Page 75 of Devoured

"I'm scared she's not going to come back from this one," Addi whispered. "From you. I've watched her survive things that should've killed her and bounce back loud as ever. This time she came home different. Quiet. Like a light went out." Her jaw set. "So no. You don't get to come up here and switch it back on for one night and change your mind again in three weeks. I won't let you. Get back on your plane, Dean. Go home. Leave her be."

"Addi —"

"I mean it. I will stand in this hallway all night —"

"Addi."

The voice came from behind her, from inside, quiet and careful and unmistakable, and Dean felt the whole world stop on it.

"It's okay," Lara said. "Let him in."

Addi turned. Whatever passed between the two sisters in that look, Dean couldn't read all of it, a whole shared language built over a lifetime, but he saw Addi's shoulders come down, slow, reluctant, and he saw her decide to step aside.

She turned back to him first, though. One last time. She put her finger in the center of his chest, and her voice dropped low, and there was nothing theatrical left in it at all.

"If you hurt her again," Addi said, "I will come for you. I don't care how far it is. I don't care how big you are. You hurt my sister one more time and I will find you, and there will not be enough of Texas to hide in. Are we clear?"

"We're clear," Dean said. "I'd help you do it."

Addi held his eyes one more second. Then she stepped out of the doorway, and she went, past Lara, squeezing her sister's arm hard on the way by, disappearing down the hall and shutting a door behind her with pointed, generous loudness, leaving the two of them alone.

She had a dish towel in her hands. She'd been doing something ordinary — dishes, maybe, the small motions a person makes to get through a day — and she came around the corner with the towel still in her hands and saw him standing in the hall, and stopped dead.

He'd been ready for a lot of things. He hadn't been ready for the look on her face, the flinch of pure hope before she stamped it down, the way her whole body went still and braced, a woman who'd made a brave decision and was holding the line on it through sheer will because she knew, she knew, how fast she'd undo it if she let herself.

She didn't run to him. Of course she didn't. She stood there in the doorway with the dish towel and got her face under control and said, level, careful, wrecked under the care:

"What are you doing here, Dean?"

"I came to talk to you. If you'll let me." His hat was in his hands. He'd taken it off without realizing. "And if you won't, I'll go. But it took me four years to get here, near enough, so I'm asking you to let me say it first."

A muscle worked in her jaw. Behind her, somewhere, Addi had made herself scarce.

"You said everything already," Lara said. "In your bedroom. You were very clear. I didn't leave because I misunderstood you, Dean. I left because I understood you perfectly."

"You understood the man I was that night." He turned the hat in his hands. "I'm asking you to listen to the one standing here now. Ten minutes. Then it's yours, whatever you want to do with it."

She looked at him a long moment. Then she stepped back, not toward him, just clearing the doorway, and said, "Talk, then," and didn't ask him to sit down, and didn't put the towel away, and held onto it like the shield she'd held her purse like the first day, and Dean knew this was the only shot he was ever going to get and he was not going to waste a word of it.

"I was a fool," Dean said.

"Dean —"

"No. Let me say it right this time." His voice was rough already. "You stood there and listened to me tear your heart out in my own bedroom and you still walked out without hating me. So you let me finish now."

Lara's fingers tightened around the dish towel.

Dean dragged a hand through his hair.

"I kept calling it honesty because that sounded better than what it really was." He laughed once, short and ugly. "I built a whole damn moral code around being scared."

Her eyes flickered shut.

"I told myself I was protecting the kids. Protecting you. Being honorable about it." He shook his head. "Truth is, I was terrified. And instead of admitting that, I decided losing you on purpose would hurt less than lying awake waiting for you to leave me."

"Dean —"

"And the worst part?" His voice cracked clean through. "Somewhere in me I knew exactly what I was doing the whole time. I loved you, and I kept trying to make you temporary anyway."