"I smelled Lumi," he says. "Before I saw her. Before I knew what she was. Something in me recognized her the way a wolf recognizes a mate — which isn't subtle and doesn't ask permission." The corner of his mouth moves. "Smelling her was the first time I understood there was something worth coming back to. Not the facility. A specific person who was real and present and mine. That's what anchored me. Something that wasn't the mountain."
I think about the fence. RJ's thumb over my marks through chain link. His forehead almost touching the metal. The way his shoulders dropped when I sat down on the cold ground beside him.
"He settles when I'm close," I say.
"Yes."
"But I'm not an omega. It's not the same thing Lumi did for you."
"No," Stone says. "It isn't." He thinks, choosing words with the care of someone who doesn't use many. "Lumi is an anchor. A place to come home to. What you are for RJ is different. More like a direction. A reason to keep moving toward something instead of away from everything."
I press my palm against my wrist.
"Does it get easier," I say. "Watching someone still on the mountain."
"No," he says. "It gets different. The not-being-able-to-help stops feeling like failure and starts feeling like endurance. Youshow up. You sit down on the cold ground on your side of the chain link. You endure it. Because the alternative is not showing up and that isn't available to you." He looks at me steadily. "You already know this."
I do. I've known it since the first time I sat down at that fence.
"I don't have answers," Stone says. "I have experience. If you want it—" He holds my gaze. "Find me."
A pause. He looks at the Red House door, then back at me.
"He needs you," he says. "Not the facility. Not the protocol." His eyes hold mine. "You. Keep going to him."
***
I stand in the cold with my hand on the door.
The brace is tight across my ribs. The two cracked ones remind me every time I breathe too deep, which is fine — the pain is specific and located and I know what caused it, and that’s a kind of clarity. I’ve been carrying other things that aren’t specific or located at all.
Sven filed a report that cost him. Stone walked me back and gave me something from the mountain. Two men who have been carrying things quietly and chose, in their different ways, to put something in my hands.
The wanting is still there — the monitoring that never turns off. RJ is somewhere in this building.
I press my palm flat against my wrist and feel it running.
Not an anchor. A direction.
A reason to keep moving toward something instead of away from everything.
I rest my forehead briefly against the door. Breathe shallow through the ribs.
I think I can be that.
Chapter sixteen
Ienter Red House and turn toward RJ's corridor, not mine.
I hear Sven's sigh and then his footsteps follow without comment — not to stop me, just the sound of him adjusting, settling against the wall at the far end of the corridor where he can see both me and the main hall. Doing his job. Watching without appearing to.
RJ's door is closed.
I sit down against the wall beside it.
The floor is cold through my jeans. The brace presses into my ribs where I'm leaning back and I shift until I find the angle that's tolerable. I don't knock. I don't say anything. I don't need him to open it.
The wanting is there — the monitoring I can't turn off, the pull that's been running since the first morning I sat down on the cold ground at the south fence. Through it I can feel that he's inthere. He knows I'm out here. That's the whole of it. I'm not here to make him feel anything or do anything or say anything. I'm here because Stone told me the alternative isn't available to me and I already knew it and now I'm here.
