Chapter Thirty-Six #3
Sterling leans against the counter with his own mug, watching without actually staring. “Are you going to critique the seasoning? Or just inhale it and pretend you weren’t starving?”
“Don’t rush my reunion with carbs,” I say around another bite. “We have history.”
The eggs go down a little more slowly, my stomach does a warning roll, then settles.
The apple is a bridge too far—the smell alone makes my throat tighten.
I push the slices to the edge of the plate and hope no one notices.
Cam notices. But he doesn’t comment, just slides a glass of water into the apple’s place.
“You’re off,” he says quietly. Not accusing. Just… marking it.
“Join the club,” I say. “We should get jackets.”
Cam lets it go, for now, going back to the notebook, pen scratching.
Sterling rinses his mug and sets it upside down on the rack with a little more force than necessary.
The normalcy of it is surreal. Four people in a cabin: one reading, one doing dishes, one pretending toast fixes existential dread, and one probably tending to the children—if we don’t count all the children and the two hostages we have.
Eventually, the plate is empty enough that Cam can’t justify hovering anymore.
He glances at the ancient, loud clock and sighs.
“We’ll dig into this more tomorrow,” he says, tapping the notebook.
“Right now, you both need sleep if I want useful answers out of you.”
“You say that like we’re harder to handle when we’re tired,” I say.
“You’re always hard to handle,” Cam says. “You’re just less entertaining when you’re half-dead.”
Sterling snorts. “Go to bed, Ki,” he says. “I’ll take first watch on our resident mad scientist.”
Cam flips him off, “If I’m mad, it’s because of you three.”
I push my chair back carefully. The room holds steady. The S on my hip aches in time with the rest of me. “Wake me if the notebook starts talking,” I say.
“If the notebook starts talking, I’m setting the whole place on fire,” Cam says.
“Fair,” I say, and head for the short hall.
The room is small—all shadows and familiar mess.
The bed looks like heaven and a trap at the same time.
I toe off my boots, peel out of my jeans with a hiss when the denim drags over the mark.
The sight of it in the low light—angry, swollen, his—is almost enough to knock the air out of me again.
I pull on softer shorts and one of Sterling’s older shirts, which I borrowed and never gave back.
It smells like detergent and faint metal, like him.
My body recognizes it and unwinds a fraction.
I sit on the edge of the bed and listen.
Murmured voices through the wall—Cam’s cadence when he gets excited about data, Sterling’s lower replies cutting in.
The occasional scrape of a chair, the tick of that loud clock, the steady percussion of the rain.
I lie back, just long enough for the mattress to remember my shape. Stare at the ceiling. Count heartbeats.
You can still change your mind, a small, sensible voice says. You can stay. You can pretend this is just stress until it proves you wrong.
Another voice—the one that dragged me through Ward C and into a ruined chapel to carve and be carved—says, You hate not knowing. It’s right. I do.
I roll onto my side and reach under the pillow. The burner is where I stashed it, cool and weightless. Dr. L’s last words echo: come if you’re near, back door, no questions. “Okay,” I whisper to the empty room. “Fine.”
Sterling’s keys are tossed on the dresser from earlier when he came in to drop my gear. I cross the room, every bruise complaining, finding them exactly where he left them. They clink dully against the wood as I pick them up. The door would mean explanations, the window means none of that.
The frame sticks a little from the rain, warping the old wood.
I work it up an inch at a time until the night can breathe in—cold, damp, smelling of pine and wet dirt.
Gritting my teeth, I swing one leg over the sill, then the other.
It’s not a long drop, but my ribs and hip protest anyway as I ease myself down.
Gravel bites my bare feet. I hiss under my breath, yanking on my boots fast and shoving the laces inside.
From here, the cabin looks almost peaceful. Warm light spills from the main room windows onto the slick porch boards. Their voices are just a low murmur through the wall—Cam’s quicker cadence, Sterling’s slower replies—blurred into background noise by the rain. They don’t realize I’m missing yet.
I keep low, staying in the trees’ shadows.
The truck waits just beyond the reach of the porch light.
At the driver’s door, I pause. This is the line.
If it’s nothing, I come back with a stupid story and a private sigh of relief.
If it’s not, I want to hear it in a kitchen that smells like lemon cleaner, from a woman who doesn’t own a clearance badge.
Unlocking the truck and sliding in, pulling the door shut with a careful, muffled click.
The keys feel heavier than they should when I slot them into the ignition.
The engine coughs once, twice, then catches—a low growl swallowed quickly by the trees.
I leave the headlights off and let it roll, tires whispering over wet gravel until the cabin is hidden behind the first bend.
Only then do I flip the lights on, the road to town spilling out in front of me—slick and narrow and unavoidable.
A new dread settles under my ribs, right alongside the ache of my name on his skin. I drive anyway.