25
ARIEL
By the time the trucks were packed, the sky had the washed-out color of cheap paper. Smoke still hung low over the ridge, thin and stubborn, like it hadn’t gotten the memo. Ghost checked straps. Ranger checked the creek line. Doc checked Cap and me with that look that means “do not make me scold you into living.”
“We’ll be three ridges over,” Wrecker said, tapping the hood like the truck needed moral support. “Float channel on the half-hour. If you hear me singing show tunes, run the other way.”
“You can’t sing,” I said.
“That’s the point,” he said. Then he looked between me and Cap and did the face. “Hydrate. Eat. Sleep. And for God’s sake don’t,”
“Say it,” Cap deadpanned.
“Rearrange the furniture while your concussion is busy rearranging your IQ,” Wrecker finished. “What did you think I meant?”
Ranger coughed something that sounded like “furniture,” Ghost stared at a tree like it was fascinating, and Doc pretended to shuffle gauze that didn’t exist. Wrecker shook his head in thatolder-brother way. “I swear, you two could burn down a forest by looking at each other and argue it was an accident.”
“Go away,” I told him, sweet as pie.
“I am,” he said, already climbing in. He leaned out the window. “Windows open, okay? For ventilation. Because of the smoke.”
“Goodbye, Wrecker,” I said.
“Love birds,” he said, and Ranger honked the horn twice just to be unbearable. They rolled out in a groan of suspension and bad country radio, and then it was just the little safe house-that-was-a-toolshed and the creek talking to itself and us.
Silence does a weird thing after chaos, it’s loud. My ears kept trying to hand me noises that weren’t there, like the depot had imprinted itself on my hearing. Cap stood still and let the quiet settle around him like he was tied to the earth. He does that. He ground-wires a room by existing in it.
“You, okay?” I asked.
“Define okay,” he said, but there was a smile hiding there.
“Okay is you not pretending you’re fine, so I won’t give you water.”
“I’ll never lie about water,” he said. “Hand me the bottle.”
I did. He drank. I watched the line of his throat move and remembered the river and the way he’d pressed his mouth to my hair like a benediction when we both thought we might be done for. All the fear and fury and relief in my body tried to stand up at once and do jumping jacks.
“Sit,” I said.
“Yes, ma’am.” He sank onto the cot with a wince he didn’t sell. The safehouse smelled like wet wood and old oil and something medicinal Doc had left behind on purpose. Light came in through the busted slats in a patchwork. You could almost pretend the world outside wasn’t trying to be a problem.
I wrung out a clean rag in the bucket and knelt between his knees. “You’re bleeding,” I said.
“Only where I got hit.”
“Thanks for the detective work.” I dabbed at the cut along his temple, and he didn’t flinch, which made me want to kiss the sting away like an idiot. I did it anyway, just a brush, a “sorry I’m poking your head” kiss, and he hummed low, the kind of sound a man makes when a problem gets solved by kindness and he forgot that happens.
“Let me see your hands,” he said. I flipped my palms up. The knuckles from the seam fight were split and swelling in ugly little moons. He turned them over like he was reading my future. “You’re brave,” he said.
“I was stubborn,” I said. “Brave’s the nice word we use when stupid works.”
“It worked,” he said. “So, it gets the nice word.”
I set the rag down and breathed him in, cordite ghost, smoke, soap, Cap. The room narrowed itself to his hands on my wrists and the way his eyes softened when he was the only person I existed for. The adrenaline had burned off and left nothing between me and the truth of wanting him.
The cot complained when I nudged his knee and swung one leg over to sit in his lap. He let his hands settle at my hips like we’d been doing this for years. Maybe we had, in places other people couldn’t see.
“Wrecker said ventilation,” I murmured.
