Chapter 2
SAWYER
The first thing I noticed was that the ceiling was wrong.
My ceiling was wood. Dark, rough-hewn planks I’d installed myself three winters ago when the old drywall had started to crack. I knew every knot, every grain, every imperfection. I could trace them with my eyes closed.
This ceiling was white. Smooth. There was a crack in the far corner that looked like a river on a map, and someone had hung a small paper lantern over the light fixture, the kind you’d buy at one of those craft stores in town.
This was not my ceiling. Which meant this was not my house.
I sat up too fast. The world tilted sideways, and my skull split open from the inside, or at least that’s what it felt like. Pain hammered behind my eyes, thick and relentless, and my stomach rolled with the kind of nausea that made you reconsider every choice that had led to this moment.
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes and breathed. In. Out. In. Out. The room smelled like lavender and something else. Vanilla, maybe. Something warm and clean that had no business being anywhere near me.
I dropped my hands and looked around.
Small room. Twin bed, which explained why my feet were hanging off the end.
Nightstand with a glass of water and two white pills.
A bookshelf in the corner crammed with paperbacks, their spines cracked and worn.
A window with yellow curtains pulled shut, thin enough to let the morning light through in a golden haze.
The glass of water sat there, patient as a saint. I stared at it like it might explain how I’d gotten here. It didn’t.
What I could piece together was this: Josh’s birthday.
The bar. Rounds of whiskey that I shouldn’t have said yes to but did because it was easier than explaining why I didn’t feel like celebrating.
The way the noise had gotten louder and louder until I couldn’t hear myself think, which had been the whole point, until even the noise wasn’t enough and everything I’d been trying to drown had come flooding back in.
After that, nothing. A black wall where memory should have been.
I looked down. I was still in yesterday’s flannel shirt, wrinkled and smelling like a bar floor.
My boots were sitting neatly by the door, lined up side by side like someone had placed them there carefully.
Someone had taken off my boots. Someone had covered me with a blanket that had small embroidered flowers along the edge.
My jaw tightened.
The door was open a crack. I could hear sounds from somewhere beyond it. A kettle. Footsteps. Humming. Someone was humming, soft and low, a melody I didn’t recognize.
I grabbed the pills, swallowed them dry, then drained the water in three long gulps. My head screamed in protest at the movement. I ignored it and swung my legs off the bed, my socked feet hitting a worn rug.
The hallway was short. Five steps and I was standing at the edge of a living room that opened into a kitchen so small you could probably touch both walls if you stretched your arms out.
The couch had more throw pillows than any piece of furniture needed, and there were string lights, actual string lights, draped over a bookshelf.
The whole place looked like something out of a magazine for people who found joy in small things.
She was standing at the stove with her back to me.
She was shorter than I expected, though I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting.
Her hair was pulled up in a messy knot on top of her head, dark blonde with streaks that caught the light from the window.
She was wearing an oversized sweater that hung off one shoulder and a pair of socks with what appeared to be cartoon cats on them.
She was stirring something in a pot, still humming, completely unaware that I was standing there.
I cleared my throat.
She turned, and her face broke into a smile so immediate and so bright that it actually made my headache worse. Nobody should be capable of that kind of wattage before eight in the morning.
“You’re awake,” she said, like this was wonderful news. Like finding a strange man conscious in her guest room was the highlight of her day. “Good. I was starting to think I’d have to bring in reinforcements. Have some soup.”
She turned back to the stove and ladled something into a bowl, moving with the easy efficiency of someone who was used to feeding people. When she turned back, she held the bowl out to me with both hands, still smiling.
I didn’t take it.
“Why am I here?” My voice came out like gravel. Raw and rough, scraped clean by whatever I’d been doing to it last night. “What did you do to me?”
The smile dimmed. Not all the way, but enough that I could see the shift, the slight tightening around her eyes, the way her chin lifted just a fraction.
“Well, good morning to you too,” she said.
She set the bowl on the small table between us with a careful, deliberate motion.
“And to answer your questions: you’re here because I found you passed out on a sidewalk in forty-degree weather with no jacket.
What I did to you was drag your very large, very heavy, very unconscious body to my car, drive you here, take off your boots, give you a blanket, and leave water and aspirin by your bed. So, you’re welcome.”
The words hit like small, precise stones. Each one landing exactly where she aimed it.
I stared at her. She stared back. Her eyes were blue, the kind of blue that made you think of summer skies over the mountains, and right now they were steady and unflinching, daring me to say something stupid.
I was good at saying something stupid.
“I didn’t ask for your help.”
“No,” she agreed. “You asked for Jimmy.”
The name went through me like a blade.
Everything locked down. My chest, my throat, my expression. Years of practice kicked in, the automatic shutdown that happened whenever someone got too close to the thing I kept buried. My face went flat. My hands curled into fists at my sides.
She noticed. I could tell by the way her eyes flickered down to my hands and back up. But she didn’t flinch. Didn’t step back. Just stood there in her cat socks and her oversized sweater, holding her ground.
“Calm down,” she said, and her voice had gentled, not in a pitying way, but in the way you’d talk to something cornered and hurting.
“I’m not a pervert or something you might think.
I just helped you because you were too drunk and crying, and I wasn’t going to leave you there to freeze. That’s it. That’s the whole story.”
Crying.
The word landed in my gut like a fist. I had been crying. On a sidewalk. In public. In front of this woman, this stranger with her string lights and her cat socks, I had broken down like a child and called out for my dead brother.
The shame was instant, total, and suffocating. It rose up my throat and sat there, thick and hot, and I wanted to put my fist through the nearest wall.
I turned toward the door.
“Where are you going?” she asked from behind me.
“Home.”
“Without eating? Without even sitting down? You look like you’re about to pass out again, and I really don’t want to carry you a second time. My back is still recovering from the first.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re hungover, you’re dehydrated, and you’re about to walk out into the cold in a flannel shirt with no jacket because your pride is bigger than your common sense.”
I reached for the door handle.
Her hand closed around my arm. Not hard, not aggressive. Just enough to stop me. Her fingers were small against my forearm, and the contact sent something jolting through me that I immediately buried.
“Sit down,” she said. Her voice had shifted again, firmer now, with an edge that reminded me of a teacher dealing with a stubborn kid.
“Eat the soup. Take the medicine. If you don’t know how to give gratitude, don’t disrespect me at least. I didn’t have to help you.
I chose to. The least you can do is not be a jerk about it. ”
The words hung between us.
I looked down at her hand on my arm. Then up at her face. She was serious. Dead serious. And underneath the firmness, underneath the stubbornness that practically radiated off her, there was something else. Something that looked a lot like the kind of decency that doesn’t expect anything back.
The guilt came then, quieter than the shame but more persistent. She’d found me at my lowest and instead of walking past, she’d hauled me into her home, taken off my boots, left me water, and made me soup. And my first instinct had been to bark at her and walk out.
I let go of the door handle.
Without a word, I walked to the table and sat down. The chair was small, meant for someone half my size, and my knees bumped the underside of the table. I picked up the spoon and ate.
The soup was good. Chicken and vegetables with some kind of herb I couldn’t name.
It was hot and simple and it settled my stomach in a way the aspirin alone couldn’t have.
I ate without looking at her, focused on the bowl, but I could feel her watching me from where she’d moved to lean against the kitchen counter.
“So,” she said after I’d eaten about half the bowl. “What happened last night?”
I kept my eyes on the soup. “Friend’s birthday party. I don’t know what happened after that.”
“You were outside Murphy’s. On the sidewalk.”
“Like I said. I don’t know what happened.”
A pause. Then, softer: “You were talking in your sleep. Or, well, your unconscious state. About someone named Jimmy.”
My spoon stopped. I set it down carefully, precisely, like the act of placing it on the table required all of my concentration. “That’s not your business.”
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s not.”