Caroline
A whimper.
That's how I'm saved in the end.
Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
It's a single, muted groan from somewhere outside the bunkhouse.
Like the last breath of air escaping someone's lungs.
Gold Chain freezes with his finger still hooked under my thermal, the garment raised halfway over my bra.
He turns his head to squint at the door.
Beanie straightens up from the doorframe.
Buzzcut's hand drifts toward the disassembled Glock on the cot, which is currently in four pieces on a rag and about as useful as a jigsaw puzzle at a gunfight.
Then the lights go out.
Not the dying evening light that comes through the windows—it's the generator that goes kaput. That background drone dies and the space heater does the same. Overhead, the single bare bulb that's the extent of the room's artificial illumination is black and cold.
In the dark, someone says, "The fuck—?"
The door comes off its hinges.
I don't mean it opens. I mean it comes off, inward, with a sound like a car crash and a rush of freezing mountain air that cold-cocks me across the face. A shape fills the doorframe. It's broad-shouldered, backlit by the last gray light of dusk, rifle raised, and impossible not to recognize.
Beanie goes for something at his hip. He doesn't get there. Truthfully, he doesn't even get halfway. There's a crack that splits the air in two, and Beanie crumples sideways against the wall and slides down it like he's had a very, very long day.
Gold Chain releases my shirt and lunges toward a gun locker in the back.
Afon beats him there in one room-spanning lunge and drives the butt of the Remington into Gold Chain's sternum.
The sound is awful. Thock, like Afon's axe hitting the woodblock back in his cabin, but with an extra wet, nasty crunch that can't be good from the perspective of Gold Chain's internal organs.
Gold Chain makes a sound like his friend outside did, a sad little whine, and then Afon hits him once more with the rifle stock.
Gold Chain doesn't make any more noises after that.
Buzzcut is the last one standing. He's scrambling on the cot, fingers scrabbling for the Glock pieces in the dark.
He gets the slide and the frame together, and even though that's basically a useless, non-firing hunk of metal, he still swings the thing around and aims it at Afon like he'll somehow magically conjure the bullet that will save him.
It doesn't work out quite like that.
Afon breaks Buzzcut's wrist with a single, effortless snap. Thock, then a scream.
With his other arm, Afon throws a crunching elbow into the bridge of Buzzcut's nose. Just like that, it's all over.
Afon stands in the center of the bunkhouse, breathing hard, surrounded by three unconscious men, steam rising off his shoulders in the cold air. The Remington is back in his hands. His eyes sweep the room once in a systematic grid pattern, checking for any other threats.
Then they land on me.
"Caroline."
I try to answer but all that comes out is a wordless whimper. My mouth is open and my lungs are working, but somewhere between my brain and my vocal cords, the signal has degraded into static.
Afon slings the Remington over his shoulder, pulls a folding knife from his jacket, and slices the zip tie off my wrists with a single flick. The blood rushes back into my fingers. The pain is extraordinary—white-hot needles threading through every nerve ending from my elbows to my fingertips.
"Are you hurt?" he asks.
I shake my head. Then nod. Then shake it again. I don't know what I am anymore.
"Did they—"
"No." That word, at least, I can produce. "No. You— Well, you cut it kind of close there, actually."
I feel like that's pretty funny, but he doesn't crack a smile. "Can you walk?"
"I… I'm not sure. My ankle—"
"Right."
He scoops me up, one arm under my knees and the other around my back, and carries me through the kicked-in doorway and into the dusk.
The logging camp looks a bit different now than it did earlier.
The generator sits silent with its panel ripped open.
One of the men who'd been smoking outside is facedown in the mud near the trucks, motionless, with a nasty-looking patch of red snow covering his head.
I don't see the others and I don't ask. I kinda get the feeling they're all lying unmoving in red snow patches of their own.
The tarp-covered snowmobile is where it was before, but the two trucks now have their hoods up, wires hanging loose like disemboweled intestines. Afon has been thorough.
The Bronco is parked about fifty yards from the bunkhouse, right where the logging road widens out. Afon carries me toward it without breaking stride, his boots crunching over the frozen mud. My arms are around his neck, so I'm sure he can feel me shaking.
"Almost there," Afon says.
We're maybe twenty yards from the Bronco when the shot cracks through the air.
It's a sharp whiplash noise, followed by the metallic ping of something hitting the Bronco's fender.
Afon pivots instantly, dropping into a crouch behind a stack of cut timber so fast that I barely register the change in altitude before my back is against the silvered logs and his body is between me and the direction the shot came from.
A second shot follows. This one thuds into the timber six inches above our heads, sending a spray of splinters into the cold air.
"Stay down," Afon orders as he unslings the Remington. He peers around the edge of the log pile toward the logging road, where a pair of headlights has appeared, bouncing through the trees. A truck. Someone returning to camp who wasn't here when Afon dismantled the welcoming committee.
A third shot punches through the Bronco's windshield. The glass shatters and collapses inward in a web of cracks. Afon's scowl deepens.
"Motherfucker," he snarls. "I just replaced that glass."
"What now?" I ask in a panic.
He thumbs off the safety on the gun. "Change of plans."
He fires the Remington once toward the approaching headlights, and then he's lifting me again and running, not toward the Bronco but back toward the bunkhouse—a.k.a., the last place on earth I want to go back to right now.
Another shot cracks behind us. This one goes wide, smacking into a tree trunk somewhere to our left. "Afon!" I scream. "Where are we—"
Then he veers around the corner of the bunkhouse and back to the tarp canopy serving as a carport for the guys that call this place home. He deposits me on the snowmobile's seat, yanks the tarp the rest of the way off, and swings a leg over in front of me.
"Hold on."
"Huh?"
The sudden acceleration rips my voice out of my throat.
I scream as I wrap my arms around his waist and press my face into the back of his jacket.
We lurch forward, engine bellowing, and tear out of the logging camp on a trail I can barely see.
Branches whip past on either side, some painful.
The headlight on the snowmobile cuts a jerky cone of white through the darkening woods, illuminating trees, snow, more trees, a rock that Afon swerves around at the last possible second.
Behind us, the sound of the returning truck's engine fades, replaced by the growl of our own machine and the wind roaring past my ears.
I have no idea how Afon knows where he's going. The trail, such as it is, seems to exist only in his memory—a series of turns and gaps between trees that he navigates at a speed I'd categorize as medically inadvisable. We hit a dip and go briefly airborne. I scream again.
"You good?" Afon shouts over the engine.
"No!"
He nods and we keep going, out into the cold, dark night.
The cabin appears out of the darkness like a hallucination.
For so long, it's been nothing but black woods and the pale stripes of birch trunks in the headlight.
Then, abruptly, the forest fades and the clearing opens up, and there it is: cedar shingles, stone chimney, the woodpile, the whole rustic postcard of it.
I wouldn't call it "home," but there's a distinct feeling of relief upon seeing it again.
Afon kills the engine and the silence that follows is so sudden and total that my ears ring.
Wolf is at the door before we are, barking over and over, a deep chorus of woofs that vibrate through the porch boards.
Afon carries me inside—I've stopped protesting, because my ankle feels like it's the size of a watermelon right now—and sets me on the couch.
Wolf shoves his enormous head into my lap immediately, whining, his tail a blur.
Afon locks the door, moves the Remington to its spot against the wall, and crosses to the window.
He stands there for a long time, scanning the clearing, one hand resting on the sill.
Whatever he's looking for, he doesn't seem to find it, because after a while he exhales through his nose and pulls the curtain.
Then he kneels in front of the fireplace and starts building a fire.
I watch him do it. Kindling, then the smaller logs, then the larger ones.
A match. The orange bloom of flame catching, spreading, stabilizing.
His movements are steady and precise. He seems perfectly fine.
If I didn't know any better, I'd say there's no way he just spent the last hour incapacitating six armed men and outrunning a seventh on a snowmobile through pitch-black woods with a grown woman clinging to his torso.
Meanwhile, I am coming apart.
It starts in my hands. They won't stop shaking.
I press them between my knees, but that doesn't work, so I sit on them.
But that doesn't work, either. In fact, it makes things worse.
The trembling migrates up my arms, into my shoulders, down through my ribs.
My jaw locks. My teeth chatter so hard I can hear them, this awful, involuntary percussion that I can't make stop no matter how hard I clench.
"Caroline."
Afon is in front of me. I didn't see him move. He's holding a blanket, the same plaid one from the first time we did this whole song and dance, and he drapes it around my shoulders, tucking it tight. His hands are warm and soft and enormous.
"Breathe," he advises.
I try. The air goes in but it doesn't find its way to anywhere useful. It just sits at the top of my chest in a hot, useless knot, and when I try to push it deeper, a humiliating little sob leaks out of me like air from a punctured balloon.
"In through your nose," Afon instructs. "Out through your mouth. Slow."
I try again. Same result. The shaking is worse now, not better. My vision is doing that thing from the bunkhouse, the black edges creeping in, and I can smell Gold Chain's breath on my neck even though he's miles away and almost certainly nursing several broken ribs.
"I c-can't—" I lick my cold-chapped lips. "I can't make it stop."
Afon studies me for a moment. I see his eyes sorting through options, ruling out this and that. Then he nods, like he's arrived at the final route and doesn't like it one bit.
Then he drags me down to the floor, puts me between his massive legs, and pulls me into his chest.
I don't know if he's ever been taught the concept of "cuddling" before. He feels like a man who's teaching it to himself based off first principles. It's a stiff, reluctant embrace, and I get the feeling that he'd rather be back in the bunkhouse bare-knuckle boxing, but he doesn't let go.
"You're safe," he whispers into my ear, close enough for his beard to tickle the delicate skin of my temple. "You're in my cabin. The door is locked. Wolf is here. I'm here. No one is coming."
I turn, press my face into his sweater, and cry.
I'm afraid it's an ugly girl cry. At least he lets me keep my face hidden from him.
Because I just know that snot is running full barrel from both nostrils, my cheeks are blotchy red, and my eyes are already swollen.
It bears zero resemblance to any sort of Gone with the Wind style display of grand feminine sadness.
No Hollywood director is rushing to film this for posterity and Oscars recognition.
It's just what happens when the fear finally catches up to you.
I didn't let myself feel it back there, with Gold Chain's calloused fingertips sneaking up under my shirt, so it's all crashing down on me now, every suppressed second of it, an avalanche, a flood, a world-ending disaster.
Afon lets me have it. He refuses to let go of me. I stay there, nestled in the crook of his elbow, until the sobs ease, the snot dries, and the tears slowly retreat back from whence they came.
Eventually, Wolf comes over and rests his heavy head on my lap.
The three of us sit there for a long, long, very long time, with the fire burning in front of me and Afon burning up behind me.
He's a mountain of a man and I've never been more grateful, because it feels like I can fold myself up inside him and stay safe here for as long as I please.
He'd never tell me to go. Pretty ironic, to feel that way about a man who literally kicked me out of his life this morning, but I know in my bones it's true.
He'll hold me until the end of time, if that's what it took.