Not yes.Not no.Not surrender.Just a foothold I can use to leave this room alive.
Daylight fades without either of us noticing.Wolf’s bed smells like hearth smoke, the sheets rumpled, the air steeped in that faint wildness that’s all him.
Three days have passed since I started reading the journals.I’ve slept an hour here and there, my body running on caffeine, emotion, and the unbearable ache of everything I’ve seen through those pages.
Wolf made sure I ate, bringing me soup, coffee, and whatever he threw together in the kitchen.But mostly he’s been giving me space, hovering nearby, sketching, or scrolling on his phone.
We haven’t left the island.Hell, we’ve barely left the guest house.Taaq told me to take as much time as I needed.My job will be there when I return.
Jag has been uncharacteristically quiet.He sent a text yesterday telling me not to leave the island, all his usual threats on the surface, but unsettling underneath.
Stay on the island?Why?I expected him to demand the opposite and don’t know what to make of it.Honestly, I don’t have the emotional capacity to dig into whatever mind game he’s playing right now.
The journals lie closed beside me, heavy as coffins, the pages discolored with fingerprints and tear stains.
My eyes sting from reading and crying and not sleeping, but for the first time, I don’t feel like I’m trespassing in Wolf’s pain.I’m part of it now.
I sit cross-legged on his bed, hands slack on my lap.He sprawls beside me, one arm folded under his head, the other resting over his chest.His eyes are open, shadowed, watching the ceiling.
He looks calm in that deceptive way of his, mouth lazy, lids hooded, but the small tics give him away.The flex of his throat, the twitch of his fingers against his ribs, the way he swallows as if it burns going down.
He’s waiting for me to say something.
I don’t know where to start.My head is a burning field of nightmares.
Twenty-three years in the Arctic Circle.Twenty-three years of captivity, abuse, and isolation.Raised like an animal under Denver’s sick perversions.Taught to kill, survive, and shun all hope.
Then the river.The cage without windows.Rhett Howell’s scalpel and the dark.
And finally, Sitka.Six months of learning how to exist among people.
He wrote about his first visit to a grocery store.How he stood in the aisle for thirty minutes, too overwhelmed by choice to buy anything.How Monty had to teach him to cross streets without freezing at the sound of an engine.How technology had both fascinated and terrified him.
He wrote about people as if they were another species.The way strangers stared at him when he forgot to blink.The way laughter in a restaurant felt like gunfire.
He wrote about the day Declan gave him a tattoo machine and told him to try.The trembling in his hands.The vibration reminding him of something awful before it became something healing.Drawing on skin instead of splitting it with a scalpel.Control instead of helplessness.
He found purpose in ink.
Maybe that’s what keeps him tethered.Not sane, but whole enough to be kind.To be human.
For all his darkness, he’s the most colorful person I’ve ever met.His moods swing like the weather, storm one minute, sunlight the next.He talks with his hands, hums while he cooks, and makes faces when he thinks.
He hasn’t told me he cares, but he shows it a hundred sideways ways, by feeding me, teasing me, and guarding my quiet.
For someone who lived his entire life in the dark, he’s the only person I know who tries to make other people feel happy and bright.
But after reading every word in his journal, there’s one thing missing.The trigger that sent him spiraling in the shower.
What happened between him and Jag that day?
I shift on the bed, pulling my knees to my chest.The light from the small lamp drapes a quiet warmth over Wolf’s face, his lashes absurdly black.
“I understand now.”My voice scratches.
“What’s that?”His eyes remain on the ceiling.
“The reason you jumped.I don’t know how you managed to endure as long as you did.You’re a lot braver than I am.”
