Chapter 15: Going Home
1477 Words
They stopped for lunch on the way back.
Cole had insisted, in the particular way Cole insisted on things — not loudly, just persistently, until resistance became more effort than agreement. He'd directed them to a diner on the edge of town, old and warm and smelling of coffee and something fried, the kind of place that had been there long enough to stop trying to be anything other than what it was.
They took a booth in the back. Maya slid in across from Cole. Ethan sat beside her without discussing it, which she was choosing not to examine too carefully.
The waitress was a woman in her sixties who called everyone honey and refilled the coffee without being asked. Maya decided she was the most competent person she'd encountered in two weeks.
"So," Cole said, once the menus had been looked at and mostly ignored. "You're going home today."
"That was always the plan."
"The plan kept changing."
"This time it's not changing."
He looked at her across the table with that uncomplicated warmth of his. "Are you actually ready or are you just saying you're ready because you feel like you should be?"
Maya considered this honestly. "Both, probably."
"That tracks." He picked up his coffee. "You know you can call, right. Any of us. If something feels wrong, if you see something you don't recognize, if your building's cat acts strange—"
"Cole," Ethan said.
"I'm being thorough."
"You're catastrophizing."
"I'm preparing her for contingencies." He looked at Maya. "The cat thing is real. Animals notice things before humans do."
"I don't have a cat."
"Then notice if your neighbor's cat acts strange."
Marcus, who had been reading the laminated menu with apparent genuine interest, said without looking up: "She has the protection clause. She's not undefended."
"The clause protects her from packs. The Hollow Pack isn't operating like a pack right now." Cole set down his coffee. "I'm just saying. Keep your eyes open."
"I have been keeping my eyes open for two weeks," Maya said. "I think I can manage."
Cole looked at her for a moment. Then nodded. "Yeah. You can."
The food came. She ate without tasting much of it, which wasn't the diner's fault. Her mind was elsewhere — back at the lodge, in the circle, feeling that loosening. Forward, to her apartment, to Jess, to the life she'd left behind two weeks ago and had to somehow re-enter.
She wondered if she'd fit back into it the same way.
She suspected she wouldn't.
She wasn't sure how she felt about that.
---
They drove her home after lunch.
Her apartment was in a building three blocks from campus — old, slightly drafty, with a landlord who fixed things eventually and neighbors who kept reasonable hours. She had lived there for two years and it had always felt like hers.
She looked at it through the truck window and felt like a stranger.
Not because it had changed. Because she had.
"You don't have to go up yet," Cole said, from the front.
"I know." She picked up her bag. "I'm okay."
She looked at Ethan. He was looking straight ahead through the windshield, hands on the wheel, jaw set in that way she had learned to read.
"Hey," she said.
He looked at her.
She didn't have a speech. She'd thought about it on the drive and come up with nothing that felt right — nothing that adequately covered two weeks of coffee and blankets and maps and Old Norse and things said in kitchens at two in the morning.
"Thank you," she said. Simple. Direct. His language.
Something moved through his face. Quick and real.
"Don't walk in the forest at night," he said.
She almost laughed. "I'll try."
"Maya."
"I know. I won't." She held his gaze for a moment. "I'll be back in two weeks."
He looked at her.
"For the meeting with Rennick," she said. "About the Hollow Pack."
"You don't have to be there for that."
"I know." She opened the door. "I'll be there anyway."
She got out before he could respond.
Cole gave her a wave through the window that managed to communicate approximately seventeen different things. She waved back.
The truck waited until she was inside the building.
She heard it pull away from the lobby.
She stood in the stairwell for a moment, bag over her shoulder, listening to the familiar sounds of her building — someone's TV on the third floor, pipes in the walls, the distant sound of traffic outside.
Normal. Completely, thoroughly normal.
She walked up to her apartment and unlocked the door and went inside.
---
Jess was there.
She was sitting on the couch with her coat still on, like she'd arrived recently and hadn't wanted to get too comfortable in case she needed to leave quickly. She stood up when Maya came in, and they looked at each other across the small living room.
"Hi," Maya said.
"Hi," Jess said. And then: "You have ten seconds to start explaining before I start crying and then neither of us will be useful."
Maya dropped her bag and crossed the room and hugged her.
Jess hugged back — hard, the kind of hug that meant I was scared and I'm angry and I'm so glad you're okay, all compressed into physical pressure. Maya held on.
"I'm okay," she said, into Jess's shoulder.
"You better be." Jess pulled back. Looked at her face. "You look different."
"I'm fine."
"I didn't say you looked bad. I said different." She studied her. "What happened?"
Maya looked at her best friend — at the worry in her face, the relief underneath it, the sheer normal human reality of her — and thought about how to start.
"It's a long story," she said.
"I have nowhere to be."
Maya sat on the couch. Jess sat beside her, turning to face her, pulling her knees up, settling in the way she always had when a long conversation was coming.
Maya thought about what she could say. What was safe. What would help and what would only frighten.
"I met someone," she said finally. "In the forest. And I ended up staying with him for two weeks while something got sorted out."
Jess stared at her.
"Two weeks," she said.
"It's complicated."
"Maya. Two weeks."
"I know."
"Was he—" Jess stopped. Started again. "Is he good? Is he safe?"
Maya thought about Ethan. About three exit strategies and Old Norse books and a blanket appearing over her in the night. About the way he said you're not alone in there and meant it completely.
"Yes," she said. "He's safe."
Jess looked at her for a long moment.
"Tell me everything," she said.
Maya looked at her hands.
She told her most of it. Not the parts that would require explanations she wasn't ready to give — the pack, Rennick, what Ethan was. But the shape of it. A man in the forest. A danger she'd stumbled into. Two weeks of something she didn't have clean words for.
Jess listened without interrupting, which was unusual for her and meant she was taking it seriously.
When Maya finished, the apartment was quiet.
"You like him," Jess said.
"I—" Maya stopped.
"You don't have to say it. It's on your face."
Maya looked at the window.
"It's complicated," she said again.
"The good ones always are." Jess leaned over and put her head on Maya's shoulder. "Are you going to see him again?"
"In two weeks."
"Good." A pause. "Is he coming here or are you going there?"
"I'm going there."
Jess was quiet for a moment.
"He put a blanket on you," she said. "When you fell asleep on his couch."
"I didn't tell you that part."
"You didn't have to." She could hear the smile in Jess's voice. "I know your face, Maya."
Maya looked at the ceiling.
Outside the window, the city moved in its ordinary way — traffic and voices and the low continuous hum of a world that didn't know anything had changed.
But something had.
She sat in her apartment with her best friend's head on her shoulder and felt the lightness in her chest and thought about two weeks and a house at the edge of a forest and a man who had three exit strategies and good coffee and eyes that caught the light in ways that weren't entirely human.
She thought about what came after after.
She still didn't have an answer.
But for the first time, she thought she was ready to find one.
Outside, a wind moved through the city.
She thought about forests.
She thought about gold eyes in the dark.
She thought about going back.
Two weeks felt like a long time.
She was already counting.
- Writer
