That’s what she first saw. Does she still?
I shouldn’t care.
My thumb grazes her skin, just for a second.
For a fraction of a beat, my hand hovers over the small scrape on her shin. A tremor stirs in my fingers, and I suck in a deep breath to maintain some semblance of self-control.
Startled, she flicks her eyes up.
She felt the thread snap.
We both did.
This unspoken and unwanted but absolutely real thing between us.
Sharp-edged silence follows. A garrote waiting to be pulled taut.
She leans closer, her eyes softer now, her lips parted.
I turn away and wipe the memory of those lips from my mind.
My own reflection stares back from the kitchen window. A face drawn in hard strokes. Eyes colder than steel. A man I both know and suddenly don’t. Advoynik.
Exhaling deeply, I remind myself of who and what I am.
With steady hands, I pack away the first aid kit, every motion practiced and efficient, unlike my galloping pulse.
“Nothing goes back to the way it was.” I fix my eyes on the kit. “I’m the only thing keeping you breathing. Don’t run again.”
Behind me, she looses a strangled, crying laugh. “Run? Where would I even go?” Her sharp words splinter apart. “I can’t go home. They know you. Now they know me. And you did this.”
I pivot.
She’s still on the chair, fire in her weary eyes. “My life, the one I clawed out of nothing, is gone. Just gone.” This isn’t a tactic. Just her accepting reality. “I missed my podcast post this week. And my presentation and lecture at the Soul Journeyers conference is tomorrow. That was supposed to be my shot.”
I blink. That…is not what I expected her to say. “A presentation and lecture.”
Defeated, she nods and curls into herself as if trying to shelter a fragile core she’s suddenly found too exposed.
“You were trying to get to…” The disbelief cracks out before I can mask it. She’s running from killers, and instead of going to the police or an airport, her solution was to attend a coo-coo conference?
She covers her face. “Now that’s just another thing ruined. Another thing to rebuild from nothing.”
I watch her exhale, inhale, and start to reconstruct herself in real time.
Der’mo.
This isn’t how I wanted this to go.
I meant for all that effort—the threats, the grinding uncertainty, the involuntary loneliness—to break her so that I could extract information from her.
Instead, she’s re-forged herself into an unyielding force of nature. Absurd, mystical, crystal-charged steel, but steel all the same.
That’s a problem.
Steely Jordan is useless to me. I need her open. Supple. Malleable.
The hammer’s not working, though, so I have to pivot to a different kind of tool.
