Chapter 12
Marin
I don’t have time for this.
Not the gash in my shin, not my rapidly swelling ankle, not the step, and definitely not Charles, slumped over like he’s on vacation instead of heavily sedated in the trailer I bought on Facebook Marketplace. Impulse purchase, cash only. The kind of deal you don’t get a receipt for.
I limp across the gravel, cursing the way the sun has the nerve to be cheerful. I unbolt the trailer and fling the door open.
“Rise and shine, asshole.”
Charles doesn’t move, just drools on himself like a warning label. The drugs are still doing their job, which is good, because I need to do mine.
Dragging a full-grown man with one working ankle and no backup plan wasn’t in the brochure, but here we are.
I get my arms under him and start pulling. Every few feet I pause, catch my breath, and check over my shoulder, certain someone is watching from behind a curtain. I wave once, just in case. Might as well make it look domestic.
“This is what devotion looks like,” I say through gritted teeth, hauling him up the porch steps, across the threshold, and to the top of the basement stairs. The house echoes like it’s judging me.
He groans when I hit the first basement step. His head lolls to the side.
“I’m still never going to marry you,” he slurs.
I sigh. We have further to go than I thought.
There’s a pause where the polite version of me would try to process that. But she’s been gone a while now.
Instead, I make it halfway down the stairs and I let go.
He thuds hard on the first few steps, rolls awkwardly toward the bottom, head first. He hits the wall and just sort of tumbles the rest of the way down like laundry, before landing in a heap that says staying put.
It’s solid, final—but not fatal.
I watch the dust settle. He’s breathing. He won’t be going anywhere.
I brush off my hands.
Two birds. One stone.
That’s when I hear a car coming down the road.
“Congratulations, Marin,” I tell myself. “You’ve been here an hour and you’ve already personally invited witnesses. Great work.”
I roll my shoulders then grab a towel and ice from the freezer, limp outside, and lower myself onto the porch just in time to hear the rumble of a truck turning onto the gravel drive.
Perfect timing.
I hold the ice to my ankle, smile like I haven’t just committed a low-grade felony, and wait.
He parks in the driveway this time. Climbs out slower, like he’s decided there’s no rush—he knew I’d call. Of course he did. He seems like the type to know exactly how long things take to fall apart.
He comes up the walk with his toolbox in one hand and that same steady gait, like nothing in the world surprises him anymore. He looks at me, at my ankle, at the step.
“Hi,” I say, because I don’t know what else to do.
“Damn,” he says. “Probably need an x-ray for that.”
He sets the toolbox down and kneels to inspect the board, fingers pressing into the crack like a doctor checking a pulse. His hands are big, capable, nicked in a few places with old scars.
He could fix this house.
He could take it apart.
He could do the same to a person.
I watch him work—the easy competence in the way he measures, marks, moves—and something under my ribs shifts uneasily.
I always said I’d never be the woman who needed saving.
And yet, here I am.
But at least Charles will be proud. Not right now, of course.
It pains me to think of him, groaning and rolling around down there in the dark. If Luke thinks I need an x-ray for a tiny sprain, he should see the other guy.
Still, I hope in time Charles will see how everything I did—everything I’ve done—has been for him. For us.
For now, I sit on the porch and let the handyman replace the stairs, the smell of fresh-cut wood curling up around us like some kind of promise neither of us has any business making.