Page 221 of These Tears

I brace one hand against the splintered frame.

Glancing over my shoulder, I find him no longer folded into himself. The video is still playing beside him, picking away shame, piece by piece.

His attention follows me as I turn, then snags somewhere lower.

‘Is that his name on you?’

Heat punishes my neck and ears in an instant.

The tattoo.

‘Yes.’ It comes out on an exhale.

He counts another few breaths, eyes still fixed on my hip. A kind of warmth loosens my ribs. Of all the things he had been drowning in, he’s now thinking about my stupid tattoo instead.

‘Does it mean anything?’ he asks.

‘Nothing,’ I say firmly.

His eyes lift to mine.

I glance at the script inked beneath his arm. ‘What does yours mean?’

A beat passes.

‘Nothing.’

Same old dance.

I wrench my gaze from him and step into the hallway with my soul coiled beneath my collar, leaving the door behind me open and battered. I leave the camera with him too, along with the hatchet I used to break through the locks he had put between himself and the world.

And I head into the kitchen.

Because wounds need cleaning. Dangerous men need clothing. And any further choices need to be preceded by something liquid, strong, and held in a glass.

One glass.

37

After tending to my own scratches that the splintered wood left on my forearm, I leave the first-aid kit on the table and head for the yard. I don’t know how long he’ll need behind that door, or what he’ll decide to be when he finally comes out.

Outside, the world has rearranged itself in just half an hour.

The snow is no longer an endless white cage. Blood marks it in vicious, scattered streaks.

I pass the crossbow abandoned where he threw it, half-buried beside the churned-up signs of our struggle; a weapon that had been a choice and then a warning and then nothing at all.

Beyond it, the smokehouse sits like the only black wound in all that brightness.

For the first time since I woke up here, the landscape doesn’t look like something built to keep me trapped.

It doesn’t even look like something survived despite the current setting.

It’s where I’ve found my grit. Where he’s found his demons. Where those demons met mine and they stripped both of us down to whatever was left underneath.

The cold nips at me through my clothes as I stand there for a moment, allowing the truth to settle in my chest. Then my eyes take in the mess around me, and practicality wins.

I tidy up as much as I can. It takes me a short while, my eyes darting towards the treelines – now painfully aware of the lurking beasts behind them.