Page 50

Fuck.

This woman.

Lyla still stands near the truck, arms crossed, watching Clair instead of me. Her expression does not soften exactly. Lyla does not do soft when strategy is involved.

But after a second, she gives me one small nod.

Not approval. Not yet, but something closer to it.

Good.

I look back at Clair and nod.

Again.

That night, camp quiets down in pieces, the way it always does now.

Voices fade first, one by one, swallowed by the trees and the dark. Joanie’s carries the longest, sharp and bright over the low murmur of everyone settling in, until even she runs out of chaos for the night. The fire burns low in the center of camp, orange light licking over the dirt, the tires, and the sides of the vehicles circled like a wall against the woods.

Then quiet settles over us.

Not peace. Never that.

Just the closest thing we get.

I sit in the driver’s seat of my truck with the door shut and the window cracked. October air slips through the gap and cuts across my face, carrying the smell of damp leaves and smoke. The cab smells like old leather, oil, gunpowder, and the faint sweetness of the strawberry-frosted Pop-Tarts left in here because Mom decided my truck needed “emergency snacks.”

A few tools rattle softly in the passenger-side door pocket whenever the wind nudges the truck. My bow rests within reach. The hatchet sits on the console. My notebook lies open in my lap, pen in my hand.

Blank page.

I stare at it like the words might crawl out on their own if I threaten them hard enough.

They don’t.

Clair got free today.

Once.

Not clean. Not fast. Not without freezing first.

But she got free.

And Lyla saw it.

Still, the training knife at her throat was not the only thing that made her freeze.

Clair’s flinch rises behind my eyes. Her fingers tightening around the crowbar in the jewelry store. Her face every time I step back and she thinks distance means rejection.

The hurt she tries to hide. The doubt. Like my distance confirms every ugly thing already carved into her. Too much. Too broken. Too hard to want without regret.

The pen bends under my fingers.

That is the problem with silence.

I thought keeping my want quiet made me safe for her. No pressure. No expectation. No hands reaching for more than she was ready to give.

But silence leaves space.