Chapter 6 #2
She felt the disruption before she understood what it meant. The generator was cycling. The propane heater was fighting the outside cold, fighting the wind, fighting the historic blizzard that was still trying to break through the walls.
She broke the kiss and pulled back enough to look at me.
The lights flickered again.
“Knox—”
“I’m not going to do this with you in the cold.”
“It’s not cold.”
“The power is failing. The apartment is dropping. You’re going to get sick.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
I stepped back. I moved away from her slowly, the way you move when what you want is to stay exactly where you are and what you need to do is something else entirely. I walked to the bedroom. I pulled the blanket from the foot of the bed. I came back and held it out to her.
In the lantern light her face was flushed and her lips were swollen and her eyes were the eyes of someone who had just been kissed and was not done being kissed.
I said, “Sleep on the bed. I’ll take the couch.”
She looked at the blanket. She looked at me. She looked at the doorway to the bedroom like it was a test she might fail.
I said, “Go. Please.”
She took the blanket.
She said, “This is not over.”
“I know.”
“When the storm—”
“When the power comes back. When your house is warm. When I can do this right. Then we finish.”
She looked at me for one long beat. Then she went.
I heard her moving around in the bedroom for twenty minutes.
I heard the bed creak when she sat on it. I heard her pull the blanket up. I heard her breathing slow from the rhythm of someone who was awake and aware to the shallow rhythm of someone who was awake but pretending not to be.
I lay on the couch that was too small for me and stared at the ceiling.
The wind rattled the windows. The generator hummed its steady work.
The propane heater continued pushing warmth into a space that wanted to freeze.
I did not sleep. I counted instead. I counted the seconds my hand had been on her back.
I counted the number of times her breath had changed.
I counted the ways this was going to complicate everything.
I had kissed Maple Sutton against the doorframe. I had put my hand on her in a way that made it clear the hand was not casual. I had let her believe, for minutes, that something was going to happen in this apartment, on this night, in the dark.
Then I had stopped.
I had stopped because the power was failing.
Because three days of shared space was not the same thing as the foundation I needed for something like this.
Because I was a man who had learned, in the thirteen years since my brother died, that you did not get to have the thing you wanted and the thing you needed to do at the same time.
I got to choose.
I chose her. I chose safety over want. Comfort over the memory of her hands in my hair. Peace of mind over the way she had said my name like it was the only word she knew. I chose the couch that was too small for me. I chose the watching and waiting.
At three in the morning, the generator died.
I heard the sound of the cycle winding down immediately. The hum that had been constant — the background rhythm of the apartment — suddenly stopped. Silence filled the space. Silence that was almost louder than the sound had been.
I sat up on the couch. My body knew before my mind caught up. The temperature in the room had already started to drop. The propane heater was cycling down. The cold from outside the windows was going to start pressing in now, looking for cracks.
I walked to the office where the generator was sitting and I looked at the fuel gauge and understood that I had calculated wrong. That nineteen hours instead of twenty-four had been the real limit. That the storm was consuming fuel the way it consumed heat, the way it consumed everything.
I did not wake her. I did not want her to wake up cold, to wake up afraid, to understand that the only thing between her and the freezing was running out.
I refueled the generator from the jerrycan I had bought in a moment of clarity that was looking better and better with every passing hour.
I twisted the cap off. The smell of gasoline filled the small office.
My hands were steady even though they were not cold anymore. Fear and adrenaline kept them warm.
I poured the fuel in. I started the generator again. The lights came back. The heater continued its work. The hum returned.
I stood in the office doorway for a long minute and watched the bedroom door and did not go in.
I could go in. I could justify it — checking that she was warm, making sure the heater in the bedroom was still running.
But I knew what would happen if I went in.
She would wake. She would reach for me. I would not be able to stop again.
I went back and sat in the armchair by the window instead.
At three-thirty, I went and sat in the armchair by the window and watched the snow.
The snow was coming harder now. The wind was pushing it sideways. The drifts against the house were getting taller. I could see them accumulating in real time, rising, covering everything that wasn’t actively fighting back.
I waited for whatever happened next. I waited for her to wake up. I waited for the apartment to warm up. I waited for the generator fuel to tell me whether nineteen hours was really all I had. I waited for my body to stop aching like she was still against me.
At four, the wind picked up.
It was the kind of wind that you could hear negotiating with the house. Trying the windows. Testing the roof. Probing for weaknesses.
At five, I understood we had two days left at minimum. The blizzard was coming harder than the forecast. The system was stalling. It was not moving through. It was settling in. It was going to stay.
Part of me — the part that was still capable of thinking like a man instead of like a problem that needed solving — understood that this was the thing I had been unconsciously hoping for. More time. More hours in this apartment with her. More chances to prove that I could stop.
At six, the sun tried to rise but could not quite make it through the clouds. The world stayed dark. The apartment stayed in the small circle of warmth that the heater and the lantern made.
I sat in the armchair and counted the time. I counted the minutes since she had gone to the bedroom. I counted the minutes since I had kissed her. I counted the minutes I could hear her breathing, shallow and even, behind the closed door.
I did not allow myself to move until her breathing told me she was awake. Until I heard the shift in sound that meant sleep was leaving her. Until I could pretend that getting up to make coffee was just something a person did, not something a person did to avoid touching the woman in the next room.
I did not allow myself to think about what was going to happen when the power came back. When her house was warm again. When the blizzard passed and she could leave and the particular closeness I had created could no longer be justified by weather and necessity.
I sat in the armchair and I waited. And I kept the generator running. And I kept the apartment warm.
And I did not go back to the bedroom, even though I had kissed her three feet away from that bed, even though I knew exactly where she was lying, even though my body was telling me every second that I was a fool for stopping.
My body was not in charge here. My body had made enough decisions. My body had already destroyed enough.
I stayed on the couch. I stayed in the living room. I stayed exactly where I had put myself, which was the place that was supposed to keep her safe. Even from me. Especially from me.