Keep her.
I listened, knowing I could keep her. On my couch. In my cabin. In my life. Her in nothing but that flannel. Unbuttoned. Under me.
I drove the thought down. It didn’t stay down.
Mine.
There it was again.
I moved her, stretching her out on the couch so she wouldn’t wake up with a sore neck. She’d be sore enough as it was. I got the light quilt off the end of my bed and put it over her. Summer nights ran cool this high up, and she’d been in cold water. She turned into the quilt without waking, pulled it up under her chin, and made a small sound of contentment. I stood there one more beat than I had any business standing there.
Then I took the chair.
I killed the lamp and let the dark settle. Moonlight came in gray through the front windows. The night was doing its usual summer business — crickets working the tall grass, a moth ticking against the screen, the creek running behind the cabin, low this time of year, just a murmur over stone. Years of nights up here and I knew every sound this place made, and every one of them was accounted for, and none of them explained why I couldn’t settle.
She slept like she talked. Fully committed. Curled into a small ball but with one socked foot escaping the quilt, face mashed sideways into the cushion.
I’d done more night watches than I could count. Wire, ridgelines, radios, other men’s breathing in the dark. I knew how to sit on a watch without getting attached. The men who attached made mistakes. I’d known them and refused to become them. I’d made my life sparse on purpose. Nothing waitingon you, nothing pulling your focus, nothing the world can use against you.
That didn’t stop me from watching her, taking her in.
The scrape on her cheekbone that she hadn’t talked about once, and she talked about everything — the shoe, the raft, the rocks, the general conduct of nature — everything except the things that actually hurt her. She’d handed me the little pains like party favors and buried the big ones. Somebody had taught her that. I found I wanted a word with that person. Alone. For about five minutes.
I liked my life. That was the truth. Quiet suited me. Solitude wasn’t a wound.
I’d built this life the year the military decided a soldier with a busted knee couldn’t cut it. I didn’t need a woman who only stopped talking when she slept to inch her way inside it.
The timer on my watch buzzed.
“Amy.”
Nothing.
“Amy.”
“Mmm. No.”
“Wake up. What’s your name?”
One eye opened. Regarded me with the profound betrayal of the freshly woken. “You know my name. You just used it. That’s how you got me to open my eyes.”
“Concussion protocol. Name.”
“Amy Marsh. Age thirty-two. Blood type, sweet, iced tea.” The eye closed. “Your turn. What’s your name?”
“You know my name.”
“Right. Bigfoot.”
“Where are you?”
“A very judgmental man’s couch.” Both eyes opened now, squinting up at me in the dark. “I fell into the river. Was rescuedfrom said river. I lost a shoe but gained a pair of very warm socks.”
“Headache?”
She did an internal audit that I read as it crossed her face. “Small. Behind the eyes. Three out of ten.”
“Nausea?”