Because I had touched a match, and the house had not burned down.
Maybe that is why I want to touch it again.
August shifts beside me, one little foot kicking out from under the blanket. His hair sticks to his forehead. His mouth hangs open in deep sleep, and Blue Rex is trapped under one arm like a hostage with job security. The night-light paints his cheek silver.
Safe.
For one second, I let myself believe the word.
It doesn’t last long.
Safe is too big for one room. Too big for one night. Too big for a lock, a biker on the couch, and men posted somewhere in the trees. Jeremy is still out there. Women like Ruthanne Peck are still out there. Pearly Gates is still out there with smilesand hymns and whatever secrets made Cider go pale over an old photograph.
Sophie is at Paradise Falls now. Or on her way. I don’t know what happened after we left the old jail clubhouse because Derby brought me home before the rest of that pain could swallow me whole. Legend postponed the wedding. Becki confessed something that made the entire room bleed. Sophie walked out with her face white and her spine made of glass about to shatter.
Secrets turn into cages too.
I said that to Sophie.
Now the words sit beside me in the bed like they are waiting for me to apply them to myself.
What is Derby hiding?
Everyone hides something. He admitted that. But there are secrets that protect old wounds, and there are secrets that turn into weapons. I don’t know which kind Derby carries.
I know he carries them.
A man doesn’t tell a story about broken ribs, a baseball bat and a dead mother unless there are ten darker stories standing behind it, waiting their turn.
The couch creaks in the living room.
My body goes still.
Then another sound.
Cabinet door. Soft curse. Something metallic clattering.
Derby is awake.
Of course he is awake.
For a man built like sleep should fear him, he doesn’t seem to do much of it.
I slide carefully out of bed, trying not to wake August. The floor is cool under my bare feet. I changed sometime in the night after staring at the cracked door until my eyes burned. I’m wearing one of my own shirts now, an oversized gray one with a faded Paducah river festival logo across the front, and cotton shorts I dug from my bag. Nothing sexy. Nothing deliberate. Still, my skin feels too aware.
The bedroom door is cracked the same as I left it.
Not locked.
That still feels like a confession.
I open it a little wider and step into the hall.
The house smells like coffee, rain, and something burning.
“Damn it,” Derby mutters from the kitchen.
A beat.