Chapter 5 #2
Red's voice echoes in that country drawl of his: You've got a good heart, boy, but you're pissier than a stepped-on snake in winter when you're cornered.
He was right.
But I'm still an asshole who's going to keep her alive whether she likes it or not.
When she comes out twenty minutes later, she's not wearing my shirt.
She's in sweatpants. Gray, rolled at the waist—the same ones she was wearing when she showed up. Men's sweats. Someone else's clothes.
And Maya's shirt, hanging loose. Anything but mine.
Message received.
Her hair is damp and pulled back, and she's not looking at me.
I'm sitting at the kitchen table. Waiting.
"Sit down," I say. "I'll tell you everything."
She hesitates. She's weighing it—whether to trust me, whether I've earned another chance, whether she even wants to be in the same room as me right now.
She sits. Across from me, as far away as the small table allows.
I tell her.
Crow's updates. Nova's check-ins. The rental car. The false alarms—three of them in three days, each one making my chest tight until confirmation came through. The real concerns—suspicious vehicles, unverified reports, the threat that hasn't let up since she got here.
When I get to the text that came in this morning—the one I've been holding onto since dawn—her face changes.
"Daniels," I say. "The officer who took the round to the leg. He's being released from the hospital today. Full recovery expected."
She exhales. Something loosens in her shoulders.
"Thank God." Her voice cracks. "He was so kind to me. The whole drive to the safe house, he kept cracking these stupid jokes, trying to make me laugh. And then when everything went wrong, he—" She stops. Swallows. "I thought he might die because of me."
I don't say anything. Just watch her face.
"I should have known sooner." She's not looking at me anymore. "I've been pacing around this cottage thinking everyone who tried to help me ended up dead."
"Now you know different."
"Now I know different." She almost smiles. "One good thing."
She looks at me then. Holds my gaze the way she did in the garden two nights ago, kneeling in the dirt with her hands full of weeds—trying to see past the gruff and the grunt work.
"You've lost people."
"Yeah."
"Is that why you're like this?" She tilts her head. "Keeping everything at arm's length."
Too close. Red and fire and things I don't talk about.
"We're not doing this."
"Doing what?"
"Trading trauma." I stand up and push back from the table. "I told you what you wanted to know—now we're done."
I cross to the living room. Put distance between us—not outside, can't go outside, but at least across the room.
She doesn't follow.
We don't speak for hours.
I pretend to work on the wiring behind the wall. She sits in the armchair with a book she's not reading, turning pages at random intervals.
Around six, I make myself a sandwich I don't taste. Make one for her too, leave it outside the bedroom door after she disappears inside without a word.
An hour later, it's still there.
I lie on the couch and count the cracks in the ceiling. Lose count. Start over. One long fracture runs corner to corner, splitting the room in half.
Around midnight, I hear her moving. The creak of the bedroom door. The soft pad of bare feet. The scrape of the plate against the floor as she picks it up.
At least she's eating.
I close my eyes. Try to sleep.
All I see is her face when I reached for her. The flinch. The same flinch she'd give one of the men who hurt her.
I'm not. I'm not one of them. But she'd be right to think so, given what just happened.
***
The scream splits the night sometime after two.
I'm at her door before I'm conscious of moving. One second I'm on the couch, the next I'm pushing through into darkness, eyes adjusting to the shadows.
"Eden."
She's thrashing. Sheets tangled around her legs, pinning her to the mattress. Her spine arches, her fingers claw at nothing, and the sounds coming out of her are raw and broken and barely human.
"Please—" The word rips out of her throat. "Please, stop, please—"
"Eden. Wake up."
Nothing. She's trapped somewhere I can't reach. Whatever she's running from in there, I can't fight it for her.
I say her name again. Louder. She doesn't hear me.
Six hours ago, she shoved me away, called me an asshole, and looked at me the way she'd look at one of the men who hurt her.
But she's drowning in there. And I can't just watch.
I sit on the edge of the bed and take her shoulders—gentle but firm.
"Eden. Wake up. You're safe. I've got you."
She comes awake swinging.
Her fist catches my jaw—not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to tell me she's fighting for her life. The second blow aims for my throat, and I catch her wrists before it lands, holding them carefully in my hands.
"Eden. Look at me."
Her eyes are open but not seeing. Pupils blown wide, looking right through me.
"It's Diesel. You're in the cottage. You're in Georgia. You're safe."
She takes a breath—ragged, tearing—then another.
Her eyes find mine. Focus.
"Diesel?"
My name comes out broken.
"I'm here. It was a nightmare."
She stares at me. At my hands around her wrists.
I let go. Fast. The last thing she needs is to wake up restrained.
She looks at the darkness of the room, the sheets tangled around her legs, and then at me.
Then she moves.
Not away. Toward.
Her hands fist in my shirt and she crashes into me—face against my chest, body shaking, fingers white-knuckled in the fabric. I go rigid. Six hours ago she told me exactly what she thought of me.
But she's not pushing me away. She's holding on.
"Do you want me to go?"
Her fingers tighten in my shirt. "No." The word is muffled against my chest. "Please. Don't go."
Everything in me says to leave, to protect us both from whatever this is becoming.
I stay.
Slowly, carefully, I put my arm around her.
She sinks into me. Her head against my chest, her body still trembling, the gasping breaths slowing down.
I don't know how long we sit there. Long enough for the shaking to stop. Long enough for her breathing to steady. Long enough for her to pull back and look at me with swollen eyes and a blotchy face and tears still wet on her cheeks.
Blotchy and wrecked and somehow the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
"I'm sorry," she says. "About what I said. Earlier. Calling you—"
"You weren't wrong."
"I was wrong enough." She wipes her face with the back of her hand. "You're not like them. I knew it when I was saying it. I was just—scared. Angry. Looking for someone to fight."
"I crossed a line. In the living room." I don't look away. "You had every right to push back."
She's quiet for a moment. Then: "Were you going to kiss me?"
I don't answer right away. Can't.
"I don't know." The words come out rougher than I mean them to. "I wasn't thinking. I just wanted to touch you. And that was wrong."
"Why?"
"Why was it wrong?"
"No." Her eyes search my face. "Why did you want to?"
I don't have an answer that won't make this worse.
"Because you were wearing my shirt. Because you've been driving me crazy all day. Because I'm not as good an orc as I'm supposed to be."
She doesn't pull away.
"I'm not asking you to be good," she says quietly. "I'm asking you to be honest."
"I just was."
Something shifts in her face. Not forgiveness. Something rougher.
"You're my asshole now," she says. "So we're stuck with each other."
I don't know what to say to that.
"Yeah," I manage. "I guess we are."
"It was the woods," she says. "The nightmare. It's always the woods now."
"Tell me."
"I ran." Her fingers twist tighter in my shirt. "I heard the gunshots and the voices and I just—I ran. Out the back. Into the trees."
She stops. Swallows.
"I'm running and it's dark and I trip over something. A root, a rock, I don't know, but I'm down. I'm crawling. And it's not enough. The hands—they come out of the dark and they grab and—"
She breaks off. Breathing hard.
I tighten my arm around her and say nothing.
"If Carver hadn't found me, I'd be dead." She looks up at me. "That's why I needed to know. About the texts. The updates. Not because I wanted details. Because the not-knowing—"
Her voice cracks.
"The not-knowing is worse than any truth you could tell me."
Her breath shudders against my chest. I hold her and don't move, don't speak.
"Does it get better?" she asks. "This. The—" She gestures vaguely at her own head. "Does it stop?"
"Yeah." I don't soften it or dress it up. "It gets better—not gone, but better."
"How do you know?"
"Because I've been there." I look at her. "What you're feeling—that's trauma. It's not weakness. It's not permanent. But it takes time."
She's quiet.
"You're not broken, Eden. You're surviving."
Her fingers loosen in my shirt, not letting go but just easing.
"You sound like you know what you're talking about."
"I do."
She doesn't push, doesn't ask what happened to me, where I learned this, whose face I see when I close my eyes.
I start to stand.
Her hand catches my wrist and pulls me back down.
"Will you stay?" she asks. "Until I fall asleep."
Everything in me screams no. She's a witness under my protection, vulnerable and traumatized, and the last thing she needs is me in her bed.
"Okay."
She scoots over. I lower myself onto the mattress, staying on top of the covers.
Boundaries. There have to be boundaries.
"You can lie down," she says quietly. "I'm not going to break."
"I'm fine like this."
"You're going to fall off."
"I'm fine."
She makes a sound that could be a laugh or a sigh. "Diesel. Please. Be normal for five minutes. Lie down."
"I'm not normal."
"I've noticed." It's definitely a laugh this time—watery, exhausted, but real. "Lie down anyway."
I last about three seconds before I cave.
I kick off my boots. Swing my legs onto the bed. Lower myself down beside her, still on top of the covers, but at least horizontal now.
The mattress dips under my weight. She rolls toward me—not touching, but close. Her warmth reaches me. Her scent fills my lungs.
Her hand finds mine in the dark.
"Stay," she breathes. Half-asleep already, the word barely a whisper.
"Not going anywhere."
Her breathing slows, evening out and drifting.
"Ravgor."
The name comes out before I can stop it. She stirs against me.
"What?"
"My name." I stare at the ceiling. "The real one. Ravgor. It means fire-touched. Marked by flame." I swallow. "My people were iron binders. Metalworkers. The name goes back generations."
She's quiet for so long I think she's fallen asleep.
"Ravgor," she murmurs, testing it. Something twists in my chest. "Why are you telling me?"
I don't have an answer.
"Go to sleep, Eden."
Her fingers tighten around mine, then loosen. Her breathing deepens, and I feel the moment she slips under.
I gave her my name. The real one. The one I've never told another human.
I don't know what that means.
I don't know if I want to.