Chapter 46 Zane
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Zane
I spend the next few days changing the locks. Again. Because someone got close.
Close enough to take her, to make this place feel penetrable.
By the time I’m done, my hands smell of metal and sawdust, and the whole building feels tighter. More honest. It knows what it is now.
A fortress.
It still doesn’t feel enough.
I check the windows next.
The downstairs bar windows get new locks and fresh sensors, plus a set of temporary internal braces I can put up after close without making the place look worse than a prison during business hours. Upstairs, I swap out the latch on Aurora’s window, test it twice, then add a secondary catch anyway.
She’s sitting on the edge of the bed when I finish, wrapped in one of Finn’s hoodies and a blanket she didn’t need ten days ago.
She doesn’t say anything when I tighten the last screw, or if I think Cole has people left. Doesn’t ask if I think this is over, or any of the questions I can feel sitting just behind her teeth.
She watches my hands instead.
“You didn’t drink the tea,” she says after a minute.
I glance back.
She’s trying for normal. I can hear it in her voice. Light. Casual. A little crooked around the edges.
It does something rough to me.
“I can make more.”
“There’s some in the pot.” She shifts, tucking one foot under her. “I made enough.”
I set the drill down on the dresser and cross to the little tray she’s got set up by the lamp. Mug. Teapot. Honey. The whole thing neat and gentle and painfully Aurora.
The steam’s gone thin, but it’s still warm when I pour.
I hand her the first cup, and her icy fingers brush mine.
She takes the mug in both hands and holds it there before drinking. Heat is something she has to convince her body to accept again.
I pour mine and sit in the chair by the door.
Closest point between her and the rest of the world.
She notices, but doesn’t mention it.
We stay that way for a while. The room quiet except for the soft clink of ceramic and the faint noises of the bar below us. Arlo stacking glasses, Finn talking too loud on purpose, the building settling around people trying not to think too hard.
Aurora stares into her tea.
There’s a bruise fading near her wrist. Yellow at the edges now. Less angry than it was yesterday. Still there.
My jaw tightens.
She catches it. Of course she does.
“I’m okay,” she says softly.
I nod once. Not because I fully believe it. Because I know what she means. She’s here, breathing, trying. That counts.
A minute later, she sets the mug down and pulls the blanket tighter around herself. “You don’t have to sit guard duty every second.”
“I know.”
Her mouth twitches, almost a smile. “That didn’t sound convincing.”
“It wasn’t meant to.”
That gets a real one. Small, but real.
Good.
I lean back in the chair, listening to the hinges in the hall settle, the vibration of footsteps below, the shape of the building around us. Nothing off. Nothing wrong.
Still, I stay.
Because a couple of days ago she woke up in the dark with zip ties cutting into her skin, and now every time the floor creaks too suddenly, her shoulders go high and tight before she remembers where she is.
A lock that holds, a light left on, a body in the next room, tea while it’s still warm… safety isn’t theory, it’s built in small, repeatable things.
I know how to build those things.
So I do.
At night, she often dreams loud.
Sometimes she just goes still in her sleep, breath thinning out until I hear it change from the hall and stop what I’m doing without even thinking. Sometimes it’s quieter than that, just the mattress shifting, the faint catch in her throat, the kind of sound most people would sleep through.
I don’t.
The first night back, Finn made a joke about drawing lots for watch shifts until Ryder looked at him, and Finn shut up halfway through the sentence.
We didn’t end up drawing lots.
Ryder takes the balcony and the perimeter when he can’t sit still. Finn takes every errand within five miles and somehow turns coffee runs into recon.
I take the inside, the stairs, the locks, the windows, the spaces close enough to hear her breathe.
Tonight it happens just after three.
I’m at the kitchen table with a half-finished wiring diagram for the rear camera setup to get every blind spot when I hear it. One sharp inhale, like her body came back too fast and left the rest of her behind.
By the time I push her door open, she’s upright in bed, hand at her throat, eyes wide, breathing hard, the air’s refusing to stay put.
The lamp beside her is already on. She’s been sleeping with it that way since we brought her home. Low amber light. Enough to cut the dark before it can become more.
She looks at me, but not all the way. Some part of her still hasn’t caught up enough to know where she is.
I don’t ask what she saw, if it was him, if she wants to talk. Don’t ask for details she shouldn’t have to hand over just to prove she’s hurting.
I cross the room, sit on the edge of the bed, and keep my movements slow enough that nothing startles.
“You’re here,” I say quietly.
Her breathing stutters.
I wait.
“You’re at The Hollow,” I add. “Upstairs. Door’s locked. Windows are locked. I’m here.”
Her fingers curl tighter at her throat.
Then loosen.
I sit beside her and let the silence do what silence does when it isn’t being used as a weapon.
After a minute, she leans sideways, enough that her shoulder touches my arm.
I stay exactly where I am.
She takes one breath. Then another. Then one that almost makes it all the way down.
“That one was bad,” she whispers.
I nod once. “I know.”
Not because I saw it, but because I can feel the aftermath in the room.
She wipes quickly under one eye because the tears annoy her personally. “I hate this.”
“Yeah.”
“I feel…” She stops. Tries again. “I feel stupid, because I know I’m here. I know I’m safe. But my body keeps acting like—”
“Like it doesn’t know yet.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
“It’ll catch up.”
There’s a long pause. “You say that like you’re sure.”
“I’m sure it can.”
She looks down at her hands.
The bruises are lighter. The skin there is still angry in places. She turns one wrist over and traces the mark with her thumb as if it belongs to someone else.
Without thinking, I reach for the glass of water on her nightstand and hand it to her.
She takes it. Drinks. Breathes.
When she’s done, I set it back and stay there beside her until the panic works itself out of her system enough for her shoulders to drop.
Eventually, she lies back down.
I pull the blanket up over her and make sure the lamp’s still angled the way she likes it. Not in her eyes, but bright enough to see the room.
Her voice catches me as I stand. “Zane?”
I look back.
She’s already half curled under the blanket, hair a mess around her face, looking wrung out and brave at the same time.
“Thank you.”
I nod once. “Get some sleep.”
I leave the door cracked two inches, enough for sound, enough for light.
Enough.
The next morning, Finn makes pancakes for all of us, doing what he can to make everything feel better.
“They’re medicinal,” he says, sliding a plate toward Aurora.
“That’s not how pancakes work,” I tell him.
He points the spatula at me. “You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
Ryder sits at the end of the table, coffee gone cold in his hand, staring at nothing useful.
Aurora notices before anyone says anything. “You haven’t eaten.”
Ryder’s eyes move to her as he comes back from somewhere farther away than the kitchen. “I’m fine.”
Finn snorts. “Which is code for ‘I’m about to become a haunting.’”
Aurora huffs a quiet laugh into her mug.
Good.
Ryder doesn’t smile, but his face loosens by a fraction. Barely there. Easy to miss if you aren’t looking.
I am.
He hasn’t slept properly since we brought her back, hasn’t let himself stop moving long enough to feel anything all the way through.
Every hour he’s not checking a perimeter, he’s making calls, tying off loose ends, talking to people who owe us answers, making sure Cole stays down, and anyone attached to him understands exactly what happens next if they breathe in our direction.
Useful work. Necessary work, also the kind a man does when blame’s starting to calcify under his ribs.
Aurora reaches for the syrup.
Finn starts talking about installing a moat.
Arlo comes upstairs long enough to tell us the beer delivery’s late and then leaves before Finn can ask if alligators count as a tax write-off.
Life, trying awkwardly to come back, I let it, but I keep watching Ryder…
By evening, The Hollow has settled into its new shape.
Arlo works the bar for locals we trust, music stays low, the doors stay monitored, and every face gets checked twice.
Finn installed a cheerful little sign by the entrance that says SMILE, YOU’RE ON CAMERA. I guess he thinks that somehow makes the six new surveillance points less ominous.
It doesn’t.
Aurora spends most of the time doing inventory at the bar because she asked for something normal to do, and none of us were stupid enough to argue with that.
I keep close without making it obvious.
She catches on anyway around six, and looks up from the liquor order sheets with one brow raised. “Are you shadowing me?”
“No.”
“You absolutely are.”
I tighten the bracket on the underbar shelf I’m fixing. “I’m working.”
Her mouth twitches. “In a six-foot radius.”
“Efficient radius.”
That wins me another small laugh.
I’d tear the whole damn building apart and rebuild it with my bare hands if I could keep hearing that.
Later, when Arlo takes over, and Finn drags Aurora into a debate about whether jalapeno poppers count as a personality trait, I step out the front door to check the new motion light.
Ryder’s already there, leaning against the rail, hands braced on weathered wood, looking out over town like he’s trying to memorize it before someone takes it.
The pines are black shapes against a bruised sky. Main Street glows warm below, small and stubborn, Coyote Glen doing what it always does, holding itself together with gossip, coffee, and sheer refusal.
Ryder doesn’t turn when I step beside him.
“The new sensor’s too sensitive,” I say after a second. “Caught a raccoon twice.”
“Adjust it.”
“I will.”
From inside, faint through the door, I can hear Finn talking and Aurora answering. Her voice is still softer than it used to be. Still careful around sharp edges. But there.
Ryder’s stare stays fixed on the town. “I brought this here.”
I lean on the rail beside him.
Below, a truck rolls slowly past the square. Someone laughs outside Coyote Cup. The world keeps moving because it doesn’t know when to do anything else.
“You didn’t ruin her,” I say quietly. “You saved her.”
His jaw tightens hard enough to show at the hinge. “That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” I agree. “It isn’t.”
He finally looks at me then.
Eyes gone cold in the way they do when he’s trying to cut feeling clean out of the equation.
“I knew what Cole was,” he says. “I knew what he’d do if he got room to move.”
“Yeah.”
“I still brought us here.”
I nod once. Because denying the facts won’t help. “You did.”
He sharpens—he expected an argument and doesn’t know what to do with agreement.
“So did I,” I add.
That lands. I watch it happen. The slight shift. The recalculation.
“Cole didn’t come for The Hollow because he smelled weakness in the walls,” I say. “He came because he couldn’t stand that we built anything at all.”
Ryder looks back out over town.
“He took a shot at her because she matters. Because he knew it would get under your skin and Finn’s and mine.” I pause. “That blame doesn’t belong to one man.”
His hand tightens on the railing.
Maybe he hears me.
Maybe he doesn’t.
So I say the part I know he won’t say for himself. “She’s breathing because you went through that door.”
Still nothing.
Then, quieter, because the truth usually lands better when you don’t dress it up:
“She came home because of all of us. But you still went through first.”
Ryder exhales through his nose.
“I looked at her in there,” he says, “and all I could think was that I should’ve kept her farther away from us.”
That tracks. It also tells me exactly where the crack is.
I nod toward the door behind us, toward the muffled noise inside. “You think she’d thank you for that?”
A humorless breath almost leaves him. “She’d be safer.”
“Maybe.”
He cuts me a look.
I let that sit for a second before continuing.
“She’d also be alone.”
Inside, Finn’s laugh breaks loudly through the door, followed by Aurora telling him he’s banned from naming cocktails for at least a week. There’s life in it. Real life. Annoyed. Warm. Hers.
Ryder hears it too.
His shoulders shift by a fraction.
I straighten off the railing.
“You can carry guilt,” I say. “That’s your hobby.” He gives me a flat look, and I continue before he can waste it. “But don’t confuse it with devotion.”
That one lands deeper.
Good.
Because someone has to say it.
“You want to protect her?” I ask. “Then protect her. Don’t turn yourself into a ghost standing five feet outside your own life.”
Ryder’s voice, when it comes, is quieter. “I don’t know how to do this without hurting her.”
“Then learn.”
He doesn’t answer.
Doesn’t need to.
We stand there another minute, the town spread out below us, fragile and stubborn and worth the work. Then I head back inside to adjust the motion sensor and check the side door one more time before bed.
When I walk into the bar, Aurora looks up immediately.
Finn is still talking. Arlo is polishing glasses with the same expression he’d wear at a funeral or a pie contest. The room smells of fryer oil, whiskey, and the cedar smoke that clings to Ryder’s jacket hanging by the door.
Aurora’s tea has gone cold again.
I cross to her, pick up the mug, and say, “I’ll make more.”
Her eyes lift to mine. Tired. Bruised. Still here.
“Okay,” she says softly.
I take the mug to the kitchen.
Put the kettle on.
Check the back lock.
Reset the sensor.
Listen to the building breathe.
Then I make her tea.