JULIETTE
Theroombehindthelibrary had exactly three virtues: a lock, a shower, and a silence so thick it felt structural. I woke to it the next morning, gray light filtering through the high window, its timber shutters cracked just enough to admit the smudged light of the savannah.
The night before, after the guest chaos had peaked and then flatlined, those whose suites sat within the secure perimeter had been escorted back in pairs. But the western tents remained a hard no, which left me relegated to the library wing with a borrowed blanket and a flat pillow. It was a strange, displaced transition—going from the heat of Nick’s hands to the distinct luxury-travel experience of waking up in the equivalent of a storage closet.
My alternate life was three miles away in a bush suite I couldn’t reach. My laptop. My notebook. My fantasy novel with the cracked spine. My phone charger. My sense of order. All the small, stupid things I’d planned to hide behind while pretending I had any control left over this trip.
A sharp knock at the door broke the silence. Two raps, hard and efficient.
I pulled the thin blanket around my shoulders and opened the door. Nick stood in the corridor, looking like he hadn't slept at all. He waited only long enough for me to step back before coming inside, a porcelain mug in one hand and a folded piece of lodge stationery in the other. His attention moved over the messy knot of my hair and the rolled cuffs of the lounge pants before finding my face and staying there.
“Morning,” he said.
It sounded rough, dragged over no sleep and too much radio static.
He handed me the mug. Heat bit through the porcelain into my palm.
"Sarah's in the lobby," he said, his voice a low vibration in the small room. He pressed the note into my free hand. His handwriting was blunt, the ink heavy.
Coffee. Stay in the cleared lodge area. Sarah has the manifest. Don’t make me come find you. —N.
"I can read, Nick," I said, my voice dry. "And I'm already holding the exhibit A."
His mouth moved. Not quite a smile. More like the memory of one trying to survive on stubbornness and no sleep.
“The note is for when I leave,” he said.
I looked at him properly then. The dark bruising beneath his eyes. The way the light found the copper threaded through the brown of his beard. The mud dried along one cuff where hemust have knelt somewhere he had no business kneeling before sunrise.
“Did you sleep at all?”
“Enough.”
“That means no.”
“That means I’m upright.”
“Nick.”
His gaze flicked to mine, sharp enough to cut off the concern before it found softer ground.
“I can’t take that from you right now,” he said.
Naturally. The man could face armed criminals in the bush, but basic human worry was apparently where courage went to die.
He glanced at the small wooden desk where a lodge-branded toothbrush sat in its plastic wrapper—a reminder that I was currently a guest in the most utilitarian sense of the word. “Cloud cover’s low. Humidity’s coming. If we get a flight window, I need the airstrip cleared before anyone moves. Stay put until then.”
"Is that a request or a briefing?"
“It’s the current reality.” He paused at the door, his hand lingering on the latch. Mine tightened around the mug. “Don’t make me chase you down, Juliette.”
The warning should have landed harder. It didn’t, because his hand came up before he seemed to think better of it.
His thumb brushed my cheek once, warm enough to undo me and brief enough to deny it.
Then his hand dropped.
“Please,” he said, quieter.
