I take her elbow and sit her at the table. I wash my hands at the sink. Hot water off the stove kettle, soap. I get the kit out of the cupboard above the woodstove. I keep a good one up here. I have sewn myself up twice. I know what I am doing.
I sit on the stool across from her and take her hand.
Her fingers are cold. I wrap my other hand around her wrist to still it. I look at the cut. Clean edges. Deep. It wants two stitches. Maybe three. "I have to flush this. It'll sting."
"Okay."
I run saline through it over a bowl. She sucks air in through her teeth. She doesn't pull away. Her hand rests in mine like she's decided to leave it there.
I lay out the butterfly banadages. I dry the skin. I work slowly, because I am not in a hurry, because my hands are large, because her hand in mine is the size of a thing I could break. I am aware of that in a way that has nothing to do with the cut. Her knuckles are reddened from the cold. There is a freckle on the inside of her wrist I hadn't noticed. I close her thumb carefully. Four butterflies. I wrap it in gauze. I tape the gauze.
I do not let go of her hand when I'm done.
She does not pull it away. She is holding her own breath. I am aware of that too.
I am holding her small cold hand in my two big rough ones at a kitchen table in a cabin no one else has ever been inside of. My heart is doing something it has not done in a long time. I am notsure what to call it. I know I am not going to be the one to call it first.
"Rafe."
"Yeah."
"Thank you."
I nod. I let go.
Evening comes early at altitude. I make dinner. Eggs, toast, a can of beans I drain and season. She eats. I eat. We don't talk much.
After, she sits on the floor in front of the woodstove. She is wearing my flannel. The flannel is too big. The sleeves are folded twice.
I sit on the other side of the room. I keep the rifle leaning against the doorframe. Not because I think I'll need it in the next hour. Because that is how I sit.
She says, after twenty minutes, "Why are you doing this?"
"Because he lied to me."
"That's..."
"And because you asked me not to kill you."
She looks into the stove. The fire moves on her face. Then she cries the kind of tears that happens when a body finally stops running. Her shoulders go. Her breath catches. Tears on her cheeks. She does not wipe them.
This time I move.
I don't think about it. I cross the room. I crouch in front of her, slow, hands visible, because this morning I grabbed her from behind on a path and I am not going to forget that. She looks at me.
I sit down beside her on the floor. My back against the couch. My shoulder against hers. I don't put my arm around her. I just let her lean if she wants. She leans.
Her head comes to rest against my upper arm. I can smell her hair. Some gas station shampoo, sweat, the specific dust of two weeks on the road. Her bandaged hand rests on her thigh. Her other hand, after a minute, curls around the cuff of my sleeve. Her knuckles against my forearm. Her breath evening out against my bicep.
We sit like that for a long time. The fire pops. The wind pushes at the window. I do not move because she is leaning on me. I would sit here until the stove went cold before I would move her.
"I haven't touched anyone in two weeks," she says eventually. Small. "I didn't know I missed it until just now. Is this okay."
"Yeah."
"Rafe."
"Don't worry about it. Just sit."
