Chapter 11
eleven
“Evander?”
He came around fast, the cigarette dropping from his fingers, and for a second neither of them moved.
She’d walked in on a lot of things in her life. Men and women both doing worse to themselves than this. It was one of the downfalls of living on the road. You see all of the fucked up shit people do to themselves when they are sad or lonely or desperate.
He didn’t make a move to cover his arm, or pretend he hadn’t been sitting out here in the dark burning himself.
She stood in the doorway, rain running off her hair, and stared at his arm. There were so many scars, old and new.
Then she looked at him. “Why?”
His jaw worked. “Go back inside, Rainey.”
“No.”
She stepped into the shed. The door was narrow, and her shoulder brushed the wood as she passed. Tilly stayed put in the mud outside, rain dripping off her blocky skull, dark eyes fixed on her person.
Rainey stepped inside. The shed felt smaller with both of them in it. “You’ve been doing this the whole time, haven’t you?”
He scowled, but said nothing.
“Sleeping on the floor. Digging trenches in the rain. Eating standing up. Always pushing yourself past your breaking point. And now this.” She reached for the cigarette and stabbed it out on the workbench before taking his arm in both hands and studying the burns he’d given himself.
“You’re punishing yourself. Over and over again. Why?”
Still nothing.
“Is it because you let yourself want something?”
He didn’t answer. But he didn’t have to.
She could see it in the rigid set of his shoulders, in the way his free hand had curled into a fist at his side. She’d hit the truth dead center.
“It was the kiss,” she said. “You kissed me, and you wanted it, and that scared you more than the Sons of Sin ever could.”
His arm was warm under her fingers. The new burns stood out red and raw against the pale constellations of old scars, and she hated them.
Not because they disgusted her—she’d seen worse, lived through worse—but because each one was a record of a moment like this one.
A moment when he’d let himself feel something good and then punished himself for it.
“Rainey.” Her name came out like gravel. “Stop.”
“No.” She kept her grip on his arm, light enough not to hurt, firm enough that he couldn’t pull away without making it a thing. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you didn’t come out here because kissing me made you feel something you didn’t think you deserved.”
His breath left him in a rush. She felt it against the top of her head, warm and uneven, and she realized how close they were standing.
The shed was small, the lantern light throwing shadows up the walls, and the rain was a constant roar on the tin roof.
It felt like the whole world had shrunk to this tiny space.
“I came out here because I needed to think,” he said.
“Bullshit.” She said it softly, but the word cut anyway. “You came out here to hurt yourself. Same way you’ve been hurting yourself since I got here. Maybe since long before that.”
He looked away. The lantern caught the line of his throat, the scar along his jaw she hadn’t asked about yet. She wanted to touch it. She wanted to touch all of him, every broken piece, and make him understand that she wasn’t afraid.
“You think you’re protecting me,” she said. “By pushing me away. By punishing yourself for wanting me. But all you’re doing is proving that you think I’m too fragile to handle the truth.”
His gaze snapped back to hers. “That’s not—”
“Then tell me the truth.” She released his arm, but she didn’t step back. If anything, she moved closer, close enough that her chest nearly brushed his. Close enough that she had to tip her head back to hold his eyes.
“Tell me,” she said again.
Evander’s throat worked. He looked at the cigarette stubbed out on the workbench, at the lantern, at anything but her. Then his shoulders dropped, barely, a fraction of an inch that spoke of a man who’d been holding himself upright for too long.
“I was a Recon Marine,” he said. “Scout sniper. Six-man element, long-range surveillance, overwatch. We found a high-value target in the Korengal. Command ordered us to break contact, exfiltrate. Enemy reinforcements moving in. Air support unavailable. Possible compromise.”
His voice had gone flat, the same register he’d used describing mountain lion tracks. Rainey kept her grip on his arm, light, grounding.
“I disagreed.” He paused. “From the ground, the target looked like he was preparing to disappear. I believed command was working with delayed intel. I believed I saw something they couldn’t.”
Rainey heard it coming, the weight in the spaces between his words.
“My spotter asked if I was sure.” Evander’s jaw tightened. “Nate Holloway. Closest friend I had. I told him yes—”
The rain hammered the tin roof, relentless, filling the silence he left when he broke off.
“What happened?”
“I was positioned outside the primary kill zone. Elevated overwatch.” He said it like he was reading from a report, but his hand had curled into a fist again, the knuckles white.
“They were funneled into a kill zone while I watched. Communications disrupted almost immediately. I engaged. Tried to reach them. Continued fighting after ordered to withdraw. Couldn’t get to them. ”
Rainey’s breath came shallow. She thought of the five skulls on his chest, the names beneath them. She thought of a man watching his friends die through a rifle scope, close enough to see but too far away to save.
“By the time support reached the area, they were dead.” Evander finally looked at her, and his eyes were empty and full at once, a contradiction that made her chest ache.
“Nate. Cooper. Rory. Caleb. Dez. All of them. Because I was sure. Because I trusted my own judgment over the order that would have saved them.”
“You made one terrible decision,” she said softly. “And you decided you never get to want anything again? You don’t get to kiss anyone? You don’t get to wake up in the morning and not hate yourself for still being alive?”
His brows drew together. “That’s not—”
“Isn’t it?” She released his arm but didn’t retreat, her body still angled into his space, close enough to feel the heat coming off him despite the shed’s chill.
“You made a mistake. A catastrophic one. You were overconfident, you stopped listening, and people died. I won’t pretend that’s small, Evander.
I won’t pretend you can just forgive yourself and move on.
But you’ve turned one failure into a life sentence.
Every good thing that happens, you punish yourself for.
Every time you start to feel something, you come out here and remind yourself what happens when you forget.
That’s not accountability. That’s annihilation. ”
“Accountability would mean what?” His voice had gone rough, the flatness cracking. “Pretending it didn’t happen? Letting myself believe I’m safe to be around?”
“Accountability would mean learning the right lesson!” She hadn’t meant to raise her voice, but the shed was small, and the rain was loud, and she was tired of watching him disappear into himself.
“The lesson isn’t that you’re poison, Evander.
The lesson is that certainty isn’t leadership.
That you were wrong once and it cost everything.
That doesn’t mean you’re wrong about everything forever. ”
“It wasn’t only once.” He turned away. “I almost killed your brother, too.”
Rainey went still. “What?” she breathed. “How?”
“My second day at the ranch, there was a fallen pine blocking an access road. I rigged a winch system to move it. River asked if I was sure it would hold.” He laughed, but it was dark and bitter.
“Same question Nate asked me. Same answer. I checked the rig twice. Told him yes. Then the chain snapped.”
He stopped. His hand had gone to his left forearm, fingers tracing the old burns without seeming to notice.
“River was unconscious when I left. Dislocated shoulder, cracked ribs, deep leg wound. I heard him screaming before the pain meds took hold. I packed what I could carry and left before dawn. I couldn’t face the idea that I’d done it again.”
Rainey stared at him. The shed seemed to tilt, the lantern flame dancing in her peripheral vision.
She thought of River, her wild, manic brother who’d spent nine years not calling her, and knew without a doubt the accident wasn’t one hundred percent Evander’s fault. River was reckless. Always had been.
But she also knew Evander wouldn’t listen if she told him that, so she settled on, “It was an accident.”
He shook his head. “Every time I start believing my judgment might be safe, I need something to remind me. Before someone else pays for my confidence.”
“So you burn yourself.”
“Yeah.” His fingers still traced the old scars, automatic, unconscious.
Rainey reached out and took his hand. His fingers were cold, stiff, and he resisted at first, a slight tug-o-war that she didn’t let him win. She turned his palm up and traced the older, silvered circles with her thumb.
“Come back inside,” she said.
“Rainey—”
“Evander. Come inside. Let me clean this.” She didn’t wait for agreement.
She pulled him toward the door, and after a beat of resistance he followed.
Tilly stood as they emerged, rain still falling in steady sheets, her dark coat gleaming.
The dog fell in beside them without a sound, and the three of them crossed the muddy clearing to the cabin’s yellow glow.
Inside, the woodstove had burned low. Rainey added two logs, working the damper until the fire caught and threw heat again. Evander stood near the door, dripping, his eyes tracking her movements with that wary alertness that never fully left him.
“Jacket off,” she said. “Shirt too. I need to see what you did.”
He hesitated.
She waited him out, arms crossed.