The rifle swinging off Afon.
The shot.
The red on the black fur.
Wolf's yelp, that sharp, terrible sound.
"He's going to be okay," I say, mostly to myself.
"We don't know that."
I turn to look at him. "But I'm choosing to believe it. You taught me that. Take the thing that should flatten you and turn it sideways."
He grunts and says nothing else.
We sit. The coffee machine gurgles to itself in a language only it can understand. Down the hall, behind the doors, there are sounds—a beep, a voice, the squeak of a wheel—and every one of them makes my heart climb into my throat. What does this one mean? What's two beeps? What's one? Was that another yelp?
After a while, I can't take it.
"I can't sit here," I announce. I'm up before I've decided to be. "I can't just sit and be scared. Looking at that door… I'm gonna come apart."
Afon stands with me. "Where are you going?"
"I don't know. Outside. The truck. Anywhere that isn't this chair."
He follows me out. The lot's empty except for the blue pickup, dark with melt now, the passenger seat a sticky, crimson disaster. The sky's gone gray-white, huddling close to the earth, and the air is so cold that every breath hurts.
I climb into the truck on the driver's side, away from the blood on the bench. Afon comes around and gets in beside me and pulls the door shut.
The world goes quiet. Only our breath remains.
"He shouldn't have done that. It was a stupid thing to do." The tears come up hot and stinging. I scrub at my face with the back of my wrist, but there's blood still on it, so now, there's blood on my cheek, mingling with the tears I can't get to stop.
"Hey." Afon's hand comes up to my face. His thumb wipes under my eye. "Hey. Look at me."
His eyes aren't flat anymore. There's no concrete poured over them. There's just him, looking at me like I'm the only thing in the truck, in the lot, in the world.
"I don't know how to do nothing," I croak. "I've never known how."
He nods.
"How do you do it?" I demand. "How do you just sit in the not-knowing?"
"You do it because there is no other choice," he replies. "There's no trick. You sit in it, and it's awful, and you keep breathing anyway. That's the whole of it."
"That's probably the least comforting bit of advice I've ever heard."
"Baby, it's the only advice I've got." His thumb is on my cheek, dragging through blood and salt water.
A wet laugh tears out of me, ugly and hiccupping. "You're supposed to be comforting me."
"I'm not good at comfort, Caroline. I'm good at three things, and two of them are illegal."
"What's the third?"
His eyes drop to my mouth. "This," he says.
Then he leans across the seat and kisses me.
