Chapter 5 #2
"All right." He gathers the pages back into a square stack, careful with them, like they matter, like I matter. "Then here's what happens. This isn't going away on its own, and you're right that you can't fight it by yourself. But you're not by yourself."
"Njal." I shake my head. "You barely know me."
"I know enough." He sets the stack down square in front of me. "I know people who do this for a living. Good people. Let me make a call."
"I can't afford?—"
"I didn't say a word about paying anybody." His voice doesn't rise. It just lands. "Let me make a call, Sophie."
I open my mouth to argue and nothing comes out.
Because nobody has offered to stand between me and this.
Not the school. Not the church. Not my own father, who I still haven't been able to make myself call.
And here's a man I've known for what, two weeks, with scarred hands and a cut on his shoulders, telling me I'm not by myself.
"I need work, too." I say it fast, before the rest of it can rise up and drown me. "If there's anybody hiring. Anybody. I'll do anything—paint, scrub floors, I'm not too good to do honest work."
The corner of his mouth moves, not quite a smile. "Might know something about that, too. Let me ask around."
The storm's still going when I get to my feet to leave, and I don't want to.
That frightens me worse than all the rest of it put together.
He walks me to the door.
I turn to thank him, but the air between us has vanished.
He’s closer than I realized, his silhouette framed by the warm glow of the kitchen light, while behind him, the storm screams, rain slashing past the open door in heavy, silver sheets.
I feel raw. I’m tired and cracked open, vibrating with a gratitude that is tangled up in a longing I don't have a name for.
It’s a magnetic pull, a sudden, desperate need to be anchored. Without thinking, I rise up on my toes and press my lips to his.
For a heartbeat, he lets me.
His hand comes up to cradle my jaw—his palm is warm, his touch impossibly careful.
That single second of contact is so electric it nearly knocks the breath from my lungs.
It’s the first thing I’ve wanted for myself in longer than I can remember.
The first piece of this wrecked, miserable day that actually belongs to me. I lean into him, my heart hammering against my ribs, tasting the salt and the rain.
And then, he draws back.
He does it gently, so gently it doesn't feel like a rejection.
He keeps his hand anchored to my face, resting his forehead against mine for the space of a single, shaky breath.
When he speaks, his voice has dropped an octave, sounding rough and strained.
"Not like this," he murmurs. His thumb brushes once, slowly, along my cheekbone. "Not tonight. Not when you've been crying and had a rough day."
I freeze, waiting for the shame to arrive. I expect the old, reliable shame. The kind I was raised on, the kind that tells me I'm too much or not enough.
But it doesn't come.
Because he isn't pushing me away. He’s holding me in the dim light with the storm raging at our backs, telling me through his restraint that I’m worth more than a momentary impulse.
He refuses to take something from a woman who turned up shattered on his porch.
In my entire, sheltered life, nobody has ever wanted me enough to not take.
"Okay," I whisper, my voice trembling.
He steps back, creating a sliver of space between us, and reaches past me to flip on the porch light.
"Let me walk you home," he says. "Storm's not letting up."
"It's twenty feet."
"Then it'll take me twenty seconds." He pulls a rain jacket off a hook by the door and holds it out, and the way he holds it leaves no room to argue.
I take the jacket.
He walks me across the dark stretch between our houses with one hand hovering at the small of my back, not touching, just there.
A presence between me and the rain, and he waits on my porch while I get the door open and Hoagie comes barreling out to greet us both like we've been gone a year.
"Lock it behind you," he says.
"I will."
"Sophie." He waits until I look at him. "I meant what I said. I'll make those calls. You're not by yourself in this."
Then he's gone back into the dark, and I throw the deadbolt the way my mother would want.
I lean my back against the door and let myself breathe for what feels like the first time all day.
I change into dry clothes and crawl into my own bed, Hoagie thumping down onto the floor beside me with a groan.
I listen to the rain on the roof and the small ordinary sounds of my own house settling around me.
My mind drifts to the manila envelope holding my keys.
About the lie someone meticulously built with my name stamped on it, and the way this whole town decided who I was without me ever being in the room to defend myself.
And then I think about the taste of his mother's cooking.
I think about the weight of his hand on my jaw in the dark, and those three words—not like this. A man I barely know is promising me, through his silence and his kindness, that I’m not alone.
I don't know yet how much he means it.
I fall asleep before I can decide whether to be afraid of how badly I want him to mean it.