He wasn't going to find it. Not from me.
"Okay," he said finally.
I kissed his forehead. "Get some sleep. I'll take watch tonight."
He curled into my side like he'd been doing it his whole life. I pulled the blanket over us and held him while his breathing deepened and slowed. I was still hard. That was going to be a long, uncomfortable while, but it was worth it.
I stayed until I was sure he was actually asleep. Then I extracted myself carefully, trying not to wake him. He made a small sound of protest but didn't stir, just curled into the warm spot I'd left behind.
I found my clothes on the floor and got dressed quietly as I could. Then I looked back at him one more time: naked, wrecked, trusting me enough to sleep.
I wanted to stay so badly it ached through my whole body. But Eight was in the other room, and Lorenzo was bleeding, and I had responsibilities that didn't stop just because I wanted this man more than I wanted my next breath.
I made myself walk away from him. That was the hardest thing I'd done all night, and I'd spent four hours thinking he was dead.
I unlocked the connecting door and stood there with my hand on the frame for one second. Whatever just happened in that room was mine. I wasn't bringing it through this door where Eight could pick it apart with those eyes that missed nothing.
Eight was exactly where I'd left her, cross-legged on the carpet with a crayon in her fist like a weapon.
She looked up when I came in, looked straight past me to the door, and back to my face. She took in my neck, my mouth, the way I was probably standing, all of it in that same sweep she used for security checks. She narrowed her eyes just slightly.
"He's fine," I said, trying to sound normal. "Beat up, exhausted, sleeping in the other room tonight. You can see him first thing in the morning. Promise."
She held my gaze for another beat. Then she picked up the crayon and went back to work.
I checked Lorenzo's bandages. He still looked like something I'd scraped off the road, but the stitches were holding and miraculously there were no signs of infection.
“So,” Lorenzo asked when I was done, “What’s the plan?”
"South tomorrow. My grandmother's expecting us."
I got Eight onto the pullout. She curled on her side, pulled her knees up, and tucked one hand under the pillow around something she'd been carrying since the farmhouse. I'd learned not to ask about it because she'd tell me when she was ready or she wouldn't and either way was fine.
I pulled the blanket to her shoulders. She held still and let me.
It still surprised me every time she did.
My mother tucked blankets the same way: snug at the shoulders, one pass to smooth the wrinkles. Carmen Reyes had tucked me in a thousand times, and every single time she'd said the same thing.
God holds what I can't reach.
I didn't say it. Eight didn't need my mother's God. She needed a blanket and someone who was going to sit by the window all night, making sure nothing came through that door to hurt her.
I could give her both.
I went to the chair by the window and sat with the shotgun across my lap. The parking lot below was orange-lit and empty except for one car at the far end. I'd clocked it when we arrived. It had stayed in the same position for four hours without moving.
It was probably nothing. I kept watching it anyway.
A shape crossed the carpet.
Eight climbed into the chair beside mine, pulled her knees to her chest, and turned her face toward the window, keeping watch beside me.
I was going to change that for her somehow, some way. If it was the last thing I did, I was going to teach her that the world had more in it than violence and escape routes and people who left.
We made the churchtwenty minutes early, which meant I was late according to my mother and on time according to everyone else with a functional understanding of how clocks worked.
The building sat halfway up the hill, stone gone the color of old bread and doors painted Lucenio blue. Someone had repainted them since the last time I'd been here, the same blue as Emilio's shop, where he'd taught me to solder when I was eight and where someone had put two bullets in him three days ago. I sat in the car with my uncle's voice so loud in my head I could barely hear Lorenzo complaining beside me.
