Chapter 12
twelve
Evander came awake already reaching for the rifle before his eyes opened, and his hand closed on nothing but the cold edge of the cot.
He held still and let the cabin sort itself out around him. Low ceiling. Thin morning light through the east window.
No threat.
He’d slept — deep, dreamless with no room for anything, the type of sleep his body had forgotten how to do — and it registered the loss of the rifle with a dull, animal confusion before the rest of him caught up.
The gauze on his forearm itched. He left it alone.
Rainey stood at the stove with her back to him, stirring something in the pot.
She wore his shirt, sleeves rolled past her elbows.
Her hair fell loose past her shoulders in a gold tangle.
Tilly lay at her feet, chin on paws, watching the door the way she always did, except this morning her tail thumped once against the floor when Evander sat up.
Rainey turned and smiled at him, bright as a sunbeam. “Coffee’s fresh.” She crossed to the shelf, picked up a tin cup, filled it, and set it down on the table. “But you’re getting low on beans.”
He rose from the cot. His body felt strange. Looser, heavier, aching with real sleep instead of the wired half-rest he’d lived on for years. He crossed to the table and found she’d set it for breakfast.
Or at least as much as she could with the few dishes he owned.
He checked the dented can he kept the coffee beans in. He’d just bought a bag a month ago. By his calculations, he should still have a week’s worth left. Maybe two, if he stretched it. But sure enough, the beans were almost gone.
He scowled and replaced the lid. “I, uh, wasn’t expecting a visitor.”
“It’s fine,” she said cheerfully. “We won’t be here long enough to run out.”
And that hit like a knife straight through his chest. His breath caught, and he rubbed at the spot where the pain radiated as he sat at the table.
It shouldn’t matter to him that she was right. She couldn’t stay in this cabin with him forever. She wasn’t a hermit like he was. She needed people the same way he needed the quiet of the forest.
And now that the rain had stopped, she’d want to signal the ranch and make a plan to get to her brother.
Fuck.
He didn’t want this to end.
He wrapped both hands around the cup, breathing in the coffee steam. The heat soaked through the metal into his palms as he watched her prepare breakfast.
And he waited.
Waited for the other shoe— the barrage of questions, the concern, the backward step people took once they’d seen the thing you kept in the dark.
But it didn’t come.
Rainey had apparently said what she needed to say about his self-destructive tendencies last night and had no intention of rehashing it. She lifted the pot off the stove, set it on the iron trivet, and portioned whatever was in it into two bowls.
“You slept,” she said. Not a question.
“Yeah.”
“Good. You needed it.” She carried the bowls to the table and set them down. Oatmeal — the last of the rolled oats from the supply drawer, cooked with the dried apples and a spoonful of crystallized honey. She’d stretched it further than he would have.
He set the coffee down and picked up his spoon, suddenly starving. The oatmeal was good — sweet from the honey, the apples soft and tart. He’d made oatmeal a thousand times in this cabin and never once made it taste like this.
Rainey sat across from him. Ate three bites, set the spoon down, and reached across the table. “Let me see it.”
He extended his arm. She took his wrist, her fingers warm against his skin, and peeled back the edge of the gauze. The marks underneath were angry but clean. Not infected. Not serious. She pressed the gauze back into place with her thumb and let him go.
“Keep that bandage on for another day to keep it clean.”
He grumbled at that. He had every intention of pulling it off as soon as she wasn’t looking, and judging by her exasperated half-smile, she knew that.
She picked up her spoon and motioned to his bowl. “There’s more if you want it.”
He did. He finished the first bowl and went back for seconds in the time it took her to eat her one bowl.
Tilly whined from her spot by the stove.
Rainey glanced over, then stood and crossed to her food bin.
She measured a scoop of kibble into Tilly’s bowl and set it on the floor.
The dog ate without looking up, her whole body bent to the task, and Rainey watched her with both arms crossed and one hip cocked against the counter.
He watched her, still half-expecting the rejection. He’d braced for it since she caught him in the shed.
And still, it didn’t come. This—the oatmeal, feeding the dog, the ordinary rhythm of morning — threw him harder than rejection would have. He didn’t know what to do with her acceptance.
He finished his second bowl and carried it to the wash basin. Rainey was there, sleeves shoved up, scrubbing the pot she’d used for the oatmeal.
He eased her out of the way. She made breakfast. He wasn’t about to stick her with the dishes, too.
She smiled at him again—would he ever get used to the gut-punch when she did that?—and leaned against the counter to watch. “The rain’s stopped. Can we try to signal Ghost today?”
He didn’t want to. He wanted to keep her here with him. Which was selfish. And stupid.
Evander rinsed the bowl, watching the water cloud with oatmeal residue. “We can try,” he said, though the words felt like gravel in his throat. “But we don’t signal from here. We have to hike to the north ridge.”
“How far?”
“Three miles. Steep.” He set the bowl aside and turned to face her. “Your ribs—”
“Are fine.” She straightened from the counter. “When do we leave?”
He studied her expression. She was determined. It would be a waste of breath trying to talk her out of it.
“We need to go now. No telling how long this break in the weather lasts.” He dried his hands and turned to grab his boots.
Hers sat on the floor next to his. Lucky she’d been wearing combat boots and not heels when they fled the Dead Marshall.
“Your boots and jeans are good enough for the hike, but you’ll want to dress in layers.
It will be cool in the pines, but hot once we pass the tree line.
Get dressed.” He nodded to the metal storage locker he used as a wardrobe.
“There are extra clothes in the locker. And the radio.”
“Got it.”
Tilly lifted her head from the empty bowl, dark ears swiveled toward Rainey, then back to him, reading the shift in the cabin’s energy.
“Tilly, come.” He slung his rifle over his shoulder, grabbed his pack, and reached for the door handle.
The cold morning air hit his face, and he went to check on Sable while Rainey dressed.
He wasn’t surprised to find his free-spirited mare had shaken off the blanket and left the lean-to to do whatever it was she did.
Rainey came out of the cabin in his flannel-lined jacket. It was too big for her and made her look like a child playing dress-up. She set down the radio and held out her arms, and the sleeves flopped over her hands. “A little big.”
A smile itched at the corner of his mouth as he crossed to her and rolled the sleeves up. He couldn’t seem to stop touching her. “It’ll do.”
His fingers lingered on her wrist after the last cuff was folded. He rubbed a thumb over the handwritten tattoo there.
Be Loud.
It amazed him that she ever thought she needed the reminder.
She didn’t pull away. Her eyes held his, steady, unafraid of whatever she saw in his face.
He dropped his hand and stepped back. Cleared his throat and bent to scoop up the radio, securing it in his pack before sliding the straps over his shoulders. “Follow my pace. You signal if your ribs give you trouble.”
“I will.”
She wouldn’t. He knew that already. Rainey Beckett would hike those three miles with a punctured lung if it meant getting to her brother.
Tilly ranged ahead as they entered the tree line, her dark coat disappearing and reappearing between the trunks.
The ground was soft from the rain, needles giving underfoot with a damp squelch.
He kept his strides shorter than natural, listening for her breathing behind him, the slight hitch that would tell him she was hiding pain.
The forest climbed around them. Pine scent thickened, resinous and clean, cutting through the mineral smell of wet stone.
Sunlight reached the trail in scattered patches where the canopy loosened, and he watched her move through them, her hair catching the light and throwing back gold, her boots finding purchase on the slick ground.
The trail started climbing, cutting across the mountain’s face in switchbacks that forced them onto their hands over the worst of it.
Pines gave way to scattered fir and larch, the underbrush dwindling to bare rock and tough alpine grass.
The air heated. The wind picked up, carrying the scent of high country and the far-off promise of rain.
Two miles in, the trail opened onto a broad ridge of weathered granite, and the whole east country fell away beneath them—miles of mountains rolling toward the horizon, the valley a deep green bowl, the highway a thin gray thread stitched through it.
The sky ran vast and cloudless overhead, but clouds were gathering again to the west.
Evander dropped his pack and unzipped it.
The radio came out first—a compact military-surplus unit that could pull in everything from weather bands to encrypted law enforcement channels if you knew how to work it.
He extended the antenna and powered it on.
Static hissed, then thinned as he worked the dial.
Rainey sat on a flat rock beside him, close enough that her shoulder brushed his arm when she leaned in to listen.
She’d stripped off the jacket and the long-sleeved shirt, right down to her sports bra.
Her skin glistened with sweat in the heat, and she swiped at her brow before accepting the canteen he passed her.
“Thanks.”