16. Cara
Cara
Iwake sometime after three with the memory of Falcon's arms still sitting warm against my skin, even though I'm alone in the temporary room, with two blankets pulled up while the compound sleeps around me.
I can still feel the weight of his hands at my waist. The way he waited for permission before he touched me and let go the second I moved without holding on an extra beat.
That shouldn't feel as significant as it does. It does anyway.
I lie there a while listening, there’s the occasional sound of somebody crossing the hallway downstairs, a door, boots, a bike starting near the garage and cutting out again.
A week ago, every one of those sounds would've had me checking exits. Tonight I stay where I am. I’m not fully relaxed, that's still too ambitious a word, but it’s close enough to something like it.
My phone's charging on the nightstand. I check the security channel and there's nothing new since two forty-five.
Security Phone:
Perimeter clear. Patrol rotation complete. No further movement outside north line.
Good. There's that word again. Apparently I'm as repetitive as the men now.
I can't fall asleep, and Falcon's part of the reason, but not the only one.
The men in the woods, Maggie's house, Kells, the whole network we still don't fully understand.
Every time the club uncovers another piece I have to remind myself learning the truth doesn't mean the threat's getting bigger.
It means we're finally seeing what was already there.
That's not always comforting, but it's better than not knowing.
A soft knock sounds at my door. I sit up. "Who is it?"
"Emily."
I'm out of bed before I've had chance to think about it. She steps in slowly once I tell her to come in, she’s wearing pajama bottoms and an oversized hoodie, and she absolutely should not have been discharged this morning judging by how she moves.
"You're supposed to be sleeping," I say.
"So are you," she says, rubbing her eyes.
"That's different."
"Why?"
"I wasn't shot."
Emily glances down at herself. “I keep forgetting until people remind me.”
I move aside to let her sit, then wait until she’s comfortable before taking the seat beside her. She looks better than she did in the hospital, but she’s pale and tired.
She’s alive, though. That word hits me differently every time it crosses my mind.
“How’s the room?” I ask.
“Fine,” she says.
“Fine as in good, or fine as in boring?”
“Fine as in boring.”
“Excellent.”
Emily smiles. “The transition house was nicer.”
“You only saw it for twenty minutes,” I remind her.
“It was still nicer,” she insists.
Zip took her over this afternoon with Sarah and Frankie. I didn't go, because I didn't want to influence a decision that's hers to make, and she liked it enough to want another night here before deciding whether to move.
“What did you think of Maggie?” I ask.
“She swears a lot,” Emily says.
“Yes, she does.”
“I like her.”
“Everybody likes Maggie,” I tell her.
“Knox doesn’t,” Emily says casually.
I blink at her. “What?”
“Exactly.” She looks entirely too pleased with herself.
I narrow my eyes. “You’ve been spending too much time with Zip.”
“Probably,” she admits.
I shake my head. “Why are you awake?”
Emily shrugs carefully. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Nightmare?” I ask.
“No.”
I study her face. “Pain?”
“Some,” Emily admits.
I wait because there’s clearly more she wants to say. Eventually, she looks at me directly.
“I heard about the men last night.”
“Oh.”
“Sarah told me Falcon didn’t chase them.”
“No, he didn’t,” I confirm.
Emily watches my face. “That mattered to you.”
“Yes,” I admit. “It did.”
“He stayed.”
“He never left.”
“You know what I mean,” she says.
I do.
“He stayed at the fence,” I say quietly.
“And you hugged him.”
I close my eyes. “How does everyone know that?”
“Zip,” Emily answers.
I open my eyes again. “That man is a plague.”
She laughs, then presses a hand carefully against her side.
I point at her. “See? This is exactly why you should be asleep.”
“Don’t be funny, then,” she complains. “It hurts.”
“I wasn’t being funny.”
Emily grimaces. “That’s worse.”
She adjusts the pillow behind her back, and for a minute neither of us says anything.
"You want him back, don't you," she says.
"That's incredibly direct for three in the morning."
"You didn't say no," she says.
"No."
Her eyebrows lift. "Cara."
"I don't know." I don’t want to talk about this at three o’clock in the morning.
"That's not the same answer."
I pull my knees up under the blanket. "I want him. I can't deny that anymore." The admission feels less frightening than it did even a few days ago. "I love him."
"I know."
"Apparently everybody does." I shake my head.
"Yes, they do." She smiles at me.
"That's annoying."
"Very."
I look toward the window. "I also don't know if loving him is enough."
She's quiet, letting me get there without being pushed, and it occurs to me that's exactly what I've spent weeks trying to teach her, and here she is doing it back to me.
“I used to think it was,” I say. “Before everything happened, I believed that if two people loved each other enough, the rest would sort itself out.”
“That sounds optimistic,” Emily says.
“I was younger.”
She raises an eyebrow. “You were twenty-eight, not twelve.”
“Thank you for pointing that out.”
“You’re welcome,” she says sweetly.
I try not to smile and don’t quite manage it.
"Love didn't protect me," I say. "Falcon couldn't protect me. I spent years confusing those two things. I thought if he loved me enough he should've found me, and when he didn't, there had to be something wrong with the love itself."
"That isn't fair."
"No, but it made sense at the time."
She nods. "So, what do you need from him now?"
There's the question again, and I keep avoiding it, which is probably why it keeps getting asked.
"I need him to want to come home to me," I say.
"I don't need him to stop being dangerous.
I don't even need him to stop going toward danger when his job requires it.
I need to know that when he has a choice, he doesn't automatically pick the option where he's the one who gets hurt instead of somebody else. "
"Because that means he thinks he's worth less."
"Yes. Exactly that. And if he believes that, every time something goes wrong I'm going to be waiting for the day he decides protecting me means not coming back."
Emily picks at a loose thread on the blanket.
"He came back last night," she says.
"He never left.”
“You know what I mean," she adds, before I can say it. "He stayed at the fence."
"Tonight," she says.
"What about it?"
"If someone comes back." She hesitates.
My chest tightens. "I don't know."
"That's the part you hate."
"Yes."
She gives me a small smile. "You told me I didn't have to know what happens next."
"When?" I don’t remember that.
"When I was deciding where to live."
"That was different."
"Why?"
Because it was easier when I was the one handing out the advice. She sees it on my face before I say anything.
"Thought so," she says.
"You're very annoying since you got shot."
"I was annoying before that too."
"True."
Her expression softens. "You don't have to decide whether you trust him forever. You can decide whether you trust what he does today."
Frankie would be proud. I hate that too.
"Last night I did," I say, thinking of the porch, his hands, the fence.
"So that's something."
"Yes."
"It doesn't fix what happened." She’s smart.
"No."
"It doesn't have to," she says, and there's that idea again, building something instead of repairing what's already gone. Falcon said almost the same thing, standing in the same yard, not that many hours ago.
A light comes on outside the window. We both look, and Emily stiffens.
"Security update?" she asks.
I check. Nothing new.
"Probably the patrol rotation."
"Can we see?"
We move to the window, not close enough to press against the glass, but close enough to check. A man crosses the far side of the yard, and I recognize the walk before the phone even confirms it.
Security Phone:
Night patrol change. Sterling on temporary rooms. Zip on east perimeter.
Emily reads it over my shoulder. "That's better."
"What is?"
"Knowing what's happening out there instead of just hearing it."
"Yes."
We go back to the bed, and she hesitates before climbing in. "Can I stay here? Just until I fall asleep."
"Of course."
She curls onto the other side carefully, looking absurdly young in the dark, not because she is, but because fear has a way of stripping years off people. I switch off the lamp, and for a few minutes we just listen to the compound. Her breathing slows.
“Cara?” Emily says quietly.
I turn toward her. “Yes?”
“You don’t have to look after me forever.”
I stare into the darkness. “I know that.”
“Do you?” she asks.
I smile despite everything. “Go to sleep.”
“Bossy,” she mutters.
“Learned it from Falcon.”
Emily settles deeper into the cushions. “That’s worrying.”
Her breathing quietens, and eventually she sleeps. I don't fall asleep straight away. Her words stay with me, sitting in my chest. You don't have to look after me forever.
I understand the message. For years I've been taking care of other people because it's easier than working out what I need.
The women needed routines, appointments, someone who remembered which doors made them panic and which sounds they couldn't tolerate.
I became useful, and useful has always felt safe.
Useful means nobody looks too closely at what's happening underneath.
Falcon does the same thing in a different shape. He makes himself useful with weapons and strategy and sacrifice. Maybe neither of us knows how to exist without earning our place by carrying something.
That thought stays with me until morning.
By seven Emily's still asleep and my shoulder's gone numb from wherever she migrated to during the night. I slide out carefully. She mumbles something rude at me.