My left shoulder screams. The rotator cuff. It’s an old tear, a souvenir from a door breach gone wrong three years ago. It never healed right. I never gave it time. Now, with every upswing, it grinds.
I ignore it. Pain equals information. It tells me the machine runs hot. It tells me I’m still alive.
I finish the pile. A mound of split wood lies in the snow, enough to heat the house for a week if the grid goes down.
I drive the axe into the chopping block with a final, resonant thud. It buries deep, quivering like a tombstone.
I stand there for a moment, ribs working like bellows, letting the sweat freeze on my skin. Letting the cold numb the ache in my shoulder and the ache in my blood.
I grab my shirt, wiping the sweat from my face, and turn.
She’s there.
Not at the window. At the door.
She stands on the small covered porch, wrapped in a thick, gray wool blanket I keep in the linen closet. Her feet shoved into her boots, unlaced, the tongues flapping loose. Her hair forms a dark, messy halo around her face.
She stares at me. Wide-eyed, dark, unblinking.
She takes it all in: the steam rising from my shoulders, the sweat slicking my skin, the scars mapping the history of my bad decisions. She looks at the jagged line over my ribs. She looks at the burn mark on my forearm.
She doesn’t look away when I catch her.
That’s the thing about Iris Kincaid. She doesn’t flinch. She looks at the blood. She looks at the wound. She looks at the monster and dares it to blink first.
I walk toward her. The snow crunches under my boots, a loud, intrusive sound.
“You’re up early.”
My voice grates rough, unused, and hungry. It scrapes the silence.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
Her voice sounds quiet, but it carries in the thin air.
“The wind.”
“It’s just wind. It won’t break the glass. The glass is rated for Category 5 hurricanes and .308 sniper fire.”
“I know.”
She clutches the blanket tighter, pulling it up to her chin.
“It’s the isolation. It’s loud in a different way. The silence is loud.”
I stop at the bottom of the steps, putting us eye-level. I can smell her from here: vanilla soap again, cut with the faint lanolin warmth of the wool blanket. It hits me harder than the cold. I swallow down a sudden, sharp surge of desire.
“It’s safe. Silence is safety. Noise is a threat.”
“Is it?”
She steps forward, coming to the edge of the porch railing. She looks down at me, her gaze clinical now, stripping away the bravado.
“Your shoulder.”
I tighten my hand on the shirt.
“What about it?”
