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Only Callie reached over to hug me goodbye. The three of them disappeared in my rearview mirror, Callie and Priya standing together, rummaging for their keys on the sidewalk; Jess alone, walking to her car. We’d all survived, but nothing would be the same between us. Four of us had climbed into a jeep in June because something beautiful was involved and someone else was steering. I watched three of them stand on a sidewalk and become two and one.

I drove to Damian’s workshop to drop off the truck, the orange glow of fishing vessels bobbing on the ink-black of the bay, flickering in my peripheral vision.

There was something hollowing about pulling up in the dark. I expected it empty, which is why I blinked when I saw him standing on the sidewalk, waiting for me, smiling as I cut the engine.

Smiling. Not anxious with his hand gripping his phone, his jaw tight. Just smiling in a way that made me forget how to put the truck into park for two seconds.

I climbed down, feral-muddy and scratched as a hockey puck, and then I was in his arms, held tight, the words it worked. Marlowe it worked in my ear.

For the first time, I could be happy about it, and it came out of me as muffled words against his chest, hands holding on like I never wanted to let go, legs that forgot what they were for and left the ground.

“Why are you here, though?” I said, pulling back to look at him.

He smiled again. “Aurora had a public meltdown. Everyone left. And no one has a clue what actually happened.”

I laughed and squealed against him. The adrenaline was still there as a tremor in my fingers, but the warmth of his body and the grip of his hands steadied me.

Upstairs, in his apartment, I showered under water that was perfectly scalding, washing off mud and sand and two months of tension. He joined me in the shower, complaining it was too hot, massaging my head full of shampoo in soft circles, soap running down his body in a way that made survival feel like an excellent decision.

For a long moment I lay against his chest, water pummeling me, while he whispered, “thank you,” over and over, and I told him I’d do it all over again, but with more waterproof footwear.

At the bathroom sink, he unbandaged my hand and cleaned the wound, while I hissed at the pain.

“Funny, this is kind of where it started,” I said.

“What?” he said, taping a fresh bandage.

“A cut hand and a first aid kit.”

“Hmm.” He smoothed the tape down with his thumb. “Branwen would say you should never dress a stranger’s wound unless you’re prepared to keep them. Blood-debt. Very old rule.” He closed the kit. “I should have warned you, but I was bleeding at the time, and honestly I liked my odds.”

My hand went to the fox tattoo on his torso. His skin was still warm from the shower.

“So I signed something again without reading the terms.”

“You did.”

“And there’s no undoing it?”

“None known to the craft.”

“Good.”

I sat on his sofa in his shirt while he made tea and told me I had to eat something. I took the tea but refused food until he told me absolutely everything that had happened at the retreat.

“No, I want you to tell me first,” he said, handing me the mug.

He settled beside me, draping an arm across the back of the sofa behind my head.

I told him everything. The muddy hike down the gully, the blood, the ledger of names, the rising tide.

“You’re amazing,” he said, pulling me closer, kissing me. “I knew you could do this, Marlowe.”

“Jess nearly screwed up the whole thing.”

He sat up. “Why?”

I told him about how she’d broken from the circle and scrambled up the gully toward the gate. About what she’d said as I wrestled her behind a tree.