Page 209 of These Tears

He looks at the crossbow, then returns to my face. This time, he looks at me for a beat longer. More carefully.

The thought that follows is colder than the metal under my palms.

Doors. Keys. Distance. Blood.

His voice cleaves straight through a memory: I’m a sick man. You’re the prey. There’s nowhere for you to run.

My spine realigns.

I am not prey.

My fingers clench the weapon tighter.

His eyes flick down to my hands again, to the bolt track and my finger still too close to the trigger.

A darkness settles in his eyes as they lift back to mine for the final time.

‘Hand me the crossbow, Leah,’ he says quietly.

35

Panic reignites so fast my finger twitches against the trigger.

One bolt.

His chest is right in front of it. If I pull, there are no more locked doors, no more rules – the one plate, one cup, one bed, one nightmare. It ends.

I might actually walk away from this place. Might.

His shoulders lower and his hands fall loose at his sides as he searches my eyes.

When he takes one step towards me, my arms jerk the weapon higher, centring the bolt on his chest. His boot stops on the edge of the shovelled path.

It feels as if he’s stomped on my lungs.

There’s a faint, broken sound in his breathing. I recognise it with a sick twist: the same ragged rasp I heard when he caught me in the forest, when violence and want began bleeding into each other. When something feral took over.

‘If you’re going to do it,’ he murmurs gruffly, ‘you’d better aim well enough. You won’t get another chance.’ Everything narrows to the line between us, the weight of the crossbow in my hands, the history in his eyes. ‘I promise you that.’

There is no way to run until I show you how, he’d said at the petrol station. My eyes slide beyond him where Anders’ and Inga’s snowmobiles have carved two long lines outwards.

‘Where’s my passport?’ The sentence quivers out as I lock eyes with him again.

For a moment, something almost tender feathers over his face.

His gaze flicks to the bolt aimed at his heart, then back to my eyes, the hold long enough for the silence between us to coagulate into something unbearable. His expression pulls taut as though letting me go might cost him more than keeping me.

‘Slot behind the antlers,’ he murmurs. ‘Above the entrance. Your phone’s in the bedroom drawer.’

He takes another step towards me. ‘Shoot, Leah.’

I’m shaking enough for my common sense to take control of my hand. It screams that he saved me just now, that I’ve seen the way his past gutted him and rebuilt him into this nightmare of a man.

Shoot him. Walk away. Go home.

The thoughts should fit together.

They don’t – his blood would forever be on my hands even if home reclaimed me.