We’d fallen into a surprisingly comfortable routine. I now had a car, despite my protestations that it was too much. Grover insisted it was a junker, not even worth its parts. But safe—he hurried to reassure me. I was pretty sure it couldn’t be both and that he was lying about how much it was worth, but he wouldn’t take no for an argument. And every time I talked about looking for an apartment, he just shrugged his shoulders and said there was no hurry.

I was starting to think Grover had been lonely before we moved in. And yeah, going from having three sons living with you to a completely empty nest and no partner? That sounded incredibly lonely to me. Any time I thought of Simon getting old enough to leave me, it made me shudder.

That was a problem for the future, though. A lot could and would change between then and now. And when it was time, I wanted to support him as he stepped out into the world, just as Grover supported his boys.

Besides, when Simon and I did move out, I wanted it to be a proper house or apartment, a secure home. Not like our last place. But that took money, and I was still just working at the gas station for minimum wage. I couldn’t stay there forever, but I felt as if I was still getting my feet back under me after getting knocked over by Mark’s attack.

It was frustrating how slowly Mark’s case was moving. Mark had spent six weeks in the hospital, which had delayed starting the proceedings, and as soon as the judge set bail, he’d paid it. As far as we knew, he’d gone home, but we hadn’t seen a hint of him, and he had no idea where we lived. Grover had found me a good lawyer, and I hadn’t had to face Mark since the incident. That wouldn’t hold forever, though. They’d already gone through the pre-trial hearings, and I’d been granted an order of protection, which didn’t help me feel any safer, but made me feel as if I was actually doing something.

I was cutting up carrots for dinner when Simon came bouncing in. “Dad, is Darius coming over for dinner?”

“Not tonight, buddy. It’s Friday. Family dinner is on Sunday.”

“But not this week because Mr. Grover is going fishing, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“Why not?” Grover asked, setting down a load of poles and boxes that I assumed held camping and fishing gear. “You’ll still be here. The boys will be in town. You shouldn’t stop on my account.”

Simon saved me from answering. “But it’s not family dinner without you, Mr. Grover!”

Not to mention the fact that without him as a buffer, I would feel incredibly awkward around Jeremy. Even more so than usual, I mean. Darius was great—he and I got along fine, and he and Simon got along even better. Darius had practically adopted him as a little brother, and ever since he’d brought his tattoo supplies over one night and let Simon play with tattooing an orange (under careful supervision), he’d swiftly won Simon’s favoritism, though he still looked at Jeremy with big, hero-worshiping eyes. We hadn’t seen Camden since that first night, though. That seemed to be the norm for him, from what everyone said.

“You’ve got the boys’ numbers, right?” Grover said. “We’ll most likely be out of service, and I don’t want you to be stuck if you have any trouble.”

“Everything will be fine,” I said, but Grover gave me what I’d come to call his “dad look.” I had a long way to go before I’d leveled up my own dad look to his intensity. I sighed. “Yes, I have both Darius and Jeremy’s numbers saved in case of emergency.”

Grover huffed as he bent to pick up his supplies, and I nudged Simon to go help him. Grover paused at the door and looked up at the sky. “Little gloomy,” he said. “But if it holds, that’ll be good for the fishing tomorrow. Come on, Simon.”

The house felt painfully quiet after he left, even though he wasn’t a loud man. I think Simon and I had just gotten used to having someone else around.

I hadn’t thought it would be a problem, staying alone in Grover’s house, which had come to feel like our own home. Maybe it had been more that I was determined it would be okay. That I would be okay. But something tingled in the air, setting my nerves alight. Maybe whatever it was affected Simon, too, because he was unusually quiet as we sat down to eat dinner. I kept reminding myself that Mark had no way to find us, and the house was secure, even if he did. The weather had passed gloomy and gone full-on thunderstorm, which wasn’t helping.

“How was school?” I asked, trying to draw him out.

“We did an experiment,” Simon said, a smile lighting his face. “We took coffee filters and tied strings to them, and tied the strings to little plastic men, and dropped them off the bleachers.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah! And some of them just went pffft-boom! But some of them, the parachute worked and they floated slowly to the ground!”

“That sounds like fun.”

“And next week! We’re supposed to create a kind of parachute that can protect an egg!”

I spooned some extra carrots onto his plate. “Just a parachute?”

“And a basket, I think. And we get to decorate our eggs!”

I was pretty sure his teacher knew better than to give a bunch of seven year olds raw eggs, but for the moment, I imagined a battlefield of broken Humphrey Dumpties scattered behind the bleachers.

“I’m gonna paint a face on mine and he’s going to be like rawwwr like he’s screaming. Like this, Dad—“ He stretched his face into a grimace and roared, a roar that quickly grew into a shriek as the lights around us suddenly went out with a giant flash of lightning and crash of thunder.

Simon’s chair toppled to the ground and I could hear him scrambling around the table. I stuck out a hand and I think he ran face first into it, which prompted him to scream again.

“It’s okay, bud. It’s me, I’m here. You’re okay. It’s okay. It’s just the lights.” I pulled him into my arms and held his shaking body. He wasn’t that scared of the dark, I knew. It was the shock, the strangeness of being alone here, and the fear, always in the back of our minds and our nightmares that somehow, Mark would get out and find us.

“Let me just grab my phone, okay? One minute…” Thankfully I’d set my phone next to my plate, and we had a flashlight in seconds. “Better?”

Simon nodded.

“Let’s see if we can find some more flashlights or some candles, okay?”

Simon clung to my shirt as we traipsed through the house, checking every drawer and cupboard and closet that seemed likely. Surely Grover hadn’t taken everything with him? That was ridiculous. It was equally as ridiculous that he wouldn’t have some emergency lighting in the house.

My phone beeped and a gray message box appeared on the screen. Low battery warning.

That wasn’t good.

“Daddy? Are we going to die?”

Another crash of thunder shook the house. I dropped to my knees to look Simon in the eye, trying to angle my phone so it didn’t make us look like we were in the middle of a horror film.

“No, it’s just a big storm, buddy. We’re fine. What I’m going to do is call Mr. Darius and see if he knows where the candles are, okay?” Darius was farther than Jeremy, but the safer option—for my anxiety, at least.

Simon sniffed and nodded.

I called Darius, but his phone rang several times before going to voicemail. I followed up with a text, just in case he’d only left his phone for a moment, but with the way Simon was clinging and shaking, I couldn’t count on that, so I called Jeremy next. It didn’t matter whether I made a fool of myself or just came across weird. I just needed to make my boy feel safe.

Jeremy picked up on the second ring.

“Is everything alright?”

“The power went out,” I said, stroking Simon’s hair. “Sorry, I have to be quick because my phone is dying, but do you know where your dad keeps flashlights?”

“Yeah, go into the kitchen and—“

My phone went silent.

“Jeremy? Hello?” I pulled the phone away from my head, and it didn’t light up. I pressed several buttons. Nothing. Dead.

“Daddy, I’m scared,” Simon said.

I stared at the blackness where my phone sat useless in my hand. Jeremy had said flashlights were in the kitchen, but where in the kitchen? I’d already looked.

“Hey, buddy, let’s go into the living room. We can wrap ourselves up in blankets and pretend we’re camping, okay?”

Simon didn’t seem soothed by my idea, but he followed me anyway, and I pulled him next to me on the couch, wrapping us up in blankets. As soon as we were settled, I started telling him every fairytale I could remember to keep his mind busy, and it actually seemed to work for both of us.

Until a heavy crash on the front door sent us both screaming.

“Alan? It’s Jeremy Greaves.”

Simon recovered more quickly than I did. “Mr. Jeremy!” He jumped up and ran to the door, unlocking it before I could tell him to make sure it actually was Jeremy.

Thankfully it was, though he looked like a monster from the forest, absolutely soaked and covered in a dark green jacket. He held a giant industrial sized maglight in his hand. The thing was so strong, the beam of light looked like a lightsaber.

“My phone died,” I said.

“I figured.” He pulled a smaller flashlight from a pocket in his jacket. “Would you like to hold this, Simon?”

Simon eagerly clutched the light and turned it on.

“I didn’t know if you heard me say the flashlights are under the sink in the kitchen before it cut out.”

“Nope,” I said, feeling foolish. I’d clearly checked everywhere in the kitchen except there. I followed him closely, peering underneath the sink as he crouched down to grab the flashlight. He turned and flinched when he realized how close I was. I took the flashlight and he grabbed a bag of candles.

Minutes later, the living room was decorated with candles and several flashlights lay on the coffee table for quick access. Simon still clutched the tiny light he’d claimed as his, though I convinced him to turn it off. The house was too quiet, the storm too loud, so Jeremy set his phone on the table in front of Simon and put on a classic rock playlist. It seemed a little too active to fall asleep to, but at least we could hear it over the storm.

Simon’s eyes started drifting shut within half a song, and Jeremy disappeared into the kitchen. I followed him.

He cracked the fridge open and grabbed two beers, closing it quickly to preserve the cold temperature as best he could. “Want one?” Without waiting for my answer, he slid the beer across the island at me.

The crack of the pop top was lost in the drum of rain. “Thanks for saving us,” I said. “Again.”

Jeremy’s grimace was illuminated in a flash of lightning. Did he hate being painted as a hero even when his actions were completely good?

"You would have survived," he said.

I laughed quietly, remembering how ridiculously terrified both Simon and I had been before his arrival. I leaned my back on the counter next to him. His presence was comforting. "I don't know about that. The brain has a funny way of making nightmares real in the dark."

Jeremy slid half a step away from me.

Feeling suddenly bold, I asked, "Why do you do that?" Maybe it was the shadows of the candles or the sudden relief from fears that didn't actually exist. Maybe it was the way Jeremy acted like I was the one to be afraid of, not him.

"Do what?" Jeremy took a sip from his beer, but his eyes were darting this way and that. He knew what I was talking about.

I said it aloud, though. I wasn't in the mood to let him dodge me again. "Flinch away from me. Run away. You act like I'm a snake sometimes."

"You're as dangerous as one," Jeremy said.

That prompted a real laugh out of me. "Me? I'm as dangerous as a pair of bunny slippers. You're the big bad wolf."

Jeremy's eyes suddenly locked on mine and stole my breath away. I couldn’t see their ice-cold blue in the dark, but I could imagine them. The intensity was the same, light or no.

Now he really reminded me of a big bad wolf. "You make me want things I can't have. That's what makes you dangerous."

My breath was coming in short pants now. I wanted to ask him what kind of things, but that was obvious. They were the same things that had been teasing me in the back of my mind, whispering what ifs in my sleep. "Why can't you have those things?" I asked. If it weren't for the storm, I would have whispered and the words sounded too loud in my ears, as if I had started banging on a gong, yelling at everyone that Jeremy Greaves wanted me, and I wanted him in return.

"Because I'm not worth it," Jeremy said. "I ruin everything I touch."

His words cut like a knife of sorrow. It was as if I could suddenly see the gaping wound, just slashed across his soul, and I wanted nothing more than to heal him. "What about your family? You haven't ruined it." I set my beer aside and took a small step toward him. Would he run away again?

Jeremy shook his head, but continued eyeing me warily. "Not for lack of trying. Dad's the only one keeping us together.”

I stepped closer. He still didn't move. "You told Simon you're a bad man."

Jeremy set his beer down, and I tensed, expecting him to flee, but continued my pursuit. "I am a bad man."

I reached him and slid my hands around his waist. His muscles were rock hard, and he was practically vibrating. With need? With fear? I wanted to chase any fear away, but the need could stay.

"I don't believe you," I said, and his dark eyes burned down into mine. “You told Simon good people don’t hurt others. I’m not a fan of violence, but I’d be blind if I didn’t see you are a good man. A good man who occasionally does dangerous things. You don’t like Simon saying you’re a hero. You don’t like me thanking you for saving us. But you are. You did.”

Jeremy didn’t look like a wolf anymore, he looked like the rabbit caught in the wolf’s stare, on the verge of bolting. If I didn't claim this moment, I'd lose him.

I pressed up on my tip toes and kissed him.