Page 20 of Pucked Mountain Man
“Off. Battery’ll die in two.” I toss a towel over the jutting limb to keep it from shifting and start taping plastic across the inside of the broken pane. It bucks in the wind like a living thing. My hair whips my cheeks; glass bites my bare foot. I swear once, sharp and bright.
“Stevie—” He lunges on instinct; the knee punishes him. He snags the couch arm, breath strangled.
“I’m okay.” I cinch another strip. “Kitchen towel. Tie it.”
He hands it over like failure. I knot it around my arch and keep moving. Tape. Plastic. Tape. The wind finds every gap; I slam them shut until the sheet holds. It’s ugly. It holds.
We towel the floor, herd glass into piles with our soles. The battery dies; the house exhales into dark. Only the fire remains, a shallow bowl of light.
“Okay,” I pant, hands raw. “First pass done. We’ll do more in the morning when?—”
“I should’ve done it,” he says flatly, staring at the taped window like it insulted him. “I should’ve?—”
“No.” Too sharp. I catch his face in my hands. Cold skin; colder eyes. “You should’ve not re-tearing your ACL proving something to a tree.”
The corner of his mouth twitches, but nothing lands. The look settling in his eyes is the one from the replay—the self-loathing with a nicer coat.
“Hey,” I say softer. “We handled it. You were smart. You listened. You didn’t make it worse.”
“That’s the bar?” Empty. “Don’t make it worse?”
“It’s the bar tonight.” A beat. “Tomorrow it’s higher.”
He pulls back from my hands like they sting. “Yeah. Tomorrow.”
The fire pops, lonely. My heart knocks once, hard. “Come back to bed,” I say. “We’ll freeze trying to be statues.”
He nods like his neck hurts. “You go. I’ll make sure it holds.”
I hesitate—his posture is wrong, not coiled to spring but folded to break. The old instinct rises to smooth, to fix. I swallow it.
“Okay,” I say, because I can’t be the only one choosing us. “Don’t be long.”
I leave him in firelight—ink and storm shadow—staring at plastic that might as well be a mirror. In the bedroom, my hands shake rinsing blood from my foot; a cheerful star Band-Aid feels like a joke. I crawl into his bed because it smells like him and I want that to be enough.
It isn’t.
I wake to pale gray and silence. Ash in the hearth. Wind gone on. The space beside me cold.
The suitcase by the door is packed—his duffel zipped, his hoodie folded on top like a flag. In the kitchen he stands in jeans and a black tee, hair damp from a fast shower, eyes not quite meeting mine.
“Morning,” I say, because if I don’t say something normal I might break something that isn’t.
“Morning.” Neutral. Hello or goodbye.
“You were up early.”
“Window needed a second pass.” He nods toward it—layers tighter, edges tidy, floor clean, towels folded into a stack that’ll never be the same color again.
“Thank you.”
He nods once. “Road’s passable by noon. I called a car.” Finally he looks at me; it’s his face but not—press-conference blank. “We should get back to Seattle. I’ll finish rehab with the staff.”
We—but he meanshe.I’m nowhere in that sentence.
“Right. Of course.” My voice scrapes. “You didn’t have to pack for me.”
“I didn’t,” he says—then flinches at how it sounds. “I mean—there’s time. If you want to?—”
