Page 102 of Fate, Interrupted

I make the tea.

I sit down at the table, and I don’t call Penny, don’t call Jewell, don’t text Silas. I sit with it myself, in the quiet, a habit I don’t practice often enough. I let the clarity be what it is without immediately doing anything with it. I don’t make a list. I don’t draft a plan. I don’t open my laptop and look at maps of towns three hundred miles north of here. I sit with the thing that has arrived and let it take up space.

I wrap my hands around the mug.

The house is quiet. The city is winding down. I’m here making this decision for myself, before anyone else gets a vote.

And then I realize it’s okay to tell Silas about my evening. It’s not a sign of weakness. It’s a conversation starter.

Chapter twenty-seven

Silas

She called me at nine-fifteen, after the pack altercation at the warehouse, and after the wine-fest cum browbeating by my father. The first words out of her mouth were I need to tell you something, but first you need to know that I’m fine.

I knew she wasn’t before she finished the sentence. Not because she was lying, Norah doesn’t lie, it’s one thing I’ve been noticing without meaning to, but because she was being careful with her words.

I asked her what happened, and she said she’d had a weird night and was home and not to worry, and only after I said her name again did she eventually tell me.

Gradually and reluctantly, she told me. Two guys in the alley behind the shop. Positioned between her and her car. She handled it, she said. She was fine.

But I could tell she was scared. While she didn’t say so, I could hear it in the slight breathiness of her voice. It made my heart want to jump out of my chest.

By the time she finishes, I’m already in the truck with the engine running, my wolf right at the surface, running calculations I’m not entirely endorsing. I envision two teenagers in an alley, the gap between Norah and her car that they open like a courtesy and expect her to be grateful for.

The wolf is offering me several outcomes, some of which involve ripping their heads clean off, some of which involve scaring them badly enough that they never walk down another alley again. I’m genuinely undecided which would be more satisfying. The first is final. The second they’d carry. I’m leaning toward the second one.

The thought of her in that dim alley, standing her ground, makes me cold with anger. Tonight I’m going to her house and confirming with my own eyes that she’s exactly as fine as she says she is. Everything else can wait.

I park two blocks away because I need the walk to get myself under control. By the time I reach her rowhouse, I can knock instead of putting my fist through a wall. It’s a low bar, but I’ll take it.

I knock once. Then again, spaced enough that she’ll know it’s me.

A pause on the other side. The lock turns.

She looks exactly the same.

That’s the first thing I notice. There’s no visible tension in her shoulders, no unevenness in her breathing, no sign that anything has happened. If I didn’t know better, I could convince myself of that. She’s fine. That’s what I needed to see.

“It’s late. You didn’t have to come,” she says, stepping back to let me in.

“I know,” I say.

“I told you I was fine.”

“You did.”

She looks at me. “And you came anyway.”

“Yes.”

She closes the door and we move into the kitchen. She leans against the counter with her arms folded, not defensive, only bracing herself. Her house is warm and lived-in, an exact reflection of Norah. After the warehouse and my family, I welcome the contrast.

“Walk me through it,” I say.

“Two guys,” she says. “Late teens, maybe early twenties. One of them had a bruise under his eye. I may have pointed at it.”

I look at her.