finds Scott’s eyes across the room.
“He won’t be back tonight,” Yegor says when he’s close enough to be heard, and returns to his post.
Scott takes Janie’s hand and leads her back to the floor as the band plays on. Her fingers lace through his and tighten, and when she looks up at him there is heat in it. She pulls his hand to the small of her back and presses herself against him, and they dance the rest of the set like that, her temple against his collarbone, his thumb tracing a slow circle on her spine.
Shortly after the confrontation, Scott and Janie are alone in the third-floor bedroom. Both windows stand open to the September Texas night, and the air coming through carries the faint thump of the bass line from the Black Horse.
Janie closes the bedroom door. She turns, leans back against it, and looks at him across the room. Neither of them is in a hurry.
She crosses the distance between them. Her hands come up to his face the same way they did at the courtyard entrance six hours ago, palms against his jaw, fingers curling behind his ears, except now her thumbs trace the line of his cheekbones with an intent that has nothing to do with greeting. She kisses him, deep and unhurried, her mouth open against his, her tongue finding his, and Scott’s hands settle on her waist and pull her in. She tastes like the tequila she had at the bar and something underneath that is just her, alive, clean, and familiar in a way that still makes his pulse climb after two years.
He feels every one of those fourteen days in how her body presses against him, her hips tilting forward, her fingers sliding from his jaw into his hair and gripping. He walks her backward toward the bed and she lets him, her mouth never leaving his, until the backs of her knees catch the mattress edge and she sits. She looks up at him, her eyes near black in the low light from the single bedside lamp. Her lips are swollen. She reaches for the hem of his shirt and pulls it over his head and drops it on the floor.
Her hands move across his chest and stomach, finding the scar tissue below his left ribs where a piece of shrapnel left its signature, the hard ridge of his obliques, the flat plane of his abdomen tightening under her fingertips. She leans forward and presses her mouth to the center of his sternum, and Scott’s hand cups the back of her skull, his fingers threading through her hair, holding her there.
He reaches down and pulls her shirt off in one motion. She is wearing a black bra underneath, simple cotton, and the contrast of it against her brown skin makes his breath catch. He unhooks the clasp with one hand, a skill she once told him was suspicious, and slides the straps down her arms. Her breasts are small and full, the nipples dark, already stiffening in the night air from the open windows. He kneels in front of her and takes his time. His mouth finds the underside of her left breast first, tracing the curve, then moving to the nipple, his tongue circling it before he takes it between his lips and draws gently. Janie’s hand tightens in his hair. He gives the same attention to the other side, appreciative, his thumb brushing the wet nipple he just left. She arches into him and makes a sound low in her throat that he has been hearing in his head for two weeks in an empty bed.
She pulls him up by the shoulders and kisses him again, harder now, her teeth catching his lower lip. Her hands go to his belt. She works the buckle, the button, and the zipper and pushes his jeans and boxers down together. He steps out of them. She wraps her hand around him and he is already hard, has been since the dance floor, since her temple against his collarbone and her hips moving against his in time with the music.
She strokes him twice, then leans forward and takes him in her mouth. Her lips are soft, and she watches him the entire time, her eyes looking up through her lashes with an expression that is generous and filthy, and completely Janie. Scott’s hand rests on the back of her head, not guiding, just present. His breathing changes, and she reads it and adjusts, takes him deeper, her hand working the base in rhythm with her mouth. When his thigh muscles start to lock she pulls back and wipes her lower lip with her thumb and grins at him, and the grin is the sexiest thing he has ever seen.
He lays her back on the bed and pulls her jeans off, then her underwear, black cotton to match the bra, and tosses both somewhere behind him. She is naked on his sheets and the lamplight catches the planes of her body, the flat stomach, the flare of her hips, the dark triangle of hair between her thighs. He kneels between her legs and kisses the inside of her knee, then higher, then higher still, and when his mouth finally reaches her she utters a word in Spanish that is not in any textbook.
He is patient here, attentive, reading the shift of her hips, the catch in her breathing, the grip of her fingers in his hair when he finds the right spot and the loosening when he drifts. She tells him, sometimes in words, sometimes just by pressing herself against his mouth, and he stays where she tells him to stay. Her thighs tighten around his ears and her back arches off the mattress. She comes with a shudder that rolls through her entire body, her hand clamped over her own mouth because the windows are open and the street is below, and Scott feels the pulse of it against his tongue and does not stop until she pushes his head away and says his name in a voice that is wrecked.
He kisses her hip. Her stomach. The valley between her breasts. Her throat. Her mouth. She pulls him in deeper. Then she pushes against his chest, rolls him onto his back, and straddles him facing away. Reverse cowgirl. She reaches between her legs and guides him inside her and they both go still for a single breath at the feeling of it, the stretch and the heat, and the relief of two weeks compressed into one moment.
She sets a slow rolling pace, her hips working in a figure-eight that makes Scott grip the sheets. He watches the long line of her back, the shift of her shoulder blades, the fall of her hair. Her skin is flushed and damp. He reaches forward and runs his palm from the nape of her neck to the base of her spine and she shivers and increases the tempo. The bass from the bar below pulses through the floor joists like a second heartbeat.
He sits up behind her, wraps one arm across her chest, his hand cupping her breast, and pulls her back against him. She turns her head and they kiss at an awkward angle, all teeth and breath, and the new depth of the position makes her gasp against his mouth. His other hand slides down her stomach to her clit and works it in small circles while she rides him, and the combination unravels her coordination. She braces her hands on his thighs, grinds down hard, and makes a sound that breaks in her throat.
He lifts her off him. She makes a noise of protest that becomes something else entirely when he turns her onto her hands and knees and enters her from behind in one long stroke. His hands grip her hips. The pace is harder now, faster, the sound of skin against skin filling the room alongside her breathing and his. Her fingers twist in the sheets. She drops to her elbows, presses her face into the pillow, and pushes back against him with every thrust. He feels her tightening around him and slows, drawing it out, and she swears at him in Spanish with her face still in the pillow.
Then he turns her over. She goes willingly, her legs opening for him, and he settles between them and slides back inside her, and this is different. Face to face. Slower. Her legs wrap around his waist and her heels lock at the small of his back. He braces on his forearms, his hands framing her face, and their foreheads touch. Her eyes are open. His are open. The closeness of it is hard to hold, more exposed than anything else they have done tonight, and neither of them looks away.
She whispers his name. He whispers hers. The rhythm builds, inevitable, her hips rising to meet his, her nails dragging down his back leaving marks he will feel in the shower tomorrow. Her breath fractures first. She comes with her eyes locked on his, her mouth open, her body clenching around him in waves that pull him over the edge seconds later. He buries his face in her neck and lets it take him, and for a long suspended moment the only sound in the room is their breathing, the distant bass, and the September air moving through the open windows.
They lie tangled together. Janie reaches over and clicks off the bedside lamp and the room drops to moonlight, streetlight, and the faint amber glow from the bar sign below. Her head is on his chest, his arm around her shoulders, her fingertips tracing idle patterns on his stomach. The bass thumps on.
Her hand drifts lower, lazy, exploratory, tracing the crease of his hip, then inward. He stirs under her touch and she laughs softly against his collarbone, a low vibration he feels in his ribs.
“Already?” she murmurs.
“Two weeks,” he says.
She rolls on top of him, and this time is shorter, slower, more playful. She pins his wrists above his head and he lets her, watching her move above him in the dim light, her hair falling around both their faces when she leans down to kiss him. They find a rhythm that is less urgent and more generous, trading control back and forth, laughing when her knee slips on the sheet and she nearly rolls off the bed. He catches her by the waist and pulls her back, and she settles onto him again. The laughter dissolves into something that builds gradually, crests gently, and leaves them both breathing hard and smiling in the dark.
She falls asleep first, as she always does, her body going heavy against his, her breathing evening out, one leg thrown across his thighs, her hand curled loosely on his chest. Scott lies beneath her and listens to the bar close down, the music cutting off, the muffled voices in the street thinning to silence. The air through the windows cools, and he presses his lips to the top of her head and breathes her in.
In the hallway outside the bedroom door, Red lies on the hardwood floor with his chin on his front paws, his bright eyes open and fixed on something no one else in this building can see.
Wedding Planning at the Mendoza House
Six in the morning, and the drive from Levall to Fort Stockton takes five hours of two-lane highway through country that does not change. Mesquite and caliche and fence line, the same mile repeated far past what feels like the halfway point.
Janie rides with her bare feet on the dash, toenails painted coral, a wedding folder balanced on her lap. The folder is thick with printouts, magazine clippings, and a spreadsheet she built on her laptop at SMU that has tabs for venue, catering, flowers, music, and timeline. She flips through pages without reading them, tapping a pen against her knee, humming something Scott cannot identify. He drives with one hand on the wheel while Red rides in the truck bed, nose pushed into the wind, ears flat, coat rippling.
They arrive at the Mendoza house late-morning, the street lined with familiar cars. Connie stands in the doorway before Scott cuts the engine, her hand already up, waving them in. Hector appears behind her, drying his hands on a dish towel.
“There’s my girl,” Connie calls from the porch, and she is already moving toward the truck before Janie has her door open.
Connie pulls Janie into an embrace that lifts her daughter’s feet off the porch step, then turns to Scott and presses both palms against his cheeks before kissing his forehead.
“Come inside. Both of you.”
Hector shakes his hand, holds it, and claps his shoulder. “Good to see you, son.”
Red trots past all of them through the screen door as though he has been issued a standing invitation, which he has.
Connie sets a plate of conchas on the counter and a bowl of sliced mango beside it and tells Scott to eat. Janie steals a concha off his plate and grins at him with powdered sugar on her lip.
The kitchen table becomes the center of operations. Janie opens the folder and spreads the document flat, anchoring one corner with the salt shaker and another with her phone. Connie already has notes of her own, written in blue ink on a notepad, and she positions the pad beside Janie’s spreadsheet and aligns them edge to edge.
Honour Black arrives twenty minutes later, having driven from her house on the other side of town. She carries Joseph’s briefcase repurposed as a document holder, and Clover trots at her heel, tongue out, tail going. The young dog spots Red through the kitchen doorway and scrambles across the linoleum toward him, nails clicking. Honour sets the briefcase on the counter, opens it, and removes a pad of her own.
Connie waves this away. “I already have one going. Sit, sit.”