Roan

Mist is tired, stumbling over loose rocks, while Shadow’s head hangs low with exhaustion when we finally reach the cabin in the blue of evening. We stop just outside the trees.

Always good to stay outside of range, assess the situation, make sure things are clear before moving in.

The voice of the Gray Man is a habit, but no longer an identity.

There’s smoke coming from the chimney, the shutters are open wide, and the windows are cracked. Someone has moved into my home.

My nostrils flare and my neck feels hot with primal possessiveness—this is my cabin, the place I want to bring Lucy to!

I calm myself by settling into stillness in the lee of a tree, breathing quietly and willing my clenched muscles to relax. I won’t do anything until I know who’s inside and what they’re up to. It could be a family, people in need of protection…or evil men in need of death.

I drop Mist’s reins, ground tying him. My wolf noses me as I squat, weapon drawn, watching for any sign of movement.

Darkness spreads across the overgrown grass in the clearing, and a twinge at the neglected look of the place tightens the skin around my eyes. Signaling Shadow to sit and wait, I work my way through the trees around the edge of the clearing, trying to see in through the windows and get a glimpse of who’s broken in.

Lucy stands up as suddenly as a jack-in-the-box in the window frame, and she’s shaking out a sheet. The ruddy light from the stove falls on her pale gold skin, and a lantern she’s lit catches in her blue-black hair.

My heart thunders as loud as the roar of a train going through a tunnel as I watch her put the sheet on the mattress, and then fluff a pair of pillows.

My throat is dry, my tongue swollen in my mouth. All the words I want to say, all the ways I want to cry her name are trapped inside me—and I fight my muteness, opening my mouth to call out; but when I try, only a whisper sears my paralyzed throat. I want to run to her, but my muscles are locked in place as I fight for breath.

She vanishes for a moment and I crane my neck to see her pulling the rabbit skin blanket off the couch. She throws it across the sheets and with a satisfied smile, crawls onto it, disappearing from view below the level of the open windows.

I swallow to clear my sandpapery throat.

My vision of that golden light, the experience of that loving Presence, the intensity of Lucy in my arms, that tiny pulsing light in the depths of her belly—was any of it real?

Phil’s parting words when we left the cave reverberate through my mind. “You got what you came for, Winterboy. But knowing something is never enough. You have to do things differently, too.”

I am changed, if I believe I am.

I belong to the light, if my actions follow the blaze.

I am loved and capable of loving, if I live it.

My vulnerability terrifies me. Lucy holds the power to redeem or destroy me.

Fear never cloaked me like this as I approached an armed camp of skinheads because I didn’t care about the outcome.

If Lucy sends me away, or if I’m not brave enough to go to her, only the Gray Man will remain.

I don’t want to be the Gray Man anymore. I want to be Roan Winters, father of the child in Lucy’s belly, husband to the woman I admire and adore, brother to my best friend, a son to his mother. A family man.

I return to Mist and untack him, turning him loose to graze in the rich grass of the cabin’s front yard, pumping water into an old bucket for him and Shadow.

My animals tended to, I cross to the cabin. Closing my eyes and drawing strength from the source of light and energy inside me, I slip off my moccasins on the porch and open the door. The hinges creak, and I look across the cabin into the bedroom, waiting to see if Lucy has woken.

She hasn’t.

Lucy’s lying face down, her arms spread wide on the blanket as if to embrace all the sensations of the silky fur. I pad across the warm room, reveling in the crackling fire.

“Lucy.” I touch her shoulder, and still she doesn’t wake. How could she come out here, alone, and sleep so soundly she doesn’t even hear an intruder?

My heart jolts at the reality of her vulnerability.

Lucy and our child need me to protect them.

Resolve hardens in me. The Gray Man has his uses, and protection is one of them.

“Lucy.” I shake her shoulder this time, and she opens her eyes at last.

“Roan.” There is no surprise on her face, only a beaming smile, the same smile she greeted me with when she appeared in my vision.

My heart shatters into a thousand pieces, and they all cry her name. Apparently, a heart can break with happiness as easily as despair.

I sit beside her on the bed, draw her up into my arms, and kiss her.

Her hair smells like strawberries. She tastes of longing, but also a tangy bitterness, suffering that has to do with her pregnancy.

“I’m sorry I left you.” My voice is as rusty as the door hinges from lack of use. “I can’t say it enough.”

“You hurt me worse than losing my finger.” She sits up and holds my gaze. “I get that you did it out of love, though. I know it.”

“I didn’t lie when I told you I was broken. But something happened that healed me.” My voice still keeps trying to stop. Words are hard for me to find, and it’s so frustrating when my mind is racing.

Lucy reaches up and touches my lips. “I dreamed that we made love here,” she gestures around the humble cabin, “and I believed that you’d return to this place, so I came.”

I sink into her warm brown eyes, and her luscious lashes sweep down to hide them. I squeeze her tighter. “We met here in this cabin. And everything was…” My throat closes. My voice is gone, just when I need to tell her how much I love her, when I need to tell her that I’m changed.

“It’s okay. The old Lucy Luciano would have held onto her pride and kicked your ass, but I’ve changed too.” She snuggles deeper into my arms, rubbing her silky head against my chest, sliding her clever little fingers up and down my buckskins, caressing my body beneath them. I’m kindling under her hands as they build a fire, and it warms me enough that my throat can open.

“I love you, Lucy.”

“I know you do.” She nods. “I know how you feel. I always did. That’s why it was so frustrating that…you wouldn’t admit it.”

“Bad things happened that scared me. I believed that I couldn’t love you the way you deserved, and that I didn’t deserve your love either.” I stroke her hair, and the curls spring under my hand, bouncy and full of life as my Lucy always is. But she’s more subdued now, her energy pulled inward as she grows our baby, lending it her strength. She has so much to give.

Lucy plays with a piece of fringe on my shirt, and the way she rolls the leather between her fingertips makes me long for her, but first I owe her my story. I owe her words I’ve never spoken to anyone.

She listens quietly, holding me, as I tell her about my muteness, how keeping secrets became an identity, and how difficult it is to speak, even now. I tell her about my grandfather: how he allowed me to be given away when my mother died, and how he took me back later to shape me, with his anger and hatred, into the man he wanted. Lucy rests her chin on my chest, her warm brown eyes shining acceptance. My throat aches, trying to close again, the bands of silence tightening—but I draw strength from Lucy and cough, forcing my voice to go on, to tell Lucy everything.

I suck in a deep breath. “On my eighteenth birthday, I decided to get a drink at a bar. I wanted to feel like a man.” I hold Lucy’s gaze, and the love in her eyes lets me go on. “Three guys jumped me as I left, bigoted shitkickers telling me to go back to the reservation. I fought back, hard. One of them cracked his head on the curb, and died. I went to jail. Five years, for manslaughter.”

Lucy squeezes me so hard that my lungs empty. “It’s okay, you didn’t do it on purpose.”

Her words are an ice pick to my chest. “Actually, Lucy, I did. I wanted him dead. I wanted them all dead.” My voice is monotone…the words of the Gray Man. I swallow. “Since I left you I’ve done a lot more killing. A lot.”

“How much?” Her voice is a whisper.

I shift Lucy in my lap, fumbling the brass buckle of my belt open, draw the leather through the loops that hold it in place, and hand her the scarred length. She frowns at the rows of hashmarks. “So many, Roan?” Her eyes meet mine, and widen.“You’re the Gray Man.”

I cringe at that name on her lips and nod, afraid to meet her eyes. “It was the only thing I had after leaving you.”

Lucy reaches out and takes my chin in her hand, forcing my head up, her gaze holding mine. “We’re in a war, Roan, and you’re a warrior.” She pulls me in for a kiss, and I melt in her acceptance of me—darkness, scars, and all.

“So now you understand why I didn’t want to get involved with you. Nothing I did ever worked out, except for my friendship with JT. I should have taken that as a sign that things were turning around, that the Lucianos coming into my life was the beginning of something better.”

“Even if that meant the Scorch Flu?”

“Even then.” I heft her closer and stroke her, sliding a hand down her back, around her ass, cupping her firm butt. I spread my other fingers wide over our baby. “And I’m so happy you’re pregnant.”

“You know?” Lucy’s eyes go wide. I kiss her sweet mouth.

“I saw it in the vision.” I kiss her again. “Our baby showed up as a little light that flickered brighter when I kissed it.” I hold her belly gently, massaging her firm, slim waist, my heart so full. “Now tell me how you know things, too.”