Her rules, her resistance-b

I sit at the table. He moves to the front door and I hear the locks — one, two, three — each one a clean small sound in the quiet apartment. He checks the window in the kitchen. Then the one in the bedroom. He comes back through and I watch him do it and I think about how I used to check the locks in my own apartment — once, twice, sometimes three times, my hand on the deadbolt in the dark making sure, making sure — and how I told myself I was being careful rather than afraid.

"You check them three times," I say.

He glances at me. "Habit."

"From the military?"

"From knowing what happens when you don't."

I look down at my mug. "Has anyone ever gotten through?"

"No."

"Because of the three times?"

"Because of everything before the three times." He sits on the couch and leans forward with his elbows on his knees and looks at the floor and then at me. "The locks are the last thing. By the time someone reaches a lock I'm already aware of them."

I study him. "How?"

"The same way you knew he was behind you tonight before you heard him." He meets my eyes. "You already knew. Your body knew before your brain caught up. You learn to listen to that faster."

My hands tighten around the mug. He is right. I did know. I felt Daniel before I heard him — a prickling across the back of my neck, a change in the weight of the air, something animal and ancient that said *wrong, wrong, wrong* three seconds before his voice said my name.

I have been ignoring that feeling for four years.

"I need to call my job," I say. "I have a deadline Friday."

"What kind of work?"

"I illustrate children's books. I have a full manuscript due to the publisher by Friday at noon." I pause. "I can work from here if I have my laptop."

He thinks about this. "You can use your laptop offline. No sending files, no email. Tell me what you need to tell them and I'll find a way to get the message through that can't be traced back here."

"They're going to think I'm strange."

"Tell them there's a family emergency. It's not untrue."

I almost laugh. It comes out as a short, exhausted sound that surprises both of us. He looks at me and I look at him and for a single second something loosens in the room — not warmth, exactly, but the absence of tension, which is its own kind of warmth.

"You're very practical," I say.

"Yes."

"Does anything rattle you?" He looks at me for a moment. "Go to sleep," he says.

Which is not an answer. Which means it is an answer.

I finish my tea standing at the kitchen counter because sitting at the table with him feels too much like a conversation I am not ready for and standing here feels like I still have the option of moving. I rinse the mug and put it back beside the other one with the handle facing the same direction, I don't know why, and then I pick up my bag and my sketchbook and I go to the bedroom door.

"Damien," I say.

He looks up from the couch where he has settled with his back against the armrest and his long legs stretched out and his eyes on the ceiling.

"Thank you," I say. "For tonight. For—" I stop. There aretoo many things to attach the sentence to. For standing between me and him. For the tea. For answering a question you didn't have to answer. For not being what I was afraid you were going to be. "Just — thank you."

He looks at me for a long moment.

"Lock the bedroom door," he says. "Not because of me. Because it'll help you sleep."

I stand there with my hand on the doorframe and I look at this man sitting in the dark on a couch that is too small for him in an apartment that belongs to no one, and I feel something move through me that I cannot name. It is not attraction, not yet. It is something quieter and more frightening than attraction. It is the feeling of being seen by someone who isn't trying to see you. Someone who just — does.

I go inside. I lock the door.

I lie down on clean sheets in the dark and I listen to the apartment settle around me — the faint creak of the couch, the sound of rain still moving against the window, the particular quality of a silence that has another person in it.

He doesn't sleep well. He said so. He has not slept well since he was twenty-six and I don't know what happened at twenty-six and I told myself I wouldn't ask and I won't.

But I lie there in the dark with my sketchbook pressed against my side like a hand held and I think about a man who checks three locks because he knows what happens when you don't, and I think about how I have been leaving my own locks open for four years and calling it love.

Outside the bedroom door I hear him shift once on the couch. Then nothing.

I don't sleep for a long time.

But I don't check the locks.

For the first time in longer than I can remember, I don't have to.