For now, Holly is safe with me in the abandoned church.
Howie has started typing again, and his words tumble out with increasing speed until he reaches the end of his updates. “Gotta go.”
He doesn’t wait for me to answer before he ends the call.
I stand up from the pew and stretch, my ass aching from the unforgiving curve of the wood. I should’ve ripped out all of these cursed benches when I bought the church. It makes a kind of poetic sense, though, that the pews are straight out of hell.
Worship should be uncomfortable. At least the kind that was done here.
Eventually the Army will break through the paper trail obscured by the shell corporations, but for now this place is safe. Holly needs to rest if she has any hope of recovering.
I take the stairs back down to the basement. Being here with her has attuned me to every small sound in the building, which is how I know she’s already awake. I hear her movement before it should be possible and pick up the pace. Go through the door.
Find her sitting up on one of the cots, rubbing at her eyes with the back of one hand. I’m across in a matter of steps, one arm around her, easing her back down to the pillow.
Holly glares at me all the way down, her protest lighting her face, but I can see from the tightness around her eyes that it cost her. That little show of strength, sitting up in bed, it cost her.
I stroke her hair away from her face. “You need to rest.”
“That’s all I’ve been doing for the past year.” Her voice is sweet gravel laced in pain. It’s hard to stay awake with painkillers like she’s on. The stubborn set of her jaw is proof that lying around is not Holly’s favorite thing. “Lying down. Staying low. Hiding.”
“It’s been three days since you were shot.”
“Well, it feels like longer. Especially with no windows.” Holly turns her head into the palm of my hand. It’s a fleeting closeness. It hurts her to turn over, so she doesn’t. She stops herself, except when she’s dreaming. The glancing touch of her warm skin on mine is enough to set me on fire. No, I’m not a good man. I’m definitely not, if I’m lusting after an injured woman.
A narrow table, more of a cart on legs, holds all the supplies I need to change the dressing on her wound. This is all I do. I bring Holly glasses of water. I press pills onto her tongue and make her swallow. I come back again and again with soup and clean blankets and more bandages and gauze. It’s as painful as sitting on the goddamn pew upstairs. More painful.
The guilt is a sickness all its own, and it’s eating me alive.
I had Dax bring me clothes for her, and I reach for a fresh shirt.
She watches me with her brown eyes clouded with the pain she tries to hide. It hurts when I touch her this way, and I have spent every waking hour trying to make it better and failing. The guilt never sleeps. It balls itself up in the back of my throat and chokes me.
“We’ll take you somewhere with windows next,” I tell her while I peel away the old gauze as gently as humanly possible. There never would have been time for this kind of care on the battlefield. On any battlefield.
And we’re in a battle now, albeit a quieter one. Every minute that we’re here, I want to leave. I want to run. But there’s no running to be done now. She has to heal.
“Maybe somewhere with no walls. You can go hiking and sleep under the stars.”
Holly gives me a hazy smile, like light through those stained-glass windows if the windows were the color of hurt. “You and me, both. Do you promise?”
“Yes.” It’s a lie.
We’re being hunted by the U.S. government like animals. If they find this place, if they chew through all the layers of shell companies and anonymous purchases and frantic drives from her apartment to the basement of one abandoned church, then we’ll be caught. And if we’re caught, the catching will be the least of our worries. We’ll be tortured. Probably executed.
I haven’t said any of this to Holly. How would it help to know, even though it’s true?
And the other truth, underpinning the constant prickling at the base of my spine:
It’s inevitable.
The government has time and money and manpower to tie up all our loose ends. A wild goose chase won’t keep them running forever. They will find us. Maybe not today, but someday.
There is no happy ending for us.
I thought I was used to the prospect of a bleak future. Enough nights down in a well will teach you not to expect much from a new dawn. With Holly, knowing the outcome is a thousand times harder than a steep climb out of dark water.
In some ways, the well would be easier. At least back then I was down there alone.
Holly’s gritting her teeth and trying to hide it when I’m finished with the dressing. Her body fails to hide all its trembles and shakes while I button her shirt. I don’t know who she thinks she’s fooling, but it’s not me. Fresh guilt slices its way through my ribs and into soft guts. Water. Pills. I help her with both, and as soon as she swallows her muscles relax. They don’t work that fast, but a person can anticipate relief as powerfully as they can anticipate pain.
I pull up the sheet and smooth it over her, careful not to brush the dressing, hiding it beneath layers of cloth. Protecting it, as much as it can be protected. Her tongue darts out to wet her lip and she lets out a sigh. Holly watches the ceiling like a screen in a drive-in movie. They’re going sweetly unfocused. She’s starting to fall asleep. I’m relieved. I’m relieved, and I shouldn’t be.
I shouldn’t wish for her to be silent and far away. But being awake hurts her.
Seeing her in pain hurts me.
“What would it be like?”
I brush my knuckles over her cheek. How is she still so soft, after everything?
“Stars,” I tell her, and the scene springs to life in front of me. The church basement and the cot with its white sheets dissolve into a humming dark. “There would be a million stars to look at. Skies so clear we could lie there and watch the constellations rise and set. We’d bring blankets and lay them out to watch. It would be warm if we held onto each other.”
Holly’s eyes flutter closed. The corner of her mouth curls in a smile. “Keep going.”
“We’d find a brook to drink from. Or maybe a lake, the kind that appears so suddenly. One minute there’s grass and ground. The next there’s water filled with reeds. They’d wave above the water while we slept. Or while we didn’t sleep.”
She laughs, the sound as dreamy as her eyes. Holly leans into my touch, her cheek warm against my palm. Blissfully warm. Heat means she’s alive. I haven’t stopped touching her, but I should.
I can’t.
“The ripples move through the reeds and onto the grass. They’re steady. And calm, for our camping trip. Calm water. The same sound wakes us up in the morning with the sun. Time means nothing out there. Everyone has enough.”
I don’t know what I’m saying anymore, but I keep talking. There are enough words to describe a day on the shore of the lake. A swim. An afternoon in the shade of a tent. An evening with a blazing sunset over the reeds and the water. Food over a campfire. Hot dogs and marshmallows. Innocent things. Things that make people like Holly happy. Stars, infinite stars.
Her breathing evens out. Gets deeper. I still can’t pull my hand away from her face. Not for a long time. The sunset is long over outside the church by the time I stand up and go about the second set of tasks. Getting rid of old gauze. Setting out new supplies. Counting her pills. We have enough water. There’s enough food. I turn off the overhead light and turn on an antique lamp brought down from the old church office.