Chapter 43
KODIAK
The door shuts with a click that settles too hard in my chest. Footsteps fade. Then nothing. Just the fire and her.
Alice don’t speak. She watches, waits—like she knows what comes next could break either of us. She’s by the hearth, one hand gripping the mantle like she’s fixing herself there. She breaks the quiet first.
“You could still run. If…if you’d rather keep the life you have, then you’re free to. I won’t try to stop you.”
That pulls a string that snaps in me, hurting as it breaks. “You think I’d run from you after all this?”
“I want you to have a choice.”
“I do. I choose you. Always will. Just…” I start, trailing off. “Give me a minute.”
Since I was a boy I was running, stealing just to survive. Associating with the likes of thieves and killers. It’s all I know, except for that small piece of me. That piece I use when convenient. The piece that remembers being proper. Feels like a costume. Like a mask I slip on to fool some dumb bastard into letting me past the gate.
“So, what am I…an innkeeper now?” I ain’t mean to say it like the thought is a fate worse than death, but that’s damn sure how it sounds.
Alice don’t flinch at the question. Don’t smile either. “You’re whatever you decide to be,” she says. “That’s the point.”
“Slickest train robber in the country fluffin’ pillows and flippin’ mattresses.”
She lets out a soft laugh. “I’d never put a brute like you in charge of linens. Or managing guests. I’m sure the first dissatisfied lodger would find himself under the inn.” Her palms graze up, resting on the thick meat of my arms. “Though I would enjoy watching you unload a wagon or two.” She offers a smile I can’t return, the weight of this notion heavier than all hell.
The fire pops.
“You know I ain’t never stayed put,” I say. “Not anywhere.”
She nods. “I know.”
“Most I ever stayed in one place was a jail cell.”
“Would this be a prison to you?”
I imagine the way the sunlight hits her face in the morning before she wakes up. How after months of sleeping on dirt or stone, these sheets feel like swimming in butter. It’s nice. Maybetoonice. “No. It’s just that if a fella gets too comfortable he goes soft, and my luck’s never held long.”
“I’ve been thinking,” she says. “About the stars.”
“You’re always thinkin’ on stars.”
“Hush,” she says, but ain’t no bite in it. “I mean, on why the stars might have put us together. I think this is it, bear. I think…maybe it was to free each other. You helped me out of my cage, and now I help you stop running. You can finally rest. Let the hunters think they won, but live a life.”
I run a hand down my face. How is this not the easiest decision I ever made? I love Alice. I know I do, there ain’ta doubt in my mind. But…Archibald Kodiak Randolph—dead. Can’t wrap my head around it.
“You think we can trust Virgil?”
She nods. “Virgil isn’t sentimental. He never believed I was kidnapped. Still he went along with this because all he cares about is protecting his reputation.”
I watch the coals in the hearth sink in on themselves. “Don’t feel real,” I say. “Thinkin’ of myself buried in the ground while I’m still breathin’. Folks believin’ I’m rottin’ somewhere just so I can walk free.”
Alice kneels beside me. Her hand finds my knee. “You’ve been buried your whole life. Under the burden of being orphaned. Under wanted posters and aliases. This is the first time you get to come up for air.”
I breathe deep, lungs stretched against my ribs. “You really think I can be someone else?”
Her voice don’t falter. “I think you already are someone else. You’ve just only ever showed him to me.”
Silence stretches long between us. I listen to the wind outside, the boards in the wall shifting in the cold. My old life’s out there somewhere, waiting to catch up. But here—in this room, with this woman—it’s warm.
