Page 13 of Soft Flannel Hank

Deep, deep in the murky depths of his chest, Hank felt that warm spark too. He was terrified of accidentally snuffing it out, of someone else doing the same. So he kept it close, a tiny spark to hold in his hands. Something that felt an awful lot like hope.

“Have you pulled that Death card before, Esther?”

She kissed him again. “You have no idea.”

“Maybe you can tell me about it sometime.”

“I’d like that,” she whispered. “I’d like that a lot.”

Hank liked that thought too. He liked the idea of taking things slow with her, of breakfasts at the diner and coffee on the porch, of introducing her to his friends and taking her into the woods, of showing her his favorite places before pressing her up against one of the ancient red cedars and learning all of her secrets.

He liked the way her body felt solid and strong against his, how she was tall, how she looked him in the eye when she talked to him, even when he didn’t want her to.

He liked how her hand felt in his on the drive back to the motel. He liked how she smiled sheepishly when he brushed the back of his fingers against her cheek, how she pressed a single kiss to his lips before telling him goodnight. It wasn’t until he pulled out of the parking lot that he realized he didn’t even know her last name.

As he drove home through the drizzly night, he thought of the way Esther’s body felt on top of his, the press of her thighs against his, the sway of her hips as she ground them closer. How her mouth looked when she said the word “Fuck,” how his stomach lurched when she’d said,“I think you might want to fuck me as badly as I want to fuck you.”How her lips parted and her eyes closed when she’d come apart on top of him. The bone-deep desperation he’d felt to not finish before she did. Tobewhat she needed so she couldtakewhat she needed.

He bit back a groan and reached down to adjust himself in his jeans which, for the second time that night, felt like they were going to choke him to death.

When he got home, he stalked up the front steps, threw open the door, and bolted it quickly behind him before he practically ran up the stairs, ripping his jacket off and throwing it down the stairs behind him, his shirt following close behind on the floor as he darted into the bathroom, fumbling with his fly button with clumsy fingers before practically tearing the zipper of his jeans open in his desperation to free himself of the denim cage.

Bracing his body with one hand gripping the vanity tightly, his knuckles white, he roughly pumped his length in his other hand. Once. Twice. Three times before he groaned loudly, spurting thick ropes into the bowl of the sink. He kept pumping, kept milking the release from his body until he could barely stand any longer. Wrung out, shaking, and gasping for breath, Hank looked up at his reflection in the mirror.

His hair was too long, mussed from Esther’s hands. His cheeks were covered in a dark beard that was also too long and had far more silver than he remembered. His broad ribs were like bellows as his breath sawed in and out of his body.

As he stood there, gripping the sides of the vanity, his spent and softening dick hanging out of his pants, emptied twice in one night for the first time since he was a much younger man, he recognized himself. He recognized his eyes.

They looked as alive as he felt.

And that little spark in his chest, cradled so carefully and close, grew brighter and hotter. He set his jaw and grabbed his beard trimmer from the medicine cabinet. Later, he cupped water in his hands to rinse the beard trimmings and semen down the drain. He took a shower. He turned out the lights.

Hank climbed into the left side of his queen-size bed. Since his wife had left seventeen years ago, he’d slept on his couch more often than not, afraid of that empty space beside him that he couldn’t ever fill, either with pillows or his own body. But as he lay on his back with his hands beside his head, staring at the water spot on the ceiling above him, the other side of the bed didn’t feel empty. It felt reserved, like it was waiting for something, someone.

Maybe it was. Maybe he was too.

4

The last move had been a close call. Esther had been camping at Oak Creek outside of Sedona, Arizona. Her tent was pitched next to her ancient Prius. The site was remote and quiet and yet close enough to town for her to still get cell service. When Esther’s phone had rung at two o’clock in the morning, she’d answered it to hear her cousin, Shannon, frantically hissing, “They’re coming. They’ve tracked you. They’ll be there in two hours.”

Esther had sat bolt upright, the cozy tent suddenly feeling like a body bag closing around her. She’d flipped on her flashlight and opened the map app on her phone.

“North,” Shannon had said. “You’ve got to go far north.”

“I don’t have a passport, Shann,” Esther replied, feeling the all-too-familiar scratching of her own panic as it clawed its way up her throat.

The line was quiet for a minute. Esther tried to wrestle her breathing under control.

“Northwest. As far as you can go.”

Esther had moved her finger to the northwesternmost spot on the map.Olympic Peninsula, it said. She flipped to the specific page and saw a town called World’s End. She’d pressed her finger to World’s End on the map, that familiar comfort of her intuition flaring to life within her chest.

“World’s End, Washington,” she’d said to Shannon.

Another beat of silence.

Her cousin sighed, her exhale puffing loudly through the phone’s speaker. “You’ll be safe in World’s End.” She sounded so certain.

How long had Esther been running? Six months? Hopping from remote town to remote town, evading Callum and his crew, always staying one step ahead of them. Sometimes just barely.