"Why."
Because I want things I shouldn't want. Because you looked at me last night and saidyes sirin a voice that undid twenty years of discipline. Because I've been a man who couldn't save someone, and if I tell you thank you now, we both have to pretend that's all this was.
I don't say any of that.
I say, "Let's get you home."
She keeps looking up at me.
"This isn't home, Mercer."
"I know."
"And it's not over."
"I know that too."
6
SIMONE
The cabin is not the same.
That's the thing nobody tells you about coming back to a place after a man who wanted to hurt you walked through it. The walls are the same. The couch is the same. But the air knows. The rug in the living room has a boot print I didn't leave. The fridge door is cracked an inch. The rifle cabinet in the office is still locked because Gray locks everything, but there's a drawer open beside the desk that I watched him close last night.
I stand in the kitchen with my arms wrapped around myself and I try to feel safe and I mostly feel like I want to burn the cabin down and buy a different one.
Gray is on the porch talking to two men in dark jackets. Quiet voices. Short sentences. One of them has a tablet and keeps showing him something. The other is older and keeps nodding.
I can see the shape of him through the window. Shoulders set. Hand on his hip like his hip is doing something. He's a man who goes still when he's thinking and stiller when he's angry, and right now he's the second one.
Good.
I'm angry too.
I go upstairs and I take the longest shower of my adult life. Hot enough to turn my skin pink. I wash my hair in two phases because braids don't come out on a mountain timeline and my hair doesn’t take a break because a man with a gun felt entitled to her day. I condition. I oil. I wrap a towel around my head and another around my body and I stand in the bedroom a long time, just breathing.
Then I put on leggings and a real bra and a long soft cardigan over a tank, and I braid my hair again in two neat rows because my hands need a job.
When I come downstairs the men are gone.
Gray is in the living room with a fresh pot of coffee and his laptop closed and a fire going that wasn't there an hour ago.
He looks up when I come in.
"Hey."
"Hey."
He pours me a cup without asking. I take it. We stand in the kitchen like we don't know how to start.
"Marcus is on his way."
I blink.
"From Toronto?"
"From Vancouver. He was already in country."
