There’s a chill in the air.Hayami pulls the long cardigan she’s wearing around her shoulders and places her glass on the table before kneeling in front of the fire.
She works quickly, piling up the kindling and arranging larger logs on top.I’m grateful she appears to have picked up that I don’t like to light the fire.I don’t even like it burning, but the heating system isn’t powerful enough to heat a room this size.
I make my way over to the window and reach for the curtain.“It’s snowing,” I say.
Hayami joins me.“I thought the forecast said tomorrow.”
“When have you ever known the forecast to be right?”
She doesn’t answer as we stare at the small flakes that flutter silently through the air as if they have no purpose.
“Do you think it’ll settle?”she asks, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“It’s dry enough.”We’ve had no rain for the past two days, which has been a welcome break from the mist and drizzle.But now we’re in for something completely different.
“Is there a chance we could get snowed in?”Hayami wraps her arms around her waist.
“Possibly.”I don’t mention the forecast, how bad they’ve predicted this snowstorm is going to be.You wouldn’t think it, looking now at how light and lazy the snowflakes are falling—the calm before the storm.
“Wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” she says, and I note how small she appears standing next to me, arms cocooning herself as if this is her only line of defence.
“Wouldn’t it?”I ask, closing the curtains.
“I could handle being stuck here for a bit,” she says, wandering over to the fire and warming her hands.“Actually, I would love to be stuck here forever.”
I don’t pick up on what she’s saying, not at first.“You’d be stuck up here with me.”
She regards me.“You’re not so bad.”
A low chuckle rumbles in the back of my throat.“Even when I hauled you out of that cubicle at the club?”I pass her the glass of whisky, then move over to the sofa and sit down.
Hayami settles on the rug by the fire, sets her glass down, then pulls her cardigan over her knees.“You were just doing your job.”
“Was I?”
She stares at me.Then her shoulders drop along with her eyes.
I feel bold.Not sure if it’s the silence in the room, the dream I’ve just had, or six months of protecting this woman from herself.But I have to know.
“That day I dragged you from the pool.”
She looks up, her eyes wide.And I feel bad for asking, but I need to know.
“You weren’t just floating, were you?”
She swallows hard, her lips clamping shut, and I fear I’m riling her.I’m going to lose this connection we have right now, and I don’t want to.
“It’s a strange thing, surviving,” I tell her.“When your whole family dies and you’re the one who is left alive.You ask yourself so many questions that your head begins to spin.I spoke to my therapist about it, just after the fire, and he told me I was suffering from survivor’s guilt, and that it was perfectly normal for me to feel the way I did, like I should have been the one to die.That I should have been the one buried, not my sister, not my father, not my mother.But I wasn’t.I lived.And I’ve had to live with that knowledge.But the one thing it’s taught me is that life is precious, even if we don’t think it is.And when I look at you, I see an intelligent, beautiful woman who has so much potential.I know you’re a Devall.I know the hold your father has on you, but he isn’t going to be around forever.So why did you want to end it all?”
THIRTY-FIVE
HAYAMI
PRESENT
The heatfrom the fire burns my back, but it’s nothing compared to the shame I felt when I opened my eyes astride Fenrir, or the shame I feel now knowing I’m going to have to explain why I wanted to kill myself.Why my life isn’t worth living, and why I’ve been behaving the way I have for the past six months.
It’s time to tell him.
