CHAPTER 4

Ryan

I've been staring at the same page in this book without actually reading any of it for the last fifteen minutes. I hear her quiet footsteps approach. I look up to find Ana watching me. Suddenly I wish she'd go back to avoiding me, as unnerving as that was.

"You said you have stuff delivered." Her voice is quiet and devoid of her earlier cheerfulness.

"Yes," I say, noticing she looks agitated. Is my presence that unpleasant for her?

"So other people come here? Do people know you're out here?"

"A few," I say, confused until I realize how to make my problem go away. How to make her go away. She can't have recognized me, so there's no good reason to keep her here anyway. The solution is beautiful in its simplicity. "The next delivery will be soon. I'll arrange for you to be picked up and you can get back to your life. Just please don't go telling people about me. I came here for peace, like you said, and I don't want to lose that."

"No," she says quickly, and I look back up at Ana, surprised to see she looks near panic. She rushes toward me and sinks to the floor. "Please, don't make me go."

"What?" She's literally kneeling before me. Now I'm even more uncomfortable.

"Please don't make me leave. I can't leave. I have nowhere to go."

Someone else, particularly an attractive someone else, telling me they have nowhere to go is a little bit grating.

"No boyfriend?" I say, hearing the derision in my own voice.

She shakes her head.

"Family?"

"They're dead," she says, and I finally see the tears gathering in her eyes. "Please, I don't have anywhere to go, and I don't have anyone I can trust. This is the only place I feel safe," she says as tears begin to roll down her face. I realize she's trembling with fear. "Please don't make me go," she says, her voice breaking as she begins to sob. She covers her face with her hands and cries into them.

I am frozen for a moment, surprised and dismayed by this sudden display of emotion, and clueless how to make it stop. I lean forward and hesitantly reach for her shoulder, unsure if touching her will make it better or worse. Since doing nothing certainly isn't working, I lay my hand gently on her quivering shoulder.

"You can stay, for a little bit," I say.

The crying continues as though she hasn't heard me.

"Ana? You don't have to leave yet."

Still no change. This approach isn't working. I sigh quietly and regard the distraught girl in front of me. Her family is dead, she claims she doesn't have anyone else in her life, and she's convinced someone is trying to kill her. I suppose I can relate to some of that. My friends, my real family, are dead.

"I don't have anyone either, not really. The explosion killed my best friend. Our squad was patrolling a town, looking for stolen weapons, when we were ambushed. Jeremy and I were running for cover when he stepped on an IED and died instantly. Half our squad died that day. The rest of them died in the attacks that followed."

Ana's sobbing abates, but doesn't stop completely. I decide to allay her fears.

"I moved up here after that. Every month I get a delivery, but I've never seen the man who brings it. Until you showed up, I'd never seen another person since I first set foot in this cabin. No one's going to find you here. No one knows you're here, almost no one even knows I'm here. This place is about as remote as it gets."

Ana scrubs her tears away with her hands and I drop my hand from her shoulder, leaning back. She wipes her hands on her pants - my pants - hugs her arms around herself, not looking at me. I avoid making eye contact as well.

"What about your family?" she asks.

I feel anger tense my muscles. "They're -" I stop. I can't say they're dead. That feels disrespectful, considering her situation. But I can't tell her the truth, either. "It's complicated," I finish.

"Complicated how?" she asks.

"Leave it," I say gruffly.

She looks up at me, her brow furrowed in bewilderment. I avoid her gaze.

"You can't tell anyone I'm here," she says, her voice husky. "Not just for my sake, they'd kill you too."

"I won't," I say.

I return to the couch and the book I'd been staring at earlier. I'm surprised when Ana joins me on the couch. At first I'm afraid she'll want to make conversation again or ask more questions, but she curls up into a ball at the opposite end of the couch and closes her eyes.

After a few minutes, I look up at Ana. Her eyes are closed and she seems almost asleep. Suddenly her eyes open and immediately look at me. I return my attention to the book instantly. I can't concentrate on it, though. I can feel her gaze fixated on me. When I finally can't take it anymore, I look back up at her. Now she seems to realize she's been staring. She quickly turns her eyes on the front window. My gaze follows hers.

"Did you move out here to get away from them?" she asks abruptly.

I slowly look back up at her. "What?" I ask, my voice flat.

"Your family," she says, staring me down and not buying my farce that I didn't understand her the first time.

"Among others," I reply, looking away from her intense gaze.

"What -" she begins.

"I told you to leave it alone," I cut her off. She narrows her eyes and tilts her head to the side. I give her a short, warning glance, and this time she's the one who breaks eye contact.

After several minutes of tension-filled silence, she speaks again. "Why do you chop down trees? You said you don't need the wood."

"Something to do," I say, not wanting to invite any more opportunities for her to analyze me.

"What do you do out here all day?"

"I read. I have new books delivered and send old ones back. I hunt and fish. I go hiking. Sometimes in the summer I go camping."

"You have a gun?" she asks abruptly.

I study her face until she looks at me, trying to discern why she's so interested in my firearms.

"Yes," I say with trepidation.

"Good," she says.

I can feel my eyebrows lower. Her attitude is somewhat disturbing. It's as though she expects we'll need a gun for protection. I wonder how seriously I need to consider the danger she seems to think she's in.

"Why don't you want anyone knowing that you live here?"

I feel myself tense again.

"How do you figure that?" I ask, hearing the edge in my voice.

"You told me not to tell anyone that you live up here. Who would I tell? Why would they care?"

I ignore her, hoping maybe she'll give up with this line of questioning.

"Did you kill someone?"

I look up sharply at that.

"Is that what you think? That I murdered someone and I'm hiding from the law?" This accusation is borderline offensive. Does she think that because I'm ex-military? Now she's definitely going to talk about me when she leaves.

"Maybe," she says with a noncommittal shrug, like she's trying to piss me off. It's working.

"I have never killed anyone outside of the line of duty," I say in a slightly raised voice. "I just want to be left alone."

Her expression loses the aloofness, but there's still some curiosity there. I can't think of a better excuse that doesn't sound like an outright lie, so I hazard a bit of truth. "There was a lot of media coverage around the attack. It was the worst incident in months. I was the only survivor. You probably saw my picture in the news."

"So what, you're like a celebrity, or something? Hiding from the paparazzi?" she asks, her sarcasm apparent.

I cringe at how close she is to the truth. "Something like that," I say. I return to determinedly ignoring her. Thankfully she doesn't ask any more questions. After what seems an infinite silence, I chance a quick look at her. She's gone to sleep at the other end of the couch.

I find myself watching her. Her calm, peaceful face reminds me of the smile she gave me when I walked in to find her making pancakes. I feel some of the tension in my shoulders relax. Despite how intensely irritating she can be, I like her smile. When I came out of the bathroom to find her wearing my clothes and smiling at me, it took my breath away for a moment. Up to this point, I'd only ever seen her near-death and sickly. I'd thought of her as a sad, pallid girl. I was not expecting to see a pretty, cheerful woman. And she is lovely. I don't know if it's that she's clean, recovered from her illness, or even just that she smiled at me the way she did, looking pleased and with no traces of the darkness I've seen behind her eyes before. Maybe it was the combination of all three.

Whatever it was, I suddenly realized that she is beautiful. Not in the same way that Saph was beautiful. Saph was a knockout. She knew she was stunning and she knew how to use that to her advantage. Saph had plenty of smiles for me, but those smiles were just another tool she used to manipulate people. Even in our engagement photos, there was something ingenuine about her expression. She knew by that point that being associated with my family meant permanent fame. I just wish I'd realized her motivations before I got myself blown up.

But for all Saph's smiles, not one of them looked like Ana's.