He stood, swaying. “Thanks,” he said.
The word sounded foreign.
I watched him, hands clenched at my sides. “If anyone gives you trouble, you come to me. Understood?”
He nodded.
I didn’t trust it. “Say it.”
He hesitated, then said, “I’ll come to you.”
“Good.” I opened the bathroom door. “You can lay low in the den until you’re steady. Ransom won’t bug you and Ma won’t pry. If anyone comes looking, I’ll handle it.”
He followed, small and quiet. The house swallowed him up, made him look even smaller. I watched him settle onto the battered old couch, wrap himself in a blanket, and close his eyes.
I stood in the doorway a long time, watching his chest rise and fall, the bruises already darkening under the skin. I catalogued every mark, every tremor. I told myself it was for his safety. That was only part of it.
The other part—the ugly, selfish part—was the knowledge that, for the first time in years, I had something worth guarding again.
Chapter Two
~ Newton ~
If you’d asked me an hour before whether I’d ever end up hiding in a stranger’s living room, sucking blood from a split lip and listening for the sound of my own pulse over the grandfather clock’s tick-tock, I would have bet actual money against it.
I had a pretty good sense of my odds, generally. This was not a scenario I’d prepared for, but that was sort of my life’s running theme.
The McKenzie farmhouse was nothing like home. It was too big and too drafty, and instead of the Bridger-issue silence—which was only ever broken by someone yelling or a door slammed hard enough to rattle the dishes— this place seemed to hum with invisible activity.
There were animal noises—some real, some probably just the house settling around me—and the air smelled like wood polish and cinnamon and something vaguely floral, like a grandma’s hand lotion.
I liked it.
Mostly, I liked that nobody was yelling.
I’d made myself as small as possible on the edge of a battered leather couch, knees drawn up, arms wrapped tight, chin against my chest.
My backpack—lifeline and security blanket—sat within easy reach. It didn’t actually contain anything useful for this situation, unless you counted the granola bars or the dog-eared field guide to Oregon native plants, which had gotten me through more than one panic attack.
The pain in my face was just background noise at this point, except when I forgot and tried to touch the swelling or when I moved my mouth and the scab pulled at the corner of my lip.Then it became a little universe of firecrackers, all going off at once.
I tried not to move.
I tried, mostly, not to think about why I was here, or what would happen next.
Knox’s mom—or grandma? The math was hazy—had fussed over me for a solid ten minutes when she learned I was here, and then pressed a mug of something hot and herbal into my hands and told me to “rest up.”
Her touch was surprisingly gentle, the opposite of what I expected from hands that looked strong enough to crush walnuts barehanded. The blanket she wrapped around my shoulders was scratchy, but heavy, and it worked better than any weighted therapy tool I’d ever tried.
Once she left, I was alone. It was just me and the ghost of whatever had happened in the kitchen a century ago, and a herd of dust motes swirling through a moonbeam that managed to sneak through the window despite the darkness outside.
My plan was simple—If I didn’t move, maybe I’d disappear. Maybe I’d slip between the molecules of the couch and sink into the floorboards and never have to face the fallout of being alive.
But fate—and McKenzie family metabolism—waited for no man.
I heard footsteps, impossibly light for something that shook the whole hallway. I straightened a little, forced my eyes open wide enough to catch movement in the corner of my vision.
There was a shadow in the doorway.
