"I'm not going to come apart," she says.
"I know."
"You don't. You keep checking." She tugs the jacket collar up around her jaw. "I watched you at dinner. Every time I went quiet you leaned in like you were going to catch me."
"I'll stop."
"You won't." One corner of her mouth moves. "But thank you for saying it."
The cold comes up hard off the desert the way it does out here after dark.
Behind us the club goes silent room by room, men saying whatever they say to the people they might not see again.
I've got the woman I love beside me on a cold bench, and I can't find one word big enough for tomorrow.
"I'm scared," she says.
It surprises me. Not the fear. That she admitted it out loud.
"Yeah." I keep my eyes on the dark. "Me too."
"You don't understand what I mean." She turns and looks at me full on. "I'm not scared of the place. I need you to hear that, because you've spent all week terrified I'll fall apart when I see it. I won't."
"Mila—"
"I stopped being scared of that place a long time ago." She holds my eyes. "I stopped being scared of dying nine years ago. You can't threaten a woman with what she's already made peace with."
"Then what?"
She pulls her knees up onto the bench and wraps her arms around them.
I make myself sit still and let her get there.
"For nine years I had nothing. That was the one thing I had going for me down there. Nothing left they could take, so nothing left to be scared of." She rests her chin on her knees. "You can't frighten a woman who's already lost everything. It's the closest thing to armor there is."
"And now?"
"And now I walked up to a gate to get one answer out of a man who owed me, and get the women out, and be done." Her voice catches. "That was the whole plan. And instead I got a life, Finn."
I don't say anything.
"A warm bed. A woman who does my hair. A baby who fell asleep on my chest." She turns her head and looks at me over her knees. "You. I got you."
"Mila."
"So now I've got everything to lose all over again, and I got it the week before I walk back into the place that took it the first time." Her breath shakes going in. "It's not the hole I'm scared of. It's that I finally have something, and I might not get to keep it."
I reach over slowly and put my hand on the back of her neck, under her hair.
She lets me. She leans into it.
"I spent nine years unafraid." She says it into my shoulder. "You took it away in eight weeks. I hate you a little for it."
"I know." My voice comes out wrecked. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." She lifts her head. "It's the best thing that's ever happened to me and I hate you for it at the same time. Nobody warns you about that part. Getting your life back is the most frightening thing there is, because now there's something to lose again."
"I need you to promise me something." She turns on the bench to face me.
