One press. That’s all it will take because my bag is already packed, and my car is fueled, parked at the front of the big house. Winnie won’t wake up for hours. She finished the wine bottle while I shared a meager half glass over an hour ago. Maybe this isn’t the best time to reply to this email, but then, when would that be?
Puffing out my cheeks, I scan through the renewed grant offer once more.
Dear Elaine Parker,
We welcome you to reinstate your grant for this year’s funding period. Please provide your supporting documents beneath the button below, active immediately.
SUBMIT HERE
The button is big, bold, and red. It’s not like I can miss it. I stifle a laugh and press the thing before I chicken out. My supporting work is all right there. I spent weeks at Winnie’s and then Coyote Falls putting everything together, back when I was trying to work out what to do. The entire submission takes less than three minutes and it’s done.
It’s done.
I’m leaving Coyote Falls.
I stare at my laptop for a full minute longer, but there’s no point doing more than unplugging my charger and placing Winnie’s feet on the sofa in my warm patch. I cover her with thewolf blanket I leave behind, a mark of the old me. Maybe the only mark I leave on this place.
For some reason that matters, though I can’t say why.
My bag is just inside Cord’s bedroom door. I grab it and walk away without waking him. What’s the point? I don’t want to have that conversation. It’s why I haven’t tried. Cord doesn’t like people sayingnoto him. If he asks me to stay, I know I’ll never leave.
My fingers trail the rough-hewn walls of the homestead’s skeleton as I carry my single bag along the hall and slide into the cold driver’s seat of my car. I don’t look back at the house as I pull away, turning up the smallest puff of dust I possibly can in the false dawn light.
A slight movement in the rearview mirror sends my heart into overdrive. The figure is too bulky to be female, only a darkened shadow as the sun rises behind him, casting the mountain behind the house into somber silhouette. Lacking Cord’s narrow build and height, West watches as I drive away from the place where I thought I fell in love.
He doesn’t wave, and neither do I.
And then my tears fall, blurring my last view of Coyote Falls.
TWENTY-THREE
CORD
These Hollow Hours
“Fuck.”
The screwdriver twists between numb fingers that still don’t work properly. Maybe they never will. My brain screams at the loss of basic motor skills while my heart aches for something more. Something I refuse to recognize.
The loss ofher.
All because I couldn’t do something simple like pick up a fucking screwdriver.
“You’re trying too hard. Here.” West reaches around me, scooping the tool out of the dirt and presses it back into my hand. The gentle touch of work-roughened hands brings me to my knees.
“Fuckoff,” I grit out between teeth that won’t last long if I keep clenching them this damn hard. “I can do it myself.”
“No, you can’t, you entitled little shit,” West says soothingly. “But it’s okay because we’re going to get through this. I promise.”
“Yeah?” I fumble the screwdriver twice more and nearly stab us both. “Fu?—”
“Let it out, big boy. You got this.”
“You should have been a motivational coach. Not a damned architect from a broken home,” I grouse in the best reverse shit talk I can manage.
Three weeks Lanie’s been gone. Three weeks of West manhandling me like a baby. The first two I came close to punching him. Would have, if my body had managed, and we both know it. But then, if I’d been able to do that, I wouldn’t need to be fucking babied, would I?
“Yeah, because everyone wants a high-functioning coach on the autism spectrum who walked out of a DV family household at seventeen and plays Sims because he’s an insomniac.” He grunts, lifting my inoperative ass off the ground.
