"I swear, Caroline, I'm not doing this to torture you. Some of what I have to tell you, I've never said out loud. Not once. I need to do it in a way I can survive. That's the truth, and I can't be any more honest than that. Take it or leave it."
She studies me for a long moment. The light through the rippled window makes her hair look almost gray, and for a second, she could be Susan, standing in that kitchen on Seventy-Eighth Street, asking Bill where he'dreallybeen all night.
I'm promising her the truth, but there are still parts of things I intend to conceal for as long as possible. I won't mention the satellite phone in my jacket. The phone is for if everything goes to hell, and I'd like for it to stay buried in my pocket the same way it stayed buried in the ground—untouched unless there's no other choice.
"Define 'pieces,'" she says. "Are we talking chapters? Paragraphs? Or are you going to give me one word a day until I die of old age?"
"Take it or leave it, Caroline."
She chews her lip. Wolf looks up at her, then at me, then back at her.
"If I agree," she says slowly, "you start today."
I think about it. The deer needs butchering. The wood needs splitting. There are a hundred chores between now and dark, and not one of them would take as much out of me as talking will.
"Tonight," I concede. "After we eat."
She sticks out her hand. "Then we have a deal."
16
CAROLINE
Windows have been doing me no favors lately.
When I first arrived in Afon's life, I was the one looking in the mirror.
Now, I'm on the inside looking out.
The window in this hut is small and rippled, the glass so old it distorts everything like a funhouse mirror, and frost has crept up the bottom third of it.
None of which prevents me from seeing Afon Satyrin out there in the clearing, splitting wood in nothing but a skintight thermal.
I'm not watching him. I'mnot.I want that established. I'm sitting on the bed, ostensibly resting my ankle per Dr. Afon's strict medical orders, and the window simply happens to be in my line of sight, and he simply happens to be framed perfectly in the window. Simple. Veeery simple.
Thock.
The first night I was here, that sound drove me insane. He chopped wood for hours while I lay on his couch with a goose egg on my forehead. At the time, I decided it was the auditory equivalent of a middle finger. A man telling me to eff off in percussive Morse code.
Thock.
That was before. Since then, he's carried me to bed—twice—peeled a kidnapping crew apart like a very gory orange, and kissed me up against a stone wall. Things have changed. The clunk of axe hitting wood is no longer a warning.
It's more like foreplay.
Context, it turns out, is an aphrodisiac. Nobody warned me about that. Dr. Levinson never once said,Caroline, beware of contextualized lumberjacking. The road to multiple orgasms is paved with the stuff.
Thock.
As I watch, Afon sets another log on the block. The thermal has gone translucent across his shoulders with sweat. Steam is literally rising off him, like he's a draft horse, or a casserole. A huge, muscly, bearded, sexy casserole horse.
I last a few more agonizing minutes. Then I dig his spare jacket out of the duffel, shrug it on—it fits me like a flannel circus tent—and limp out into the snow.
Afon doesn't even look up. "No."
"You don't know what I was going to say."
"You were going to offer to help." The axe comes down and the poor log he's chosen as his victim gives up its ghost in two cleanhalves. "Which is a lie. You were bored, and you wanted to come stand near the activity."
