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“Uh, Natta here is PWI. She was the lead investigator on the case with the crazy guys at the pole, who were capturing women and raping them?”
“Oh, right,” I said. “There was a case.”
“Yeah, I testified,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “I did a lot of one-on-one work with Natta.”
“Oh,” I said in a different voice, looking her over.
“No,” she said. “Not like that.” She sighed. “I’m leaving.”
Holston furrowed his brow. “So, why are you here?”
“It’s… can we pretend I’m not?” said Natta with a too-wide smile. “I’ll go, and you two can…” She gestured. “Have a baby together.”
“Well, she’s having a baby,” he said. “We’re not really…” He glanced at me. His jaw worked. Then he noticed the note Natta was clutching to her chest. “What’s that?”
“This?” She looked at it, and she crumpled it up. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“Wait, were you…?” He drew back. “Was it like… was it like an I-like-you note?”
“Goodbye,” said Natta, pushing past him, shoving him into the hallway to get past him.
He let her. He collapsed into the wall and stood there, blinking, looking shell shocked.
She rounded a bend in the hallway, went out of sight, and then I heard the door to the house shutting in the distance.
I looked down at my feet, clasping my hands together.
Holston peered into her wake. “I maybe was oblivious to that. She was kind of… now that I think about it, I should have noticed, but I was just so…” He looked back at me. “I mean,you.”
I lifted a shoulder. “You want to go after her?”
His eyes widened. “Is that what you want me to do? You want me to go after another woman the morning after you and I…? While I still smell like you? Is that what this pretending thing is?”
I looked away, a lump rising in my throat. I shook my head. “No. No, I don’t want you to do that at all.”
He let out a harsh laugh. “Fuck. This was such a mistake.”
Tears started to stream out of my eyes.
He came into the room and threw himself down on a couch in there. He bowed his head and clutched both of his antlers.
We were both quiet.
Except, eventually, I started sobbing.
He looked up at me, then. He bounded off the couch and wrapped me up in his arms. “Shei?”
I buried my face against his chest and clung to him.
He ran one of his big, thick palms up and down my spine, making soft, soothing noises.
This just made me cry more.
The harder I cried, the closer he clutched me, and when I finally managed to quiet myself enough to pull away, I looked up at him, and his eyes were shining too.
I touched his face. “I’m messing everything up.”
“Hey, no, don’t… you don’t have to do that.”
