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"She might not want that."

"She might not. But I'd rather have her uncomfortable and safe than comfortable and dead." Yvonne's voice softens slightly. "You know I wouldn't ask if I thought there was another option."

I know she wouldn't. And I know, underneath the practical argument about safety, that some part of me has already decided I'm not leaving that cabin unattended after last night, after the hand-holding walk home and the honesty in the dark and the way she looked at me like I was something worth trusting.

Zoey doesn't argue when I bring it up that evening, just studies the map I spread across her kitchen table.

"Okay," she says. "You should stay."

"You're sure."

"I'm sure I don't want to be alone in this cabin with that many cameras pointed at it." She meets my eyes, steady despite the fear I can still see underneath. "And I trust you. That's not nothing, considering how I feel about trusting people right now."

I move my few belongings in that night, not much, a duffel bag and a rifle I keep more out of habit than expectation, and the guest room turns out smaller than either of us anticipated. It doesn't matter. What matters is the way the cabin shifts once there are two people living in it instead of one, coffee made for two in the morning, dishes done together at night, the particular ease of moving around someone without needing to explain every step.

I catch myself enjoying it more than I expect to. Watching her hum off-key while she cooks, badly, some dish she insists is simple and somehow burns anyway. Learning she reads until well past midnight most nights, the lamp in her room still glowing long after mine's gone dark. Small things. Domestic things. The kind of routine I gave up on ever wanting for myself a long time ago.

It scares me more than the cameras do, if I'm honest about it.

Three nights in, I find her still awake in the sitting room well past midnight.

"Can't sleep?" I ask, settling onto the bench across from her, the same spot I sat in the night she asked me to tell her something real.

"Not really. Every time I close my eyes I think about those cameras. All those hours someone spent studying exactly where I'd be standing." She pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders. "It's strange. I spent years getting photographed constantly and never felt anything close to this unsettled. This feels different."

"Because it is different. Paparazzi want a picture. This is something else."

"I know. That's what scares me. I keep thinking about what you said in the woods. That you wouldn't let anything happen to me."

"I meant it."

"I know you did. That's the part I can't stop thinking about." She sets the book aside entirely, giving up the pretense of reading it. "Nobody's meant something like that for me in a long time. Maybe ever, not really. Everyone around me is paid to protect me, paid to care, and I've never known how to tell the difference between real concern and a job description."

"This isn't a job description."

"I know that too. I think that's what scares me most."

I don't have a good answer for that, so I just sit with her in the quiet, the fire popping low, the cabin settled around us in the particular stillness of a house at rest. She shifts slightly on the armchair, close enough now that if I leaned forward even a little, the distance between us would disappear entirely.

"Kellan." My name, soft, almost testing.

"Yeah."

"What are we doing? I don't mean the surveillance, or the danger. I mean this. Whatever's happening between us."

The honest answer sits right at the edge of my mouth, close enough to taste. I want to tell her that I haven't felt anything like this in seventeen years, that watching her learn to breathe again on this mountain has cracked something open in me I thought was sealed shut for good. I want to tell her that every instinct I have says to close this distance and never look back.

I lean forward instead of answering out loud, close enough now that I can feel her breath change, close enough that every rational argument I've built against this starts collapsing under the weight of wanting something I've spent years convincing myself I couldn't afford.

Her eyes drop to my mouth. Mine do the same to hers. And for one long, suspended moment, I let myself believe this could actually happen, that I could have this without it costing either of us everything.

Then the old fear surfaces, sharp and familiar, the memory of my parents' bodies and everything that loving someone eventually costs, and I pull back before either of us crosses the last few inches between us.

"It's late, you should sleep."

"Right," she says quietly. "Goodnight, Kellan."

She gets up and heads toward her room without waiting for a response, and I sit alone by the dying fire afterward, furious at myself. Twice now I've let myself get close enough to want this completely, and twice now I've pulled back at the exact moment it mattered most.