Page 38 of Her Wicker Guardian

For a second, I can’t answer. “Yes. Rachel stays.”

That seems to be the answer he needed.

I pick up the iPad. “Come on. Let’s see what other trouble you got into.”

He follows me toward the workshop, and that’s when I notice the greenery at his wrists. It’s still green, but several of the small leaves have curled slightly at the edges. Even the little leaf near the base of his throat looks less soft than it did this morning.

I stop, and Locke stops too. “Come here.”

He does.

I reach toward his wrist, then pause. “Can I?”

He looks at my hand. I touch my own wrist, then point toward his. His gaze follows the gesture. After a moment, he holds his wrist out toward me.

I rub one small leaf between my fingers. It isn’t dead or brittle, but it’s drier than it was this morning.

I look at the water bottle sitting on the workbench. “Did you drink?”

Locke follows my gaze. “Water.”

“Yes. Water.”

He picks up the bottle and shakes it. Empty.

So he drank it.

I touch another leaf. “Maybe drinking isn’t enough.”

Locke watches me while I look toward the hose curled beside the house, then at the sky. The sun is already dropping behind the trees, and the air will turn cold fast once it disappears. Spraying him down outside is out of the question.

“Not outside,” I tell him.

His head tilts.

My gaze goes to the kitchen door.

The practical answer is obvious. The emotional one isn’t.

My fingers press into the iPad case. Beyond that door is my kitchen, the little hallway, and upstairs is my bedroom. These rooms have been mine since I moved in. Nobody comes into them unless I decide they can.

Locke looks from the house to me. “Rachel?”

“I’m thinking.”

He waits.

I have warm water inside. But letting him use the shower means letting him through that door and upstairs into rooms that have belonged only to me.

A bird calls somewhere beyond the workshop. Locke turns toward the sound, then back to me. The kitchen door is unlocked and only a few yards away. He could walk through it.

He doesn’t. He waits for me, and that decides it.

“Okay.”

I walk toward the house. Locke follows me as far as the kitchen door, then stops at the bottom step.

I put my hand on the doorknob and look back at him. “You can come in.”