The scratching slowed. Stopped. The growl faded and gave way to the distant echo of shuffling movement retreating down the front stoop and into the street below.
He turned around.
Up close, he was even larger than the blur that had charged through my front door sixty seconds ago. Broad shoulders and thick arms spoke of a dense, functional build, forged by years of hard physical labor rather than a gym. Dark hair was pushed back from a face that looked assembled from spare parts: a jaw too sharp, a brow too heavy, a nose that had been broken and reset slightly wrong, and a small, pale scar cutting through his left eyebrow. His eyes were a pale silver-gray, the color of lake ice in early March.
Those eyes found Fiona first.
“You good?” The bark from the doorway was gone, replaced by a low, even tone—the voice of someone who had simply needed to be heard over the noise and now didn’t.
She nodded weakly from the floor where she’d slid down the wall, her lungs still working hard.
“Thanks to you.”
He gave a small, almost automatic, dismissive shrug, as though sprinting through a city of the dead didn’t warrant acknowledgment.
Lily looked up at me from beside Fiona, her seventeen-year-old face pale and stripped of everything except wide-eyed shock.
“Mom,” she whispered, “He shot one of them coming down the street. Its head just—”
I looked at my daughter. Then at Fiona, still catching her breath on my floor. Then at him.
The hallway was very quiet.
“You did what?”
He met my eyes—calm, not a trace of apology in his expression.
“Had to,” he said simply. “It grabbed her jacket. Another second and it would’ve had her neck. It was a last resort; sound seems to draw them, but it was my only option.”
Fiona, still catching her breath on the floor, looked between us and managed a weak wave of introduction.
“Libby, this is my brother.” She gestured loosely in his direction. “Finn. Finn, this is Libby—my landlord. And that’s Lily, her daughter.” She pointed toward my daughter, who had already abandoned her spot beside Fiona and migrated to the front window, pressing her face against the glass to peer down at the street through the gap in the curtain.
Finn rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, and something in his posture shifted.
“Finn,” he said, extending his hand toward me.
I took it.
The contact was a jolt against the frantic energy still humming through my veins. His hand swallowed mine, all rough calluses and a surprising warmth that cut through the cold sweat coating my own skin. It was too much, another shock to a system already overloaded. I pulled my hand back as if burned.
He looked up at me with a slight crease between his brows—brief, unreadable—and for one suspended second, those pale eyes held mine before he turned away to check the window beside Lily.
Jesus, Libby. Get a grip.
I pressed my back against the hallway wall, telling myself I was just catching my breath. Finn leaned past my daughter to scan the street below, one hand braced against the window frame. Before I could stop them, my eyes found the place where his shirt had pulled free from his waistband—a strip of skin, damp and warm-looking. I did the involuntary, traitorous math.
He looked twenty-seven. Twenty-eight on a generous day.
I had thirty-nine years, a teenager, a mortgage, enough common sense to know better, and trauma for days.
The world outside was ending, andthose thingswalked the streets of Boston. Something had torn civilization apart between last night and this morning, and my oxygen-deprived brain had chosen this moment to notice that my tenant’s older brother had pale eyes and was hot as fuck.
He is practically a child. You are a grown woman. People are eating people. Prioritize.
I straightened up, smoothed my shirt, and walked over to where Fiona still sat on the floor, extending a hand to pull her to her feet.
“Welcome to my home, Finn,” I said, keeping my voice level. “Sorry about the circumstances.”
