True north, holding, even when everything else is unsteady.
When everything is shifting away from what you can control.
I roll the mouse over the compass, hold it over true north, like it’s going to open a secret file that Owen wants me to find there. Like it’s going to unlock everything I need to do now—to steady the ship again.
After all, isn’t everything shifting away from what I thought was steady? Nicholas is alive and has been working in tandem with Owen for years now. Owen, who has been risking everything to find his way back to us.
Everything I knew has certainly shifted—but, in the many ways that matter, it’s shifted only closer.
It is far closer to what I’ve always believed about who I married.
“You’re still awake?”
I turn to see Nicholas, standing by the balcony door. He is standing there in his pajamas and a pair of the hotel’s slippers. Something about looking down at them nearly does me in. Maybe because they look so soft and fluffy and inviting. All of which is in direct opposition to what we are doing here.
“Did you get any sleep at all?” Nicholas asks.
“Did you?”
He smiles and moves out onto the balcony, sitting down across from me at the small table.
“Maybe I’ll sleep when this is finished,” I say.
I move my laptop out of the way and refill my mug of coffee. Then I pour Nicholas a mug of coffee too. I give him a minute to take a sip, to ground himself a bit.
“You look worried,” he says.
“I just keep going over it in my mind,” I say. “And I think we’re missing something here. I do.”
“In terms of what?”
“Tomorrow night. All the ways it could potentially go wrong. All the ways this could all go wrong before it’s finally over.”
“Not to beat a dead horse, but if you’d let me do this on my own, it could be over for you now…”
“That’s not how this works, Nicholas,” I say. “It’s only over for me when it’s over for all of us.”
He offers a small laugh, amused by this apparently, amused or touched. “Well, if that’s your criteria…” he says.
But he doesn’t waver. Maybe because he is secure in this plan in a way I want to be able to hold in my hands too. Except I can’t—not when there is something that still isn’t adding up for me.
“I’m just having trouble believing it,” I say.
“Which part?”
“Why, after what we are about to do here, would they ever agree to just leave us alone?”
“For the same reason that anyone agrees to anything,” he says. “They don’t have another option.”
“Aren’t you the first to say there’s always another option?” I ask.
“I can be wrong sometimes.”
“Not the moment I want to hear that.”
“What do you want to hear, Hannah?”
I look over at my laptop, that marine compass staring back at me. I know what I’m doing. I know how to keep myself safe—and I know how to keep Bailey safe. But it’s not just on me to do that, not this time. And I can’t shake the feeling that we are risking something I don’t want risked.
