Danny drifted in and out all afternoon. Sometimes he’d ask where he was, or what day it was, and I’d answer, every time. Sometimes he’d say nothing at all, just grip my hand and stare at the ceiling. I could see it in his face—the war inside him, between relief and shame, pain and the tiniest glimmer of hope.
I sat with him the whole time. Every hour, on the hour, I checked his pupils and made him recite the alphabet backwards. He hated that, but it kept him awake.
Every so often, I’d brush the hair out of his face or adjust the blankets. My hands wanted to do more—fix him, heal him, erase the bruises with a touch. But all I could do was stay, and make sure nobody took another swing at him, ever again.
At sunset, he looked at me and said, “Why are you being so nice?”
I thought about it for a second. “You ever rescue a stray dog?” I asked.
He squinted, confused. “What?”
“A dog that’s been beat up so bad it flinches at every shadow. You don’t yell at it. You don’t drag it around on a leash. You just… show up, every day, until it figures out you’re not like the others.”
He was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “My brother always told me I was born broken.”
I clenched my jaw so hard it hurt. “Your brother’s an asshole. You’re the strongest person I know.”
He let that settle. It didn’t fix anything, not right away, but I could see the seed of it rooting somewhere deep.
Hooper checked in just before nightfall, toolbox in hand. “If he comes back,” he said, “I’ll bury him behind the silo. Just say the word.”
I grinned. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
But inside, I wasn’t so sure.
When it got dark, I stayed on the floor beside the bed, one hand resting on the blanket where Danny could reach it. The house was quiet, except for the creak of old wood and the distant laughter from the kitchen.
I didn’t sleep. Couldn’t.
I just watched him, watched the way he breathed, and waited.
If Dennis Jenkins ever came near him again, he’d have to go through me first.
And I was more than ready for that fight.
Chapter Six
~ Danny ~
I woke to warmth, which was wrong. Every muscle in my body had memorized the choreography of cold: morning air on bare skin, cheap polyester blanket that didn’t cover my toes, the metal frame of my cot biting into the backs of my knees.
This—this was something different.
The mattress cradled me, not like a slab of packing foam but like a hand that knew exactly where the bruises were and shaped itself around the ache. The pillow smelled like laundry, yes, but also something older: pine resin, river rocks, a metallic whiff I couldn’t place.
When I tried to move, pain traced a slow red line from my ribs to my shoulder, electric and almost beautiful in its clarity.
It took a few minutes for the world to finish booting up.
My head throbbed, fuzzy with either drugs or trauma—maybe both. Sunlight knifed through the space between heavy curtains, painting the floor in gold stripes. There was a chair beside the bed, and in it, the shape of a man: elbows on knees, head bowed, not asleep, but deep in some private disaster.
Burke Callahan.
Of all the ways I’d pictured him, “sitting still” was not on the bingo card. But there he was, every muscle tight as a baling wire, fingers laced together, hair mussed like he’d been fighting his own skull. The kind of posture that said he’d been there a long time.
I blinked and he noticed. His eyes snapped up, green and sharp and full of things I didn’t know how to read. For a second, neither of us said anything.
Then: “Hey,” he said, voice pitched low and gentle, like he was afraid he might break me just by speaking.
