Chapter Eight

That’s how I end up at Mrs. Lawson’s door again empty-handed. Luca stands a few yards back, watching to make sure no one from the Last Stop comes around. It makes me shiver to imagine those bodies—how many were there? They’ll be hard by now, lying on the pavement. When will someone find them? It might not be until tomorrow at ten when the cook opens for lunch.

There’s a move in the white lace. I’m sure Mrs. Lawson sees Luca. There’s a longer pause before she opens the door. Her eyes narrow as she glances over my shoulder.

Luca normally looks terrifying, but with those bruises, the blood, it’s an especially scary sight.

“It’s okay, Mrs. Lawson.”

Her harrumph says she knows what she knows. “Come inside, child.”

As soon as she shuts the door, she turns the deadbolt. “I’m calling the police. Don’t matter what he takes from your place or if he trashes it. You and the child are both inside here, and he’s not coming inside. Not without meeting the side of my baseball bat.”

I give her a kiss on the cheek, and she blinks in surprise.

She’ll be one of the few things I’ll miss about Alaska. “He’s not going to hurt me.”

He’s not going to hurt Delilah, which is the important thing. What he does to me alone, in the dark, when I’m his bait…that might hurt. Not the kind of pain he has now, from being hit and kicked. The kind inside you, in places you don’t know about until they’re rubbed raw.

The hallway is still dark, the door still open.

Delilah’s still asleep, her dark curls stark against her curved cheek.

I pull her warm body into my arms, cuddling her close. She makes a sound almost like a squeak before nuzzling her face against me. She wears the warmest wool nightgown I could find in preparation for these little walks, her hands and feet covered with the same thick material. It helps even inside the apartments, where cracks in the insulation make it impossible to keep warm.

Mrs. Lawson blocks the doorway. “I’m not gonna see you again, am I?”

I can’t ever come back here, even if I escape Luca again. “I’ll miss you.”

She shakes her head. “If you ever need to run away from that man outside, you call me first.”

My tears prick. When I imagined running all those years in Harmony Hills, I never thought anyone would help me. They told me stories about the sin outside. That didn’t scare me half as much as the calloused disregard. We were a community, they said. We took care of our own.

They didn’t take care of me, though. They hurt me. And I’ve found little pockets of community all along the way, shining like diamonds in the gutter.

“Thank you,” I say, my voice thick.

She steps aside. “I’ll miss that little angel, besides.”

The little angel doesn’t stir even when the cold night air touches her cheek. I say goodbye to Mrs. Lawson not with a word, but with a long look that tells a thousand warnings—the kind that women who’ve known violent men can share.

Luca’s face looks worse under the flickering lamplight, more wild. He gazes down at Delilah’s sleeping face with an expression I can’t read. “We’ll stay the night,” he says. “Our flight leaves in the morning.”

I don’t know whether Delilah’s sleeping face gives us the reprieve, but I take it. Keeping her warm inside my apartment is hard enough. Out here it’s below freezing.

“Thank you.” I cross the small walkway quickly, slipping into my apartment with practiced ease. Luca follows behind, glancing around before locking us in.

Her little bedroll is still laid out in the one bedroom of the apartment, where she usually sleeps. She curls up against the pink and purple stars on the pillow, arms immediately wrapping around her stuffed unicorn. In some ways she’d had to live like me—in a bare room, with only a thin comforter as her mattress. In other ways her life is completely different, filled with color, with wonder. With love.

I turn to leave her and almost run into Luca.

“Dark hair,” he says, but he’s not looking at Delilah.

He’s looking at my long blonde locks.

Delilah’s curls crown her face, a beautiful raven color that I’ve never seen before. Leader Allen had already grayed by the time I knew him. I like to think it’s hers alone, that she didn’t even have a father. That’s what my brother believes. That it was a virgin birth, the baby given to me by God. Only despite what I’d rather believe, I know the truth.

“It’s beautiful,” I say. “She’s beautiful.”

He nods. “Did you love him?”

I feared Leader Allen. I despised him. In a sick way maybe there was love too, in the form of necessity. The way you love air, unthinking, because you need it to live. I didn’t fight him when he taught me the divine worship he wanted. Because I had no choice? Or because I was brainwashed? It doesn’t matter. “I don’t regret what happened. It gave me her.”

He leaves the room, and I follow, shutting the door carefully so we don’t disturb her. I’m already schooling my mind to accept whatever happens next. Whatever form of payment Luca desires. It’s not so very different from Leader Allen. I need Luca to survive just as much.

In the luggage I find the white plastic box with FIRST AID written on it. “Let me take care of those cuts for you.”

He gives me a strange look. “They don’t hurt.”

That seems impossible, but then maybe a man as tough as him doesn’t feel pain like regular people. “It’ll get infected.”

After a hesitation he nods. I find a swab of alcohol and tear it from the packet. He stiffens when I approach, and I freeze. It’s like walking up to a dog who’s already bitten, who’ll do it again. But he doesn’t resist when I step close.

My hand reaches up to his neck.

He lowers his head.

The alcohol must sting against the open wounds, but I’m the one who sucks in a breath. Remembered pain. His blood drenches the little square cloth quickly. I work through two more packets before I’m done. He must bleed every time he fights.

“Who does this for you at home? When you fight in the ring?”

His voice has gone low and rough. “No one.”

This close I can feel his breaths against my temple, his heat warming my front. The apartment isn’t that much warmer than out there, especially outside the bedroom, but he feels like a furnace. When I turn away, my breast brushes against his arm. Embarrassment heats my cheeks as I find some antibacterial cream.

He stood still for the sting of the alcohol, but he pulls back from the soothing cream. It surprises me more than him when I give him a stern look. “Hold still.”

His lip curls up in amusement. “Yes, ma’am.”

I use a cotton swab to dab the cream on his cuts. “Thank you.”

He looks at me through slitted eyes, almost slumberous. “Why are you thanking me?”

“You saved me.”

He makes a coarse sound. “You really have no idea, do you?”

I turn away, fussing with the little tube of cream. “What?”

“How many men I’d kill for you.”

My eyes go wide. It’s a horrible measurement, the number of deaths that would be on his hands, the amount of violence he’d commit. And yet it’s a strange comfort too, knowing he would do that for me.

I throw away the bloody pieces and pack up the first-aid kit, using the excuse not to meet his eyes. “When will we go?”

“Tomorrow. Well, today. When you’ve had a chance to rest. I’ll come to the door at noon.”

Then I have to look at him. “Where will you go until then?”

“I’ll sleep in my car.”

“It’s freezing out there!”

“That’s where I slept last night.”

I try not to think about him outside my apartment while I didn’t know. How long has he been in Alaska, waiting for me, watching? And why does the thought make me feel safe instead of scared? “You can stay here.”

His eyes narrow. “With you?”

“I mean it’s nothing comfortable. Just the floor. But there’s a blanket. And basic heating.”

I’m not offering a blanket or heating. His car would probably be more comfortable on both counts. I’m offering my body. Maybe I should fight him, but I’m about to put the life of myself and my daughter into his hands. I want him to be as sympathetic to us as possible.

He studies me. Does he see my fear? My desire to please him? My mind is a mass of scripture notes. Already I’m trying to think of what he’d want. It was one thing when I planned to run away. Now that I’m hitching our fates to his, it’s in my best interest to make him happy.

I dig out the blanket I sleep on, which was rolled up for travel, from my suitcase. Only when I throw it out over the carpet do I realize how pathetic it looks. Sleeping on the floor seems strange to most people, but it’s all I’ve ever done. The few times we stopped at a motel, I could never get comfortable on a bed. I ended up on the floor by the end of the night.

“I hope this is okay,” I whisper, flushed.

His gaze roams past the sad makeshift bed to the corner, where the carpet curls up. To the ceiling, where leaks have turned the white plaster black. “It’s not okay,” he says gruffly.

My hands clench together. “I know Delilah deserves better.”

His eyes narrow. “And you.”

I’m not sure what I deserve, but it can’t be good. By the rules of Harmony Hills I’d go to hell for leaving, for working in a bar. And of course for helping them fight Leader Allen. And by the rules of this society, what little I’ve been able to quilt together from scraps of conversations, what Leader Allen did to me makes me a freak. I don’t belong anywhere.

All I can manage is a shrug.

He gestures to the bed. “What do you think is going to happen tonight?”

That’s a loaded question. I don’t want to whisper my fears aloud. I’m afraid I might be right. “Whatever you want?”

My voice curls up at the end, turning it into a question.

He grunts. “Get underneath the blanket.”

This part I’m used to. It wasn’t so cold in Harmony Hills, but I know how to lie on my back, how to squeeze my eyes shut. I know how to stay completely silent no matter what he does.

There’s a soft rush of air as he lowers himself next to me. I feel his size like a looming shadow in the room, as large as a mountain. I’m a trickling valley stream, about to be crushed. Except he doesn’t lay his body over mine. He lies next to me. He pulls me close, until I’m half on top of his body, my head pillowed by his chest.

“Sleep,” he says.

My ear rests right by his heart. I can hear the steady thump thump. In contrast my heart beat’s a mile a minute. My eyes are wide open, looking at the plain white apartment wall. A wall I’ve seen a thousand times but never like this. Never cradled in the arms of a man who could crush me.

I’ve slept with a man before. The proof of that is in the bedroom.

But I’ve never slept with a man before.

I bite my lip. “How—”

“Go to sleep, little bird.”

It’s impossible. He smells like the outside, like ice and pine—with a metallic undercurrent that I think might be blood. His chest moves steadily with his breath. It’s like resting my head on the ocean.

And I never sleep well. It’s not the carpet that bothers me. It’s softer than the whitewashed wood slats in Harmony Hills. The memories haunt me most at night, when my hands aren’t busy, when my mind is still. That’s when I remember what Leader Allen did to me when everyone thought we were praying.

Luca’s hand moves over my hair, brushing softly, petting. The rhythm combines with the motion of his body, lulling me into a kind of trance. His muscles are brick hard. They shouldn’t be comfortable at all, but he’s hot. Burning. A rare comfort in a cold frontier.

I press my face into him, my very own pink and purple pillow. My stuffed unicorn in the form of a hard-muscled man. My hand clenches a fistful of T-shirt, holding him there.

“Shh,” he murmurs. “I’m watching over you. I’ll keep you safe.”

That’s the last thing I hear before the night falls away, replaced only with deep, dark waters. They swirl around me in an endless tide, back and forth, dreamless and warm.