Doesn’t need to.
We stand there another minute, the town spread out below us, fragile and stubborn and worth the work. Then I head backinside to adjust the motion sensor and check the side door one more time before bed.
When I walk into the bar, Aurora looks up immediately.
Finn is still talking. Arlo is polishing glasses with the same expression he’d wear at a funeral or a pie contest. The room smells of fryer oil, whiskey, and the cedar smoke that clings to Ryder’s jacket hanging by the door.
Aurora’s tea has gone cold again.
I cross to her, pick up the mug, and say, “I’ll make more.”
Her eyes lift to mine. Tired. Bruised. Still here.
“Okay,” she says softly.
I take the mug to the kitchen.
Put the kettle on.
Check the back lock.
Reset the sensor.
Listen to the building breathe.
Then I make her tea.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Aurora
The first thingI do when I wake up is check my wrists.
It’s not conscious. Not really. My hands move before my brain catches up, fingers brushing over skin that still remembers a tightness it should never have known.
The marks are fading. Yellow now, soft around the edges, less angry than they were before.
Still there.
I press my thumb lightly into one of them, just to prove something to myself. That I can feel it. That it’s mine. That it doesn’t own me.
It hurts.
I exhale slowly and sit up. The room is warm. Lamp still on. Blanket tangled around my legs. The faint smell of cedar and coffee and something fried drifting up from downstairs.
The Hollow.
I’m here.
Not there.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and sit, letting my body catch up to the fact that the floor isn’t concrete and the door isn’t locked from the outside and no one is coming back in unless I let them.
“Okay,” I whisper to myself.
Mission: be normal.
Or… close enough that no one looks at me like I might shatter if they breathe too hard.
