The axe falls outside. Steady. Rhythmic. I eat slowly. Someone made this for me. Left it covered so it'd stay hot. Went outside so I could eat in peace.
I set my fork down.
Don't get comfortable. Don't do this to yourself again.
I wash the plate, dry it, put it on the rack. Then I pull out my phone, open the email from the staffing agency, and scroll to the contract dates. February 14. I read it twice.
Chapter 4
Garrett
She sings in the shower.
Not well. Pitchy, breathless, lyrics she half-remembers from songs I don't recognize. Something about a bad idea and a right night. Something about shoes. She loses the tune at the bridge every time, hums the gap, picks it up on the wrong key, keeps going anyway.
It's the worst thing that's ever happened to me.
Worse than the pits. Worse than the muzzle that pinned my jaw for six weeks when I was twelve and the handlers decided a silent minotaur sold more tickets than a loud one. Those things tried to break me and failed. This woman sits inside my walls dismantling me with off-key pop music through a thin bathroom door, and the worst of it is that I'm letting her. I could move. Step outside, split wood, find somewhere the sound of her doesn't reach but I stay at my kitchen counter and listen.
A rhythm has formed between us without either of us deciding it. Her alarm sounds at five-thirty, muffled through the wall, and she hits snooze twice before she drags herself upright. Waterruns. She sings. She makes coffee badly, too strong with grounds in the bottom of the cup, and leaves my mug on the counter with the handle turned toward the place I stand when I pour.
Jess collects her at six-fifteen. Nina tugs her coat on while half-shoutingsee you tonight, Garrett,through the door like she's said goodbye to me every morning of her life.
I spend the day on club work. I cook. Not the way I cook for myself. I pull out cuts of meat I've had in the freezer since November because no one in this cabin ever needed them thawed. I braise. I roast.
She comes home at six. The truck door shuts, boots on the porch, and Nina pushes through with cold riding in on her jacket and her hair frozen at the ends. She eats at the end of the table and tells me about her day.
I listen.
Sometimes I nod. Sometimes the corner of my mouth lifts without my say-so, and she laughs like I've cracked a joke, her whole face opens and I have to look down at the coffee in my mug until my lungs find the rhythm again.
The cabin fills with the smells of winter. Woodsmoke, pine resin, the cold metal scent of snow that creeps under the door. It fills, too, with her. Some soap she uses. Some oil she works through her hair at night, green and herbal. The coffee she makes wrong.
I've lived here for seven years. I have never, in all that time, had to discipline my hearing.
Tuesday evening she drops a pot of boiling water.
I'm at the table re-lacing my winter boots, and she's at the stove draining pasta, a meal she decided an hour ago would be her turn because I've cooked every night. Her left wrist is still wrapped. She reaches with the wrong hand, fumbles when the weight hits a tender spot, and the pot tips off the burner before she can right it.
She yelps.
I'm across the kitchen before the pot hits the floor. My knee skids on the tile. My palms find her calves through the wet denim of her jeans. Water has splashed across her shins. Her skin above the socks shows pink. Hot, not burning. No welts. No blistering. I press in to check the heat, and her breath catches above my head.
"I'm okay, Garrett."
I nod but I don't move.
The weight of her watching settles on the top of my skull where the fur grows thickest between my horns. And when I glance up her expression empties the air out of my lungs. Not fear. Something softer and more dangerous.
She lifts her hand.
Her palm settles on the top of my head. Light as snow. Fingers spread between my horns.
"Thank you."
I nod again. The word climbs.
It comes up from somewhere I keep bolted. Past my ribs, past the place where the purr lives when it's waking, past the scar tissue at the base of my throat where a handler's chain rubbed the skin raw the summer I was ten. It moves through all of it like water finding the one crack that's been waiting.
