20. Colt
Colt
The cabin feels warmer than usual after dinner, even as the sun dips low outside and paints the snow deep orange and purple through the window.
I made a simple stew with what we've got left in the stores, thick chunks of meat and vegetables simmering slow in the cast iron pot, the kind of meal that usually gets Nora talking about nothing in particular for twenty minutes straight.
Tonight she just pushes her spoon around more than she eats, her eyes drifting to the window and then down to her hands and then back to the window again, like she's checking something out there that isn't actually visible from where she's sitting.
I notice every small thing about her these days, more than I've ever bothered noticing about another person in my life.
The way her fingers tap light and quick against the table edge when her mind's somewhere else.
The soft furrow between her brows that shows up when she's turning a problem over without wanting to say what the problem is.
I don't know exactly what's sitting behind her eyes tonight, but I know the shape of it well enough by now to recognize when something's there, and it twists something protective and a little uneasy in my chest. I want to hold her until whatever it is loosens its grip.
“You've been somewhere else all evening,” I say, watching her push a chunk of carrot around the bowl without eating it. “Anything you want to talk through?”
She glances up, and something crosses her face fast enough that I almost miss it, guilt maybe, or the particular look of somebody deciding whether tonight's the night to say something out loud.
Then it's gone, replaced by a small, tired smile.
“Just thinking. About everything. It's a lot to carry around, is all.”
I let it go for now, mostly because I don't have the right to push harder than she's willing to open on her own, and partly because I've got my own version of the same weight sitting on me, the plan with Mason, the timeline closing in, the dozen ways this could still go wrong before it goes right.
Maybe we're both just carrying quiet tonight instead of sharing it out loud, and maybe that's alright, for one evening at least.
I push my empty bowl aside and stand, reaching for her hand. My palm's rough against her softer one as I pull her gently to her feet. “Come here, darlin'.” My voice comes out calm and even despite everything sitting under it. “Let me hold you a while. Whatever it is, it can wait for morning.”
Truth is, I've gotten protective of these quiet evenings the same way I used to get protective of a good trap line, checking it constantly, worried something might have disturbed it while I wasn't looking.
A week ago I'd have called that kind of vigilance paranoia.
Now I understand it's just what loving somebody costs, the constant low hum of wanting to know they're alright even when there's no evidence they aren't. My father used to say a man only really understands what he's got to lose once he's got something worth losing.
I used to think that was just something men said to sound wise around a campfire.
Sitting here watching Nora carry some private weight she isn't ready to hand me yet, I understand it's just plain true.
She comes to me without hesitation, fitting against me the way she always does now, like her body learned the shape of mine faster than either of us caught up to what that meant.
I guide us to the bed, the quilts still rumpled from that morning, and settle back against the headboard with her pulled into my lap.
Her head finds my shoulder. I stroke a hand slow up and down her back, feeling the line of her spine through the flannel she's wearing.
My shirt. It does something to me every time, seeing her wrapped in something that's mine, but tonight I keep it gentle instead of letting that feeling turn into anything sharper.
Whatever's sitting on her tonight, I want to love it quiet out of her instead of chasing it away with anything rushed.
My fingers slip under the hem of the shirt, tracing slow circles against the warm skin of her lower back. She shivers and presses closer, breath warm against my neck. I tilt her chin up with two fingers so I can actually see her eyes. “Talk to me, Nora. What's going on in that head of yours.”
She bites her lip, and for a second I think she's going to say something real, something with weight behind it, and then whatever it was passes and she just shakes her head slightly and leans up to kiss me instead.
I let her. Some things a person has to come to in their own time, and pushing rarely gets you there any faster.
I kiss her slow and unhurried, tasting the faint sweetness of the berries from dinner still on her mouth, and she melts into it the way she always does, her hands coming to rest against my chest. I feel her heartbeat pick up under my palm.
What follows is patient and thorough and entirely without hurry, the two of us taking our time with each other the way people do when neither one particularly wants tonight to end.
“I've fallen in love with you, Nora,” I tell her at some point, my voice rough with the plain truth of it, my forehead resting against hers. “Crazy fast. Doesn't matter to me how fast, though. You're everything. I don't want to let you go, not to WITSEC, not to anybody.”
Her eyes shine up at me, bright and full of something that steals a little of my breath just looking at it. She cups my face, thumbs brushing my beard. “I love you too, Colt. So much it scares me a little, if I'm honest.”
Those words settle into my chest like a warm coal that doesn't burn, just sits there radiating something steady.
I hold her through the rest of it, unhurried, both of us saying with our bodies everything the words already covered, until we're both spent and tangled together in the quiet aftermath, the fire burned down low across the room.
I roll us to the side afterward so I can hold her properly without any weight pressing her down, and she snuggles into my chest, fingers tracing light, absent patterns against my skin.
I notice she's quiet again, that same faraway look creeping back in now that the moment's passed, and I file it away instead of pushing on it a second time tonight.
“Can I ask you something,” she says eventually, voice soft against my collarbone.
“Always.”
“If something happened. If I did something you thought was reckless, but I did it because I loved you and couldn't just sit there waiting, would you forgive me for it? Even if it turned out badly?”
The question catches me sideways, and I go still for a second, turning it over. “That's an oddly specific hypothetical for eleven o'clock at night.”
“Humor me.”
I think about it honestly instead of just reassuring her, because I owe her that much.
“I'd be furious. I want you to know that up front, because I would be.
But forgive you? Yeah. I don't think there's much you could do that would change how I feel about you, even the reckless kind of much.
I just hope you'd talk to me first, whatever it is. Give me the chance to be furious about it before it happens instead of after.”
She's quiet a long moment, and I feel her breathing change, something in her deciding not to say whatever she almost said.
“I'll remember that,” she says finally, and presses closer, and I let the moment close instead of forcing it back open, some instinct telling me she's not ready yet and won't be rushed there any faster than she was ready to talk at dinner.
“It's settled, Nora,” I tell her instead, tilting her chin up again, my voice firm with everything I mean by it.
“You're not going into WITSEC. I'll figure the rest out with Mason.
We end this threat together, and then you stay right here with me.
No more running. No more goodbyes between us.
You're my woman, and I'm keeping you, whatever it costs either of us to make that true.”
She looks at me with so much trust and love in her eyes it steals what little breath I've got left, and underneath it, so quiet I almost miss it, something that looks a little like guilt, though I can't place why yet.
I kiss her again, slow and certain, sealing the promise the only way I know how to seal anything.
The night stretches ahead of us warm and quiet, and I hold her tighter, determined to make good on every word I just said.
I think about my father again as her breathing evens out toward sleep against my chest, about the two of us on this same mountain twenty years apart, him teaching a boy to read weather and track and danger, never once teaching that same boy what to do with a feeling this big once it finally showed up.
Maybe nobody can teach that part. Maybe you just have to fall into it blind, the way I did, and figure out the rest of it by staying, by choosing her again every single morning instead of just once, loud, in a bed with the fire dying down.
I decide, lying there, that I'm going to keep choosing her like that for as long as she'll let me, plan or no plan, Marshals or no Marshals, mafia or no mafia.
It's the only promise I've got that feels like it's actually mine to make.
The Armenians don't stand a chance against what I'll do to protect this.
To protect us. I fell hard and fast, faster than I've ever let myself fall for anything, but it feels like the one honestly right thing in my whole rugged, complicated life.
She's home now, whatever that ends up meaning once the roads clear all the way.
I'll fight this entire mountain range if that's what it takes to keep her here.