7. Jessie
Jessie
I woke to the smell of coffee, real coffee, not the instant kind that had been the currency of every field camp I'd ever run, and lay still for a moment with the skylight above me showing pale blue sky and the particular quality of high-altitude light that made everything look like it had been recently washed.
The mattress was good. The blanket was heavy. The sound from below was Rob moving with the careful quiet of someone who'd lived alone long enough to be considerate of it even when no one was watching.
I'd slept. Properly, uninterrupted, for the first time in longer than I could clearly remember.
I lay there and took that in.
Below, a mug appeared at the top of the loft ladder, held up by a bandaged hand.
"Black," he said. "You guessed right yesterday."
"So did you." I sat up, took the mug. He climbed the rest of the way, settled at the foot of the mattress with his own coffee, and we sat in the morning light and drank in a silence that required no management.
"Engineering cleared the north trail at six," he said eventually. "Road assessment on the bridge starts at eight. The access road should be open by midmorning."
"So I have a way out."
"You have a way out."
I looked at him over the rim of my mug. Silver-threaded hair, that quiet, direct face, the bandages I'd applied now slightly rumpled from sleep. A man who'd held a bridge up with his body and then made sure everyone was warm before he sat down and hadn't once asked to be thanked for either.
"I told you last night I'm not leaving," I said. "That hasn't changed."
"I know." He was genuinely calm, the kind that came from certainty rather than suppression. "I just wanted you to know the door exists."
"Rob."
"Yes."
"Stop giving me exits I'm not going to take."
The corner of his mouth. "Okay."
I reached over and straightened the edge of his bandage where it had loosened in the night. His hand turned slightly under mine — not taking, just acknowledging.
"The Havenwood clinic," I said. "Who do I talk to?"
"Alaric. He's on the council. He'll know." A pause. "He was the one who came last night."
"The man who looked at you like he was cataloguing your injuries from ten feet away?"
"That's Alaric."
"He seems competent."
"Annoyingly," Rob said. "He'll also want to have a conversation about last night. The exposure. What you saw." He met my eyes. "I'll handle that."
"We'll handle it," I said. "I can speak for myself."
He studied me. "You're going to be difficult to argue with."
"I've been told." I drank my coffee. "Is that a problem?"
"No." He said it simply, as if it were obvious. "No, it's not a problem at all."
Outside, a raven landed on the cabin eave and said something sharp and declarative into the morning air. The mountains showed above the treeline, snow-bright and enormous, utterly indifferent to the fact that my entire sense of what came next had reorganized overnight.
I found I didn't mind.
For the first time in longer than I could name, forward looked like something I wanted to walk toward.