“You okay?” he asks.
I think about this seriously. “I don’t know yet.”
He nods. “Yeah. That’s all right. You will be.”
Archer is at the worktable. Not working, sitting at it the way he does when he’s thinking rather than doing. He’s turned toward the room rather than away from it, which I’ve learned is the Archer version of being present. He’s looking at me happily.
Ryan is positioned in the window chair. I am so grateful for the way he has accepted me into his pack the way he has. If he hadn’t stopped me at two a.m. I don’t know where I would be by now. Probably at least threecounties away.
I let myself feel what I’m feeling.
This is not my standard practice. My standard practice is to feel at a distance, categorized, managed, the emotional equivalent of evidence in a filed report. Useful information. Not something you stand inside of.
I stand inside of it now.
What I’m feeling is relief. Enormously, the kind that comes when something you’ve been bracing against for a long time does not arrive, or arrives and is handled, and the bracing can stop. It’s a physical relief that I feel in my back and my jaw and the muscles around my eyes that have been doing the work of vigilance.
I’m also feeling gratitude. Complicated and large. For the town. For Scarlet. For the pack, who coordinated a response to my situation without being asked and without conditions.
Something that is not quite grief but lives nearby. For the weeks before this. For the version of me that drove into this valley with two-fifty in cash and a ‘borrowed’ car and the bone-deep belief that being known was a liability. For Amber, who is a locked box on a high shelf that I’ve started to forgive.
And underneath all of it is something that is quieter than all of those and yet larger.
Belonging.
I let that word be what it is.
I’ve been holding it at arm’s length for two weeks, circling it, naming it as convenience and strategy and temporary arrangements and anything except what it actually is. Belonging. The unmistakable feeling of being in the right place with the right people, not because circumstance put you there but because something in you has recognized something.
I recognized it when I entered this valley and the air transformed. I’ve been arguing with the recognition ever since.
I stop arguing.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
It comes out into the room without planning, and I feel four points of attention converge. I look at my tea because looking at any of them right now would be too much. I need to say this to the room.
“For last night,” I continue. “For trying to… I was going to protect you by leaving without telling you. I told myself it was for you and it was partly for you but it was also…” I stop. Breathe. “I’ve been carrying this alone for a month and before that I carried other things alone and it’s become habit. The default. And I know the default is wrong here, I’ve known it was wrong for days, I just…”
I stop again.
“Didn’t know how to put it down?” Tristan asks. Not finishing my sentence, confirming it.
“Yes,” I say.
“You figured it out,” Jack adds.
“Ryan intercepted me along the riverside route in thedead of night.”
“You came back through the door,” Ryan replies. He looks at me with the expression that is patient and present and no longer entirely restrained. “You came back through the door. That was you.”
I hold that. “Okay.”
Jack makes a sound that is somewhere between a laugh and a breath. “She keeps saying okay.”
“It’s a good word,” I point out.
“It’s a great word,” he agrees. “We’ve decided we like it.”
