She stares at me for a long moment. I hold still. I'm good at holding still, it's one of the few things the military gave me that's useful in civilian life. The ability to be motionless and nonthreatening and present all at the same time.
She bites her lip as she considers my offer. Then says, "Okay.”
I follow her up the canyon road. Her Civic takes the curves slowly with brake lights flashing at every bend. I keep my truckback far enough that my headlights aren't in her mirrors, but close enough that she knows I'm there.
We stay like that until she pulls into the driveway of a small cabin at the top of the ridge. I watch as her taillights go dark and wait until her porch light comes on. It’s a dim, yellowish glow but I can see her. Evelyn hauls her bag inside on her shoulder then turns to look back down the road at my truck.
I flash my headlights once.I'm here.Then a second time.You're safe.And finally a third.Goodnight.
She gives me a small wave then disappears inside. I sit in my truck in the dark with the engine running and the canyon walls black against the stars. I press my thumb into the center of my palm where her hand was four hours ago.
I feel like I’m going insane. It’s not possible, but somehow I knew the second I saw her. I can’t explain it. I spent twenty-one years trusting my gut in situations where the wrong call meant somebody didn't come home. But my gut has never once spoken to me the way it did when Evelyn Porter looked up at me from the floor of that library with picture books on her knee and fear in her eyes.
I don't know her yet. I don't know what she's running from or what put that flinch in her shoulders. But she's it for me. And whatever followed her to Iron Peak, it's going to have to come through me.
5
evelyn
I don't sleep.
That's not new. I haven't slept properly in months. At some point the insomnia stopped being a symptom and instead became my whole personality.Hi, I'm Evelyn Porter, I have a master's degree in library science and I haven't experienced REM sleep since the last season of Game of Thrones. Nice to meet you.
But tonight it's not the usual carousel of panic that keeps me up. Tonight it's worse. Tonight it'shim.
I'm lying on a mattress that came with the rental cabin. It’s full-size, but it sags in the middle like it's trying to swallow me. So I’m staring at the ceiling and replaying every single moment of the last six hours in excruciating, high-definition detail. My brain has helpfully organized the footage into categories.
Category one: His hands.
The size of them. The roughness of his palms against my fingers. The way he wrapped them around that thermos like he was trying to keep it from running away. The veins on the backs of them, running under the tattoo ink, and the way the tendons shifted when he poured the coffee. I'm going to need to stopthinking about tendons because this is getting clinical and also I'm sweating.
Category two: His voice.
Low. Steady. The kind of voice that doesn't rush because it doesn't have to. The way I felt his every word in my spine. There’s nothing frivolous. Every word costs James something and he's decided I'm worth the expense.
Category three: The headlights.
That's the one that's killing me. Not the hands, not the voice, not the jaw or the shoulders or the tattoos winding up his forearms into territory I amnotthinking about at one in the morning in a cabin I've lived in for eighteen hours. It’s the headlights that threaten to break me. One flash in my rearview mirror.I'm here. You're safe. Goodnight.
I push my face into the pillow and it smells mildly like mold. But I don’t care because he followed me up the canyon road. I would have never asked. I learned years ago that asking for help meant owing someone and owing someone meant losing another piece of myself. I would have buckled my anxiety into the front seat and gotten on with my night. But James didn’t need to be asked. He just did it and then he was gone.
Nobody has ever made leaving feel like a kindness before. My ex made every departure into a crisis. It was always where are you going? When will you be back? Who's going to be there? Leaving a room was a negotiation. Leaving the house was a tribunal. Leavinghimwas…
I can’t do this to myself. Not tonight. I roll onto my side and pull the blanket up.
Tonight I'm going to lie in this sagging bed in this tiny cabin at the top of a ridge in a town no one has ever heard of. I'm going to think about James Holt's hands for an unhealthy amount of time and I'm not going to feel guilty about it because I deserve this.
I deserve one stupid, harmless, middle-of-the-night spiral about a man who poured me coffee from a thermos and drove behind me up a mountain to make sure I didn't go off a cliff. That's not dangerous. That's just time well spent. It’s self care really.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand and it spikes my adrenaline. The instant full-body clench that hasn't gone away even though I changed my number twice. I grab the phone too fast and don’t let out an exhale until I see it’s Cece. My sister is the one person on the planet who didn’t make me feel insane for running.
Cece:You alive up there in the wilderness?
Me:Alive and the first day went well. The library is tiny and perfect. Looks like a Hallmark town.
Cece:Excellent. And??? The town? The people? Any hot lumberjacks?
I stare at the screen. My thumb hovers.
