Paul's POV
The peace in the cottage seemed oppressive. Everything that had lately happened depressed me and made it hard for me to breathe let alone think. Becky sat opposite me at the small table, hands clutching a mug of tea she had not touched. Since we could stop the attack outside, she had said little. She vanished someplace deep in her head, and I could not find her no matter how close I sat.
Over the evening, I kept circling back in my brain. The gunshot is it. The person lurking in the darkness. Becky's posture throughout the seeming breakdown of everything. I valued her strength even as another side of me worried about her capacity for more. We could handle how much more?
Leaching forward with my elbows on the table, I aimed to tear through the silence that had engulfed us. You
