"You did this."
"That's not fair."
"I'm going to keep saying it because you keep calling fair the things you want me to say."
He grabs a blanket from the back of the couch. Turns off the kitchen light.
Stops in the hallway. Doesn't turn around.
"I'll drive you to Kelowna Tuesday."
"Gray."
"Goodnight, Simone."
He walks into the living room.
I stand in the dark kitchen a long time.
Then I go upstairs. Alone. I get into his bed in his shirt because I can't make myself put it in the hamper.
I don't cry.
I lie there with my hand flat on the sheet where his chest was eight hours ago.
The cabin is quiet in a way I'm not used to.
I stare at the ceiling.
Tuesday is three days away.
I made it feel longer by my own hand.
And I don't know if I can undo what I just did.
11
GRAYSON
The couch is too short.
I slept on worse. Sand. Concrete floors in buildings with no roofs left. Once, a bench at a bus station in Nicosia with a pack under my head and a pistol under the pack.
The couch in my own cabin with a woman I want upstairs in my bed is worse than all of them.
I'm up at four. Make coffee. Do a walk of the property because it's what my body knows to do when my brain won't settle. Tree line quiet. No new tire tracks on the road. The threat is over. I'm doing perimeter checks on a cabin that doesn't need them because I don't know what else to do with my hands.
At six she's still asleep upstairs.
At seven I hear her in the shower.
At eight she comes down in leggings and a sweater I haven't seen before, hair pulled back in a bun that's too tight, face scrubbed clean, phone in her hand.
"Morning."
"Morning."
"Coffee's on."
